Metal detectors, used one? Found anything worthwhile?
Metal detectors, used one? Found anything worthwhile?
Author
Discussion

Butter Face

Original Poster:

35,141 posts

191 months

Monday 21st January 2013
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Considering getting one to use on some of the Cornish beaches during the summer after the tourists have packed up.

Anyone use one and recommend a good starter kit?

And more importantly, have you ever found anything good???

HOGEPH

5,249 posts

217 months

Monday 21st January 2013
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I found a buried metal detector...

Puggit

49,832 posts

279 months

Monday 21st January 2013
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News article today of someone in Australia finding a £200,000 gold nugget!

Butter Face

Original Poster:

35,141 posts

191 months

Monday 21st January 2013
quotequote all
HOGEPH said:
I found a buried metal detector...
hehe

Good work.

GTIR

24,741 posts

297 months

Monday 21st January 2013
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I found my steel toe capped boots with one.

XG332

3,927 posts

219 months

Monday 21st January 2013
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First day i got mine i found a penny in the garden.
I haven't used it since.

TheTurbonator

2,792 posts

182 months

Monday 21st January 2013
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There was that guy who found those gold coins in a field worth millions (might be making that last bit up as I can't remember their exact worth). Last I remember there was confusion to who rightfully owned them and thus who could rightfully sell them between him and the land owner.

Gretchen

19,809 posts

247 months

Monday 21st January 2013
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My son has (what I think is) a decent one. It displays the type of metal located & at what depth. He's found a few interesting bits. A lid from some wax used on planes in WW2. And he was most pleased with the buried car he located. A BMW 5 series, on blue. Being 9 at the time he cleaned it off and added it to the rest of his Matchbox collection.

The idea was it would be used to most weekends. It isn't. It'll be fun for a few hours, but they're juicy, heavy and awkward. And frustrating. The metal detector not the 5 series.

I know a chap who was regularly metal detecting, hours, days, weekends, years on end, and finding old coins of small value. He dragged his very reluctant wife with him one weekend and introduced her to his hobby. Within fifteen minutes, much to his horror, she'd found a very valuable coin and was back sat in the car exclaiming her boredom.



Morningside

24,147 posts

260 months

Monday 21st January 2013
quotequote all
My parents used to do detecting all the time on the beach and I am wearing a nice gold knotted ring that mum found on the beach.
A long time ago she told me to head under the pier near the groynes (sp?) as its where the money tends to sit.


I tried it once and felt a right tit 'Hoovering' the beach.

dmulally

6,404 posts

211 months

Tuesday 22nd January 2013
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Found an old car just meters from where I grew up in the bush. From what was left that wasn't rusted it seemed like an early 20's Dodge roadster.

s p a c e m a n

12,154 posts

179 months

Tuesday 22nd January 2013
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The most expensive thing that I have ever found was copper.


One of those outdoor detectors would be a bit extreme for wiring a house though

Ayahuasca

27,594 posts

310 months

Saturday 19th July 2014
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I managed to discover the site of Sir Francis Drake's last battle by using a metal detector.

GTIR

24,741 posts

297 months

Saturday 19th July 2014
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GTIR said:
I found my steel toe capped boots with one.
That wasn't even funny.

anonymous-user

85 months

Saturday 19th July 2014
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Its quite farmy where we live and every sunday theres always a cluster of bearded baldy men pacing around one of the farmers fields with their metal detecters.

I've never heard of any big finds.

Vonhoften

2 posts

148 months

trickywoo

14,279 posts

261 months

Sunday 20th July 2014
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I found a .50 bullet - the bit fired not the case complete with rifling marks. I assume from the Battle of Britain.

Using one on the beach might be ok - easy to dig etc.

russ_a

4,728 posts

242 months

Sunday 20th July 2014
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Vonhoften said:
Just lost the last 30 minutes of my life to that:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tRq8h1OjNE

defblade

8,078 posts

244 months

Sunday 20th July 2014
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My wife's car keys, lost in 6 inches of snow (which was why we bought it in the first place).

A nut off my lawnmower, which had worked loose and spat into the cuttings box. I'd since emptied the box into a tonne bag already half full of cuttings...

10p, on the beach.

And that's it.

But seeing as the alternative to the first one was new keys and matching ECU, coming to approx. £1000 (including recovery to the dealer etc), it was sixty quid well spent.

mike-r

1,539 posts

222 months

Sunday 20th July 2014
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To be fair a bucket of warm water would've found the keys just as easily.

21TonyK

13,397 posts

240 months

Sunday 20th July 2014
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As a kid I was dragged off by parents to the beach or some obscure part of the country where I sat in the car for hours while they plodded around with tekkers looking for "treasure".

They were serious about it, numerous machines in the car, selecting their weapon of choice dependant on soil type and what they were hunting. They normally found interesting historical "junk" of no monetary value but occasionally found stuff worthwhile.

My Dad still frequents the beaches of Devon and Cornwall but more likely the Med where he scavenges the waterline. Finds enough to pay for a couple of holidays a year.