Don't listen to all that nonsense the club guys told you.
Honestly, I am sure they were trying to be helpful and get you a fully loaded tool to give you the best shot at finding the most but I bet not many told you that most of them worked up to those higher end machines...they didn't start out with them.
Some do, most don't.
Ask them again and I bet most will tell you they started out with way simpler and less expensive machines before they decided to climb up the upgrade mountain.
Sure, higher price will get you more features, more settings to tweak, more depth and more, but really how much do you really need just starting out?
Here is my journey using a low end $200 Fisher F2,
http://metaldetectingforum.com/showthread.php?t=53930
Read it, or at least scroll through and look at the pictures because that will open your eyes to what lower end tools can do in the hands of an owner that commits to learning his tools as well as he possibly could.
It starts out slow because I was learning but as time went on even I became shocked at the quality and volume of great treasure in eventually found.
Especially all the silver and gold.
It wasn't the best or the deepest but it found me more great treasure than most could have imagined, relics, coins and jewelry...especially jewelry because that is what I was most interested in at the time.
I found enough in 3 seasons to pay for that F2 way more than 10x's its cost.
Way more.
As a matter of fact I won so many awards at my monthly club meetings that 4 or 5 guys in that club, who all owned those higher end whiz-bang, fully featured more expensive detectors, all went out and bought F2's.
They saw me bring in more silver and gold jewelry in to show off than anyone else, mostly every month, they saw me win yearly clad count awards and beat out the next nearest member by thousands more coins for the year.
I think the ones that went out and got one after I showed up believed this detector was magic.
It wasn't...the magic was in how well I learned to understand it and how much fun I had doing it and finding all that treasure.
Just about all of it was found in common, public parks, also.
The fact is 95% of what we look for and find is usually 6" or less in depth and that is a mark that most detectors can hit, even the cheaper ones.
Not everything but the bulk of what we find.
So what if they can't get to everything at all depths in every kind of dirt and site conditions, there is still plenty out there to find no matter what you use.
Admittedly, where I hunt now is very challenging because I live in the SE now with many issues like massive iron and trash, mineralized red clay devil dirt and more.
I used the F2 here for many months before I moved to better dirt in another part of the country and found a ton and had a great time but the fact is my soil is so challenging the F2 just couldn't do what I can do now with a couple of higher end detectors because they just have more power to get deeper and more settings that really helped to combat and get around all these problems so going upper end does have some advantages.
Do I regret doing all that hunting around here with that lower end F2 that just didn't have the capabilities my higher end tools have...not in the slightest.
I don't regret one second standing behind that thing for 3 years, I have nothing to regret because I found so much in two different states that I never had a chance to regret a thing.
The F2 is gone now but it was replaced with the F22, an upgrade to the F2 that still costs under $250.
There are others out there too, the Eurotek Pro has many fans and the market today is filled with lower end and entry level tools that can work well for you.
You need something decent to start out and learn the hobby and most $200-$250 units will work well at doing just that.
If you want to upgrade one day fine, most of us that stay in the hobby do that, but why not stay in your comfort range and get one that you can learn on.and find things, maybe enough to help pay for or completely pay for a healthy upgrade if you want to do that...someday?
By that time you will be well versed in what features would be advantageous for you to have on board to get you to the next level.
In the time I spent with that F2 I managed to gather up close to $1000 in clad, lots of older coins and about $12-$1,500 in silver and gold jewelry if I sold it all at melt price...not retail.
Since then I added a few more higher end detectors and lots of coils plus other accessories to my arsenal and the F2 paid for all of it.
I vowed after I was in the hobby about a year that I would never spend another dollar on my hobby that couldn't be paid for with what I was able to find buried in the ground and I am still pretty much sticking to that.
Start out slow, spend what you want to spend and use that one to learn the hobby and most of all have fun doing it.
When it is time to upgrade, if that time ever comes, you will have much more knowledge about what kind of hunter you want to be, what kind of targets you enjoy going after the most and experience in different kinds of sites and soil conditions so you will know exactly what features could possibly help you advance in the hobby if you feel you want to do that.
Trust me, it is all so confusing now but in a short time it won't be once you start.
Eventually it will all become easy and obvious to make future decisions.