best cheap mding buy?

Welcome Keith. $100 limits your choices. If you can go up to $150 or better yet $200 you can get a good detector that will better fit your needs.
Whites, Garrett, Tesoro, Fisher all make good entry level detectors. I have owned the Whites Prizm series and the Garrett Ace series and highly recommend each. I haven't used Tesoros or Fishers but by all account they are great detectors. Others can give you more info on those.
Check "metal detector reviews" to get some insight about each. Also there are several members that can steer you in the right direction. GL

First off, welcome to the forum Keith. Good to have ya here. For the beguinner, the Garrett ACE250 would probably suit your needs real well. A lot of the folks here have one, and all seem to love the machine. Its light weight, and has about all the bells and whistles. Cost is around $199. I'm sure TonyCT will be able to help ya out in this respect.

Welcome!!

Do yourself a favor, and stay away from any minor brands, as you will probably be wasting your money. I bought 2 Ace 250's recently. I am trying to get the wife interested, as well as a nephew. They are probably the best bang for the buck you will find, as well as having some resale value should you decide to move up. Most people keep them as a back up machine. For an entry level unit, it has outstanding performance. It will work well on dry beaches, and average soil. Does not like wet salt water beach, but unless you would consider spending about $ 400-$500, not many of the machines are able to balance well in salt water. The Ace is an outstanding coin shooter, but don't expect the depth of a more sophisticated machine.

Welcome to the forums. You're bitten and you haven't detected yet. 8)
The guys are right in what they're saying. The Ace150/250 is the place to start. If you go cheaper you'll have fun but wonder what you're missing.
Let me know if you need any help in deciding.

Hey Keith, glad to meet you.

I'm a newbie, too, so I can relate.
My interest goes back years, but I've never owned a detector until my wife bought me a...'value' unit this last Christmas. She didn't know and she was getting me something I always wanted. Although I've not been able to find out how much they cost (the model has been discontinued) I would estimate it to be right in that $100 range you spoke of.

My advice is the same as everyone else's so far: Don't buy one that only costs that much. They are barely above toys, and if you want to KEEP your interest you need to get a quality unit. All it would take is being with someone else who has a good unit that kicks the crap out of you on decent finds and you'd be discouraged with the hobby.

I just ordered a Garrett ACE 250, which seems to be, hands down, the best unit for the money (around $200). Not to say it IS the best unit, of course, but it's the way I went. For something just a little cheaper, take a look at the Garrett ACE 150, as others have mentioned. Not as many features as the 250 has, but not quite the price.

Charles Garrett says something like this in a book: "Take your budgeted detector amount and add $100 to it. You won't be sorry."

Good luck!

OH

Even though I run a hundred dollar unit (Bounty Hunter Fast Tracker) and am finding all I'm willing to dig. I have to agree with everyone else. Go with a higher quality machine. The BH's shaft is a bit wobbly and it had issues straight out of the box. (Headphone jack wouldn't work) The problem is I'm not willing to put it down long enough to get it fixed.

check your PM

I realize sometimes you don't have much choice in what you can spend but if you really want to give metal detecting a fair chance less than $100 won't do it. Unless you lucky enough to hunt areas where no one else has, or you'll be happy with finding clad(modern) coins and possibly the recently lost rings then pretty much any detector will do.

I know all too many people that have tried metal detecting and chose to go cheap and gave up.