Some 40 odd years ago I was a 12 year old kid who dreamed of owning a metal detector. (which my wife finally bought for me in 2015 - long wait) My uncle had a detector and came to our house with it. I knew my father would not approve of me pestering him with asking to try it, so I simply focused on being 'ever present'. I watched as he pulled a gold and two silver rings from our front yard, dozens of coins including several silver also came up. Finally he had searched the yard and was getting ready to put it away so I popped the question, "Can I try?"
He thought it over and said, "No, you might break it".
At that point my father did something I never expected, he said "You got to search our whole yard, let him try and you make sure he's careful."
He handed me the thing which must have weighed 15 lbs. and had a control box that was the size of a toaster oven with enough knobs to be overwhelming. Well, I dug 3 or 4 of the old-style pull tabs and he laughed and said he had found all the good stuff and that I ought to go down to the barn and dig up rusty nails for a while. - Which is exactly what I headed out to do, now more or less unsupervised with my uncle following at a distance. Under an ancient oak tree by the barn I found an area that lit up 2 ft. in diameter. I dug up an aluminum pot lid, which my uncle promptly confiscated showing up seconds later. Minutes after, I dug a silver quarter, which was also his because 'the detector was his'. This was followed by perhaps 20 nails in various stages of decay.
My uncle finally got bored watching me dig nails and went up to the house to get some iced tea. I searched on, never tiring of pulling out one nail after another. Finally I got a bigger signal that turned out to be over a foot deep. It was a large solid silver serving spoon stamped US Cav. I was pretty jazzed! The spoon fit in my inside coat pocket but nearly protruded through my collar! My uncle showed up a few minutes later, confiscated the coin I had just dug and asked if I'd found anything else? "Yes, I said proudly. I have tons of nails and stuff." (not quite a lie - stuff...) "Do you want any of those?"
"No, you can keep those. But, I'm gonna put the detector away now - it's not a toy".
I still have that spoon! It's in my collection with all the many great things I've found in the last year and half since getting my own detector. But it is special in ways that are hard to describe.