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My first detector story.. Add yours!!!

detectorist143

Junior Member
Joined
May 8, 2018
Messages
38
Location
Near Rochester NY
Hey Diggers,

I looked for a similar thread but could not find one.
Soooo....
Add your first detector and FIND story,

I bought my first detector about 16 years ago for my daughter.
It is a no name brand I bought off ebay. On/Off only. Hard wired coil and
no head phone port. CHEAP....
At that time my daughter was 4 and wanted to be an archeologist.
So I of course wanted to help promote her dreams.
Well the detector showed up and like any good dad I had to make sure it worked. RIGHT??
I slapped a single 9 volt bat in it and headed to the back yard with the wife right behind me.
"She is a history major"

I only went about ten feet off the back deck and started to swing this little thing.
It beeped all over the place.. then it went crazy in one spot.
Yippy it works...

I turned it off and headed back in. Then the wife who was watching from the deck said "well what is the beep?"
"I don't care" I said "it works."
That's all I wanted to know. So she pushed a little more. "Hmm" she said "I wonder what it could be??"

OK Ok it did not take much. I turned the little toy back on and head to the crazy beeping spot in the yard.

I swung the detector over it and it screamed again. I did not know it at the time but the size of the target was HUGE...
So I got a shovel and started to dig.

Well the TARGET was about 7 inches down. I was shocked at the depth but finally found the target.
As I hit the target with the shovel I realized it was big I started to fill the hole back in.

Again the wife pushed "Really your not going to see what it is?"
Ya ya ya OK.... I'm easy hehe

I started to make the hole bigger. It was just about at this point when I realized this is like HUGE!!!!
It end up being close to 2 feet wide in all directions by the time I opened the hole all the way.
But as I kept widening the hole. All I could think of is "this is going to be a Lid to and old SEPTIC TANK... OHHHH GOD!!"

Well after a lot of encouragement from the wife and about 20 minutes of digging I finally freed the target on all sides.
After it was loose in the hole I figured it could not be a lid to a septic tank. It was to thin.

I jammed the shovel under a side and lifted it up Half praying....

It started to give and move upwards to the world of the living again. It was heavy and rusty. I struggled abit with the shovel and finally grab it and pulled the huge piece of metal from its resting place for only God knows how long it was there.

"IT's HUGE" my wife says "What is it?"
I was just happy it was not a septic cover,

Well I man handled this Muddy, Rusty, Heavy, Huge piece of Iron over to the hose.
As I started to wash it off some fancy designs started to appear.
I turned the hose on high and blasted the mud out of it and slowly it started to take shape.

Big and Square. Cast iron and fancy, It has pillars on the side and claw feet? WT

I had no clue what the heck it was. Then the wife reappeared and said with one look.
OHHHH WOW its and old Fire place back... "WHAT??" I said....

Sure enough after a lot more cleaning and some TLC, it is indeed a fireplace back for reflecting the heat back into the living space.
Well I still have both the detector and the fire back. The fire back sits out in our shed now. Because it's HUGE.
I do not use the detector any more. I think you can guess why, and the daughter decided to study animal behavior instead of archeology. I am totally fine with that being a dog trainer myself LOL.

That stupid cheap toy detector and HUGE fire back all those years ago, did not create the worlds best archeologist. But it did create
a new hobby and passion for me.
So that's my first detector story. Hope you enjoyed it and PLEASE POST YOURS....

PS. I'll try to add pics of the fire back to the thread later.
 

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How can one Top that?
Great Story !!

Mine is more mundane and probably more idiotic on my part.

I just moved to my current home on 5 Acres and got curious as to what is on/in there.
I bought a used Teknetics Gamma 6000 of Craig's List and went to town on the acreage. About 10 minutes into my hunt I got a big Iron signal, The screen said 2 inches down but I pulled it out at about 6 inches.
When I pulled it out I was like what the heck is this? The object was about the size of a grapefruit but only a sliver of it, looked like a rock and it weighed a ton.
It literally looked like a rock that had exploded.
Ok so first thing that came to my mind was I found an exploded Meteorite.. I mean what else could it be :?:
Well I went inside and started doing research on the Net and I was convinced that's what it was.
I emailed a professor at Portland University who is a Geologist, sent him pictures and explained what I found and where I found it and he quickly called me back.
He told me that in 1906 a Rare Iron meteorite had been found about 5 miles from me and it was a good possibility that this was part of that. He instructed me to go on Amazon and get a Nickel test solution and test for the presence of Nickel. he said if that passed he would do some more tests on it for me free of charge as it would be a very significant find.

I was like WOA maybe I have something here and was very excited. I quickly ordered up the nickel testing solution and when it arrived I tested it.

Well it FAILED the nickel test :(

Disappointed I started doing research on the are and found out that from 1943 - 1945 my area was the butt end of an Artillery range and what I found was an exploded piece of Ordinance.

Since then I have found probably 30+ pounds of the stuff on my property and am still pulling out fragments (you think your soil has Iron issues).

So that was my first Detector and First Find Story.. Look forward to hearing others.
 
In 1980 my parents were trying to live the "Little house on the Prairie" dream and purchased a home in the country that was built in the 1880s. I was 10 years old, Mt St Helens had just erupted and I had grew up in the suburbs up to that point. Country life was a big change for me.

Our property was the last remaining 7 acres of what was a 400 acre farm in the old days and numerous sheds, root cellars and ruined buildings dotted the landscape. My little brother and I would scour through all these outbuildings searching for what we called "trinkets" back then, nothing really more than old pipe fittings and such. We were easy to impress in those days.

Around this time the movie "Raiders of the lost ark" came out and compelled us to do some amateur archeology on our own. We dug all over the place and recovered some cool artifacts including an 1888 O Morgan dollar which had a bullet hole in it, a 1925 SLQ and a silver pocket watch. My dad was very impressed and bought me my first detector for Christmas that year hoping we'd find some gold out there. A cheapie, Radio Shack kids detector like the one below. Loved that machine for the short time I had it.

The first day I ever detected is still fresh in my mind. I had decided to start where an old auto repair shop had stood in the 1930s. The building was gone and all that remained was the oil soaked floorboards and foundation. My first find wasn't anything special, just a rusty pair of Pliers similar to the picture below. From that point though, I was hooked on detecting, very sure there was much more to find out there and dad was very impressed too.

I spent several months searching the landscape for more relics with my trusty detector. No more silver was found but I had a great time recovering model T car parts, pieces of old wood stoves, a huge plow blade and some Mason jar lids. Just when I was beginning to become a decent detectorist, tragedy hit my family hard.

I came home from school one afternoon to find my home was gone. A fire had started in our laundry room, the entire house went up in flames taking everything I and my family owned, including the detector and my finds with it. Life was crazy for a while trying to rebuild and restart from nothing. Things did get better eventually but it would be many years before the detecting bug bit me again.

Fast forward to the present. Life has come full circle and I now own a few detectors, get out about twice a week to hunt and have made many amazing finds and friends in this hobby. Trying little by little to get my kids as excited as I am at digging up history. Now I am really hooked and can see myself swinging a detector until it's no longer physically possible. It all started with that first find.

Thanks for reading and Happy Hunting out there! :grin:
 

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Mine is quite a sad tale and by sad I mean pretty pathetic. I was living with a woman several years ago and one of her children was given a cheap detector as a present. I am not sure of the occasion as I have blocked most of that relationship out of my mind. Suffice it to say she could have been on an episode of hoarders and I simply had to get out, leaving a lot of personal things behind. I guess they belonged to her in her mind.

Moving on, I was designated to take the youngster outside with his new toy. He lost interest quite quickly, but I pushed on because I have always wanted to try out detecting. I probably had the sensitivity set all wrong because my first hit was a brass plate about 1/4" thick and 2" by 4" with a couple numbers on it. It was a couple inches down and, to me, shined as if it were gold.

Although I enjoyed that find, my back hurt a lot from bending over with such a small detector.

Fast forwarding about 6 years finds me in a much healthier relationship (marriage) and significantly better off financially to where I have a decent starter machine for me and loving the time spent swinging it. No major discoveries as yet. For some reason, gold and silver still elude me. I will continue to seek that which has been lost.
 
My first detector was an MXT. I was nearing retirement and thought it mgiht be an interesting hobby. There was a pocket park one house down from ours so that's the first place I went. When I got there the closest active area was a swing set so I wandered over and began detecting. BAM - my very first hit of any kind turned out to be a 10K gold wedding band (no initials inside). Well, I thought, this is going to be a GREAT hobby - nothing to it.

Needless to say on the average it's been a bit downhill from that first hit. But I'm still at it and still loving it (and still hitting swing sets at every opportunity).
 
I had been detecting for a year or so when Teknetics came out with some new detectors. I was swinging a Whites 6000Di at the time. I decided to sell my whites to a friend so I could get the Tek. I took my friend to an old roadside park where I had made some good finds. I tried to show him how it worked but he growded in front of me so I had to swing it to the side. I handed it to him and he backed up and swung it in front of him, getting a dime reading and digging up a Mercury that I would have found if he hadn't been standing so close. I think he was one of those guys who are just lucky. We hunted together a lot and when I would find a silver coin, he would find one. i found a silver Cub Scout ring and he found one. I found an old cheauffer's badge (the only one i have ever found) and the next day he found one. I found a silver ring with an Indian head design and he found the same ring. He found a silver dollar . . .and I'm still looking for mine.
 
Started in 1971, built my own, a Heathkit.
First thing I detected:
We had low pressure hot water heat. Water pipes from boiler were laid out on the floors, in concrete, under floor tiles. I was able to trace them all, and even find the unions where they were plumbed together at, lol.
 
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I built my own first detector in high school, for an electronics class project. It was pathetic. I soldered little components onto a little circuit board, cut out a 6 inch circle of scrap wood, wrapped some copper wire around it, and mounted it all on a broomstick. I waved a coin past the coil, and the little speaker buzzed! The day I took it home, I remember finding a dime next to our house, and a few junk metal pieces. That dime was the only keeper find I got before the design and manufacturing flaws became woefully obvious, and overcame it's usefulness.
The project had it's fails, but it was a short term success, and a long term inspiration.
 
Hey Diggers,

I looked for a similar thread but could not find one.
Soooo....
Add your first detector and FIND story,

I bought my first detector about 16 years ago for my daughter.
It is a no name brand I bought off ebay. On/Off only. Hard wired coil and
no head phone port. CHEAP....
At that time my daughter was 4 and wanted to be an archeologist.
So I of course wanted to help promote her dreams.
Well the detector showed up and like any good dad I had to make sure it worked. RIGHT??
I slapped a single 9 volt bat in it and headed to the back yard with the wife right behind me.
"She is a history major"

I only went about ten feet off the back deck and started to swing this little thing.
It beeped all over the place.. then it went crazy in one spot.
Yippy it works...

I turned it off and headed back in. Then the wife who was watching from the deck said "well what is the beep?"
"I don't care" I said "it works."
That's all I wanted to know. So she pushed a little more. "Hmm" she said "I wonder what it could be??"

OK Ok it did not take much. I turned the little toy back on and head to the crazy beeping spot in the yard.

I swung the detector over it and it screamed again. I did not know it at the time but the size of the target was HUGE...
So I got a shovel and started to dig.

Well the TARGET was about 7 inches down. I was shocked at the depth but finally found the target.
As I hit the target with the shovel I realized it was big I started to fill the hole back in.

Again the wife pushed "Really your not going to see what it is?"
Ya ya ya OK.... I'm easy hehe

I started to make the hole bigger. It was just about at this point when I realized this is like HUGE!!!!
It end up being close to 2 feet wide in all directions by the time I opened the hole all the way.
But as I kept widening the hole. All I could think of is "this is going to be a Lid to and old SEPTIC TANK... OHHHH GOD!!"

Well after a lot of encouragement from the wife and about 20 minutes of digging I finally freed the target on all sides.
After it was loose in the hole I figured it could not be a lid to a septic tank. It was to thin.

I jammed the shovel under a side and lifted it up Half praying....

It started to give and move upwards to the world of the living again. It was heavy and rusty. I struggled abit with the shovel and finally grab it and pulled the huge piece of metal from its resting place for only God knows how long it was there.

"IT's HUGE" my wife says "What is it?"
I was just happy it was not a septic cover,

Well I man handled this Muddy, Rusty, Heavy, Huge piece of Iron over to the hose.
As I started to wash it off some fancy designs started to appear.
I turned the hose on high and blasted the mud out of it and slowly it started to take shape.

Big and Square. Cast iron and fancy, It has pillars on the side and claw feet? WT

I had no clue what the heck it was. Then the wife reappeared and said with one look.
OHHHH WOW its and old Fire place back... "WHAT??" I said....

Sure enough after a lot more cleaning and some TLC, it is indeed a fireplace back for reflecting the heat back into the living space.
Well I still have both the detector and the fire back. The fire back sits out in our shed now. Because it's HUGE.
I do not use the detector any more. I think you can guess why, and the daughter decided to study animal behavior instead of archeology. I am totally fine with that being a dog trainer myself LOL.

That stupid cheap toy detector and HUGE fire back all those years ago, did not create the worlds best archeologist. But it did create
a new hobby and passion for me.
So that's my first detector story. Hope you enjoyed it and PLEASE POST YOURS....

PS. I'll try to add pics of the fire back to the thread later.

Good story! Nice write-up. Thanks for posting this, and starting the thread.
 
Decades ago I tried out my first detector - Whites 500D. I first went out my back door & started swinging. Just a few sweeps later I got a great signal. I dug & dug & it was a big target. Not wanting to stop as it might be a treasure I finally pulled out a basketball hoop. I had been inside the hoop hearing all the sounds.

Well 35 + years later I am 75 & have never lost the excitement of digging coins, jewelry, etc. And that's the real treasure to me.


Steve in so la
 
6 year old son's curiosity got me started

My six year old son one winter back in 1988 ask me way the high dirt bank that was being cut through for a new building construction had different layers of colors. Of course not being a geologist I could not answer the question. So did some research in the library (remember those days when you needed to learn something you went to the local library?).

Anyway, I answered his questions. But along the way I learned about the gold belts in North Georgia and got interested in gold panning. The coming spring, loaded up the two boys, 6 & 14 years old into the van with some basic panning equipment.

Soon found most the good places to pan were on private property. Was going down a long dirt road to some creeks and a lady was driving out. She politely ask me if she could help me. I told her that my boys (who were hanging out the windows) were looking for places to pan. She said she would be back in 10 minutes and for us to wait up near her house.

well she cam back and I introduced myself and boys to her. Turns out that she knew my father. She was retired and and she and her late husband owned a camper dealership and sold my dad a Winnibago like camper. She give us permission to pan on her 40 acre lot which had two real gold mines, and two gold bearing streams. What luck!

back to the metal detector. Being a greedy sort and wanting more gold, I figured I would buy the Fisher Gold bug and find lots of gold.

Well, it did help because it located corroded bird and buck shot in the streams and those were good areas to pan. We never found any nuggets bigger than the size of two squashed bb's. But we did find some nice relics. the best being a really good condition but rusted 1840's hand forged miner's pick. Just 3 months ago I set up an electrolysis bucket and took off a lot of the rust and then oiled it up with olive oil.

Oh, and when I was searching for gold caches I passed the coil over the pick. It blasted in my earphones like I had just passed over a buried volkswagen.

It was about 1 foot down in the dirt and tailings.

Since then I have been metal detecting off and on with getting serious again about 3 years ago with my AT Pro and since last march 2018 even more serious with my Nox 800.

The boys and I had great fun together in the woods for two years back then. We even built a home made dredge with a 7 hp trash pump. Boy was that a pain to lug back to the creeks. But lugging back uphill was worse. We used a hand truck with big balloon tires. We panned about once or twice a month almost year round. cold in winter but no snakes.
 

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My story is quite simple....I've been a coin collector since the late 1950's. I had subscriptions to a couple of coin collector publications, one being "COINS" magazine. Sometime in the 1970's the magazine started having ads from White's showing their detectors and how you could locate coins in the ground. I thought WOW !!!!...that looks like fun but do they work or is it nothing more than a piece of overpriced junk. Thought about it for a few years and finally in 1983 I bought a low end Garrett TR machine because I didn't want to spend a lot of money on something I may not like. I hunted in all the wrong places and didn't find much until one day I hunted around a pay phone booth...anyone remember those?? I dug some clad but that was enough to hook me and I was soon hunting every pay phone in town. I noticed that my finds were all clad and all very shallow, not the silver that the ads showed. After talking to a coin dealer who also sold white's detectors he explained why I wasn't getting any real depth needed for silver. He gave me a really nice deal on a White's 6000di and off I went. First time out with it I dug a Mercury dime and the rest is history....2019 will be my 37th year detecting
 
My older brother Torpedo has been interested in MDing for about 15 years, although only going a few times each year. I remember going with him and I would help dig up his finds, and sometimes we would take turns. :mder: The past 7 years he didn't go out much, maybe once or twice.

Then, in early 2017, we were watching unrelated videos on YouTube, and we came across some MDing videos. Remembering what fun it was, we searched for metal detecting videos and quickly came across NuggetNoggin. We watched his videos for around 2 hours, then stopped for supper. :D My brother surprised me & my sister with a Bounty Hunter Junior to share for our birthdays, and a Harbor Freight detector for Christmas that year (2017). I haven't found anything very spectacular yet, but I really enjoy spending time with my family. :mder:

My first find was a nail in my backyard, and my first coin was a clad dime in my frontyard. :detector:
 
I bought my first mental detector when I was a kid. It was a cheap one from harbor freight. Years ago. Got about three trips out of it and got bored. My fiance and I were out checking out some ghost towns a few months ago and it hit me.. how cool would it bee to have a MD?! So after shopping around for a few, we decided on the bounty hunter tracker 4,. Didn't wanna spend a bunch of money just Incase.. needless to say we've already got a million accessories, a new MD, pin pointer, dedicated MD backpack... Lol. Our first trip out we went to an old abandoned boarding house area. Within half an hour we dug up two Canadian pennies (1940 and 1943) a couple old nails and an old Fiat toy car we looked up and found out it was made in the earlier 50s. Now that we're hooked I can't wait to get out and find some more!
 
"We gotta talk" said my Doctor as he snapped off his rubber glove and sighed...He sat down on his little rolly mechanics creeper stool and took a breath, got real serious looking...Like at the BMW dealership...He was evaluating the chart of my test results incredulously...He muttered a 'damn'...

Then he took a big breath and said, "From what we can tell here, Mr. MudPup, your Blood Pressure is about 10,000psi, which is good if you are a backhoe, your cholesterol count appears to be in the 'large curd cottage cheese' spectrum, Your lung Xrays resemble a shopvac sump at a public carwash, and your prostate is hot as a meteor and as big as a grapefruit, your liver lipid results are registering 93 octane!"..."I cant believe you walked in here alive! I want payment in cash before you leave!"

I was pulling up my pants and asked, "So?.., What compelled you to stick your finger up the coal chute of a dead man walking? Are you some sort of digitally excited necropheliac? A poop hole puppeteer? How much did that cost me? Can you tell me what I had for breakfast, or is this just a hobby of yours?"

"NO!" he shrieked, "But I can give you the phone number to the local mortuary!" And I'm like yeah..hows about calling them and booking a room for yourself? And with that comment I left before it escalated to murder, (not that theres anything wrong with that)...

So I went home digesting the final words he said: "You will be dead by Christmas, and theres really nothing I can do about it!"...


Now, I've always been attracted to Outdoor Pursuit Oriented Sports, you name it, I've done it! But for some reason I never pursued Metal Detecting?...Sure I saw the ads in Fur Fish and Game, but figured it was for some coccamamie Old guys who couldnt fish, hunt, trap, trotline, flounder poke, frog gig, smelt seine, ginseng hunt, burl hunt, sell used cars, gopher trap, squirrel tails to Mepps, life insurance, realestate, clean out gutters, snow shovel, mow grass, or golf...

The night after my physical, Me and the Wife drove down to the beach to watch the Sun Set..and the conversation came up...She asked, "What did your doctor say?" ...I responded... "Basically, He said I had pancakes for breakfast, and I'm built like a fussing backhoe! But dont be buying any green bananas or worry about getting me anything for Christmas, dont even bother washing my underpants!!" She was overjoyed!

Then, as the Sun was setting, here came an old guy trudging up off the beach..he had a CZ20 and a big old scoop slung over his shoulder....I said to the Wife,, "Now I'd be really GOOD at that! Lets get out and talk to this old Btard!" And so we did! He was great! I got the Bug! So we took his advice and went and got my first detector the very next day from a local dealer...My F70....

That was 10 yrs ago..I dont know what ever became of my Doctor, I havnt seen him since...the damn guy is probably dead for all I know..probably from pills or getting runt over by a golf cart...He had a good gig going though...Kudos to him! Scare people into buying pills and stuff to avoid death?, making them drop trow and getting a yearly back door digital probing for $50 or more? Something a guy could easily do themselves?. ..The guy was basically Totlotting every day of the week!! :laughing: :laughing:

I havnt seen this Doctor or got a fresh 6 pack of Sams Club underpants for Christmas since! :laughing::laughing:
 

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