A Lurkers First Post

I've done a bit of lurking here over the past year trying to soak up some know how, and I thought I might share a summary of year 1.

I got my MD as a Christmas present in 2014, and then life went kind of crazy for a while so I had no chance to get out. I only managed 8 short hunts (!2---3 hours each,) but two of them turned out some fairly heavy clad finds. I used a spreadsheet to track everything and wound up with just over twenty bucks in clad, but some fairly interesting other finds.

• 1854 French 5 Centimes Bronze Coin
  
  • Maybe the most interesting to me because I found it on my first test run out in my own yard within half an hour of taking the MD out of the box. It's in pretty poor condition, but still, how does a 160 year old french coin wind up under six inches of rocky soil in the hill country of South Texas?
  
  
• 2009 Bi-metal Mexican Peso; 1964 Canadian Quarter (N), 1997 S. Korea 10 Won, 1997 Mexican 25 Centavos piece.
  
  • Also just weird. All of these were found along with a lot of US clad near a baseball diamond at a local park. Was there a UN game or something?
  
  
• 1 Bandera Bowl Funplex token, 2 Peter Piper's Pizza tokens, A 2002 1$ Texas Folk-life Festival token, and 12 Chuck E. Cheese tokens
  
  • I don't always find coins, but when I do, chances are good it's a worthless token.
  
  
• 1 Silver Celtic ring
  
  • Instantly recognized as one I bought for my daughter at the Highland Games; daughter happy to have it back.
  
  
• 1 Chunky Copper Chain Bracelet
  
  • Instantly recognized as one my Grandmother had given me thirty years ago, and somehow wound up in my yard.
  
  

The main find this year was dialing in on how to use my gear to work a space, but my best find was a fun new excuse to duff around in the sticks with my daughters.

In 2016, I need to shift focus from how to use the gear to where to use it. I've spent (not counting the MD) $154 on other related gear, so I'm still about 85% under water, so if things don't improve, I won't break even until 2022 :)

My obsessive compulsive spreadsheet addiction seems to be producing some amusing data, so I'll try to post it in below.

Hunts	8
Hours	16
Coins	219
Avg Coins/Hunt	27
Pennies	89
Nickles	20
Dimes	38
Quarters	63
Half Dollars	0
Dollars	0
Other Coins	9
Clad Value	$21.44
Numis. Value	$0.96
Total Coin Value	$22.40
UFOs	33
Pull Tabs	69
Pull Tab Avg/hunt	9
Clad Value per HR	$1.34
Total Kit Expense	$154.48
%Recovered	14.50%
Outstanding	$132.08
Hours at this rate	99
Break even year	2022

I'm glad you found us and am impressed with your output for only 16 hrs! I don't think I broke into the 1800s until after 100s of hrs. Any pics of that centime? What are you swinging? I got my first detector as a gift also. Welcome to the group!!

Welcome Oleander salad , my congrats to you on taking that huge step from out of the "lurker lands" :lol:and into our community :cheering: . The 1854 French 5 centimes is certainly and interesting find but not uncommon to see here in the U.S. , most foreign money was still widely accepted until 1857 (when it was officially outlawed). I like the spread sheet (wish i was that organized :yes:) , don't sweat the length of time when you'll be back in the black for that machine . the time with the kids and the exercise is "priceless" in itself plus all it takes is that one great find to pay off your machine a few times over , it can happen !! Again glad you joined up and good luck !!

Dan

For some reason it seems to defy my efforts to photograph it. It's on the bottom right in the second (2015 round-up) photo. I'm still using my first MD which is a Bounty Hunter Tracker IV. Had the stock 8" coil but just got a 4" and it seems to have upped my accuracy for coin-shooting, could just be mental though.

The chunk of limestone on the top left of the second pic is my "smart rock." It would ring up on the pin pointer when I held it, but not when it was sitting on the table! It took me about ten minutes to get smart enough to realize I was just finding my wedding ring because it was always on the other side of the rock when I was holding it.

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Welcome to the forum-glad to see you came out of lurker land! Interesting data on the spread sheet, but kind of makes me think you might be an accountant by day? :lol: One thing I have learned very quickly is that one never really can expect to recoup the money put out for detecting gear. One day you decide it's difficult to dig stuff up so you lay out big money for a Lesche. next it might be a fancy dancy utility belt, back pack, recovery pouch, vest or shovel. Then it's a better pinpointer. Once you start making some nice finds you begin to wonder what you have been missing so then it's an upgraded machine. Of course then you need more coils and better headphones. It like you find $5 then spend $20! :crazy: This pretty much summed up my first year detecting-of course now I got insulated waders and neoprene gloves for x-mas to do cold water hunting while land is inaccessible due to snow. So I don't think it ever really ends-but the experiences of making great finds, knowledge gained, and time spent with friends or family makes it worth every penny!

Welcome from Wisconsin! Kind of like digger says, you find some things and then you start to wonder that if maybe you get this item that maybe you will find more and better things. Never ending cycle I think but I still just love getting out and finding what I can

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Originally Posted by groundhog53946

Welcome from Wisconsin! Kind of like digger says, you find some things and then you start to wonder that if maybe you get this item that maybe you will find more and better things. Never ending cycle I think but I still just love getting out and finding what I can

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So true-but I think I can honestly say that if I had not upgraded to the CTX I would never have found 98% of what I found at the old church site including that large cent since I had already been over that area several times with the X-Terra. It just couldn't find the good targets very well if they were masked by trash.

Welcome from western MA. My daughter just moved to Austin and is loving it. What I have read here in this thread just about sums up my detecting career. Started out hunting schools and parks, got a ton of clad. Then moved over to farm fields and started getting the old stuff. First used a hunting knife as a digger, then got the Leshe. first detector was the White's Prism IIII, upgraded to the 9" coil. Ended up with the V3i and loving the ease of use. Went about a year and a half without a pin pointer(don't know how I did it), got a Garretts pin pointer. Over the years had to replace it once. Then got myself a very nice leather holder for the Leshe and pin pointer. Not to mention the Riker display cases.......hope you can see acquiring gear may never end. The real reward comes from getting out with friends, the peace of being out in nature...... and recovering an item that has been buried for 100 - 200 years.

Welcome! I admire your data compulsion ;) I recommend you add the following to your tracking spreadsheet: steps taken, calories burned, # hours using Google Earth, # of holes dug, # of times your wife gives you the "look" as you are heading out the door, # of times you cuss a bottle cap, # of hours spent fondling your finds.


Rather than Excel, you might want to convert to Access to squeeze the most useful information out of your collected data :grin:

Yes, my first year has disabused me of the idea that the hobby will pay for itself for just the reasons you state. It's similar to hunting and fishing; what little meat you take is small compensation. It's the experience that makes the thing worth the investment. It does seem like the potential for this hobby to at least contribute to it's own maintenance is much higher with metal detecting. The spreadsheet thing is just a by-product of being a computer programmer. I'm not an accountant, but I work closely with them and I've developed a kind of sick pleasure in mocking their silly notion that the books are "balanced." :) My spreadsheet is probably as much self-mockery as any real effort to "break even."

At first, it seemed like I was finding a boat-load of money in clad, but when I looked at it---nope. Then I realized that the dollar-two ninety eight wasn't what was getting me out in the dirt. It's the feeling of discovery and the tangible mystery of how things got where you find them; like the French Centime, or a one gallon morphine jug I found while digging up a coil of bailing wire!

Welcome from Washington state. For me, the fun is never knowing what the next signal will bring. I've found lots of items, some really cool, but never anything of real intrinsic value. But I have lots of fun doing it. Even with the detector and related gear, it's still cheaper than my other two hobbies - motorcycling and ham radio, and the returns from metal detecting are at least tangible.

Glad you're on the forum now and look forward to your finds. I don't have the patience to make a spreadsheet, but I do find yours interesting.

Welcome to the forum from SE Wisconsin. We are happy you decided to join. You did well for the hunts you got in over the year and I live your spread sheet. GL and HH.