I got interested in metal detecting earlier this year when I found myself watching hours and hours of metal detecting videos on YouTube.
Towards the end of January, I decided to pull the trigger and ordered a $245 Garrett ACE 300 detector from Amazon.com. It arrived on Feb. 3, but the cold weather hung on for what seemed like several months. In the meantime I continued to accumulate equipment - A hip/thigh pack for finds and gear (free from the Vine program), a pair of cut-resistant gloves for $11.49, a plastic backpacker's toilet trowel for $4.61 - later replaced with a purpose-made serrated digging tool for $8.57, a sand scoop for $7.73, a serrated shovel for $29.99, a Garrett Pro-Pointer pinpointer for $127.45, and most recently a pair of Garrett gloves for $9.95 because the cut-resistant gloves were a touch too big. That's a total investment of $451.67, thus far... And as of today, I have recovered 88 cents in change.
The Corona virus pandemic severely limited my access to detecting sites, which was fine with me because I want to learn as much as I can within the privacy of my own yard. The front yard is getting most of my attention because the back yard was mostly churned up by an abortive garage project in 2007. The house was built in 1903 and there are plenty of targets in the front yard. My first hole yielded a discarded piece of flashing from the replacement windows we had installed in November, 2017.
So far, the most interesting things the yard has given up are a matchbox-size 1940 Mercedes touring car, a tow truck, a small toy gun, some bottle caps and some can slaw (what's left of cans after they get shredded by a mower). The only other location I've searched is the city park diagonally across the street from my house, focusing on the pea gravel surfaced playground area. That's where the sand scoop comes in. Its holes are just right for sifting pea gravel and have yielded up a bunch of small change and a matchbox Mustang. My first foray to the playground was the day my pinpointer arrived, but I didn't think I'd need it. I took it along the next time I detected the playground and quickly realized how wrong I had been - it's a huge help in narrowing down a search.
I posted this photo of my Monday discoveries, noting that a quarter and eight pennies is not enough to quit my day job. Then I realized that metal detecting IS my day job.
