Buying Metal Detectors
The type of detector that you get depends on what you are hunting for and where you go. And how much you want to spend.
Nowadays, there is a detector that does it all (coin, relics, and gold) very well.
In coin detectors, the cheapest detector will find coins and relics. As you go up in price, you then get auto ground balancing, better target ID, discrimination and will detect deeper and will have a larger learning curve. You can set the discrimination to detect a nickel (for example), and it will not pick up other targets. But, it takes working with the detector and learning it to get the most out of the detector.
People that find the most will keep the discrimination set low and dig everything, there are things called target masking, a bad item like a nail will mask a good target, and if you don’t dig the bad, you will not find a good target. Some people will tell me that they don’t dig pull tabs; I then ask them how many rings they have discovered. Most will say none.
I have been detecting over 20 years and started with coin detecting, then found myself in Sumpter Oregon Gold Detecting.
Where there is gold, there are black sands and hot rocks. I had an excellent Coin Detector that had a prospecting mode on it and was finding ever Hot Rock around.
I then tried a lot of different detectors and ended up with a Minelab SD2100. It has to be very hot rock before the detector sounds off, and it will pick up gold under hot rocks. In Arizona, I have been to outings with 50 to 75 people, and most are using White’s or Minelab’s.
I have seen White GMT Detectors pick up smaller gold than the Minelab PI Detectors. But, I have picked up gold 18 inches to 2 feet in rocky ground that no other VLF Detector could have done.
You don’t buy a detector and start getting a lot of coins or gold, you need to learn the detector and know where to go, and you can get that by reading books, joining a club and support from the Dealer.
Bob
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