The future of jewelry hunting

I recall a post like this some time ago but it is really hitting home for me this year. I mostly lake and river hunt so in my area I don't get the multitudes of "depositors" like the bigger condo lined saltwater tourist beaches. Today, I found my 15th, 16th, and 17th ring of the season from hunting several swimming areas. Out of 17 rings...just one has been gold. And just one is 925 silver and it was one of the 3 I found today. The majority have been stainless and tungsten, with a few very cheap costume bling junk mixed in. It's still fun seeing that roundness in the scoop but geez...are you other hunters seeing this same thing in your finds? Seems like nobody is buying or wearing gold or silver rings any more...at least not in my area. A lot of the people at work are simply getting ring tattoos and not wearing rings at all. A lot of the others are wearing silicone bands too.

Years ago..no body water hunted in my area ...now you can hunt in all metal and no targets as it really caught on...at least I my area...
Last time I hunted 6 guys lined up and scoured the area.....times surely changed...

Daniel,

I'm in the same exact boat. I have hunted the beach 16 times this season/year....... thus far. I have only found 3 gold items. This is very unusual for me. I normally find a piece of gold every OTHER time I hunt the beach. This year....... I have been loaded with Stainless, Tungsten, Titanium, ...... and a few silver items. And....... as of hurricane Irma...... this has caused my beaches to incur the zero'ized "Master Reset"....... as all summer sand (with subsequent summer drops/losses) are gone.

I mostly do park hunting and sports fields, and before I would have 12 to 15 gold rings a year. Now I get maybe 2 or 3 a year, 5 or 6 silver. I think gold has gone up so much people know if they loose one it is a lot of money. Now they are replacing rings with other metals. I still love to find a silver now and then. But the gold will make my hart almost stop. flintstone

Yep ,, all those fancy videos and pictures everyone likes to plaster all over the internet and attract more people to a hobby with finite resources are really taking their toll.
One thing detectorists have never grasped is that you reap what you sow.

I can't believe I am saying this, But agree with Shoveler a 100%. Lmao.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/22/2017 03:06AM by Harold,ILL..

I think some of y'all missed the point. I'm not talking about lack of finds due to competition on sites. Rings are still being lost and are out there to be found but the quality of them are getting to be more and more junk metal vs precious metal. That's what I was getting at.

Daniel Tn Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I think some of y'all missed the point. I'm not t
> alking about lack of finds due to competition on s
> ites. Rings are still being lost and are out ther
> e to be found but the quality of them are getting
> to be more and more junk metal vs precious metal.
> That's what I was getting at.

Its probably the fact that folks are growing wiser about wearing expensive jewellery and the higher risks of loosing it while out on sports or other leisure pursuits,if someone had say say 'grannies' victorian lump of ice on her finger that has been handed won over the years that was probably worth a fair amount and also the sentimental value attached with it as well,then i would think they would be devastated loosing it,so i am assuming they would swap it for a 'el-cheapo' tungsten or silver ones and hence you are seeing a big increase in low grade jewellery finds and a decrease in higher grade gold and platinum finds with lumps of expensive ice.

In many ways water hunting is not like the old days, but the past is the past. Fortunately there are a couple prime spots nearby for re-nourishment. Just have to hit them early and often.

The amount of tungsten and stainless is discouraging.

Tom

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In a democracy, it is difficult to win fellow citizens over to your own side, or to build public support to remedy injustices that remain all too real when you fundamentally misunderstand how they see the world.

Been a tuff year Tom even on this side of the island. The front sand bar just kept getting bigger with new worthless sand..... then the storms came and all that sand moved toward the beach. We had the people, but it seemed they werent as active this year, they wanted to spend more time on the dry sand...... and they spent more time in the shallow as well. New age rings just leave you wanting to scream. Got one two days ago......looked like shinny nice white gold, i would have bet on that one, but it turned out to be White Tung Carbide. They are even combining them now and adding stones. Been at least 5 years now since we were down to the shells where we needed to be. We have the hard pan and recent drops are getting scooped up quickly since people are morning, afternoon, and knight hunting around here. I hit the beach around 4:30...... and there is always at least one or two guys there neck deep just finishing up. We just need a Winter of consistent N. wind to get the long shore drift cutting......... or this winter is going to be even more of a challenge.

Dew

My area has a number of detectorists but most all of them are exclusively into the civil war relic hunting and or simple recent deposit clad hunting in playgrounds and such. There is no evidence yet of water hunters here besides me. That could change as waterproof detectors become more into the price range of average detectorists but for now I am good. I always go when nobody is there as to not draw attention or to give anyone else a light bulb idea that would have otherwise not thought of it. That's one benefit to working 3rd shift and having days off during the week. I can go early of the morning during the week and have the beach area to myself for at least 4 hours. It's even better when it rains or is threatening to rain.

We noticed a drop off when the price of gold sky rocketed!

Well then most likely do to price of Gold getting crazy makes People leave Jewelry in the Car. I have not found much,But I am strictly a Park Hunter. But it seems with the econominal AT-PRO much more Detectorist are venturing into Water Hunting.
It seems most Newb's on FB are using AT-PROs these Days.

Seems to be the same everywhere when it comes to water hunting. This year has been a record breaker for me when it comes to junk. In the 90's it seemed like every adult was wearing a lot of gold and some people were wearing a lot to the beach. Then it started getting a little more scarce each year. When I run into new hunters on the beach these days and describe how it was back then they kind of stare at me in disbelief. Lots more hunters now with AT Pro's(which aren't bad machines) but there are a few with pulse machines and huge scoops. They are working much harder than I had to at their age. Some of the holes I step in are enormous. The days of digging the mid tones are long gone for me. If I find silver I feel very lucky. I can actually find more coins in parks now days than at the beach/water. I've been hoping things will change but I fear this is the new normal. Lots of things have changed, crowds are way down. The local waterparks have something to do with that. But when the beach is crowded people don't swim and play in the water like years past. They've gotten much lazier and mostly lie on the beach and stay on their phones I've dug a lot of phones from the water the last few years. The future sure doesn't look good for jewelry hunting. BTW, my 1st post on this great forum.

A lot of people dont wear gold like they used to. Guys especially. I remember growing up alot of my redneck buddies wore gold necklaces, I had one myself. Jewelry isnt as popular with african americans either. Maybe the recession made people realise how wasteful it is. Who knows. Now I will say I had some good luck on the soccer fields if that makes sense.

You guys remind me of my dog who simply looks the other way when confronted with something he can't process and hopes it will go away. If he just doesn't look at the cat while it eats his food , then it simply isn't happening. You can ignore the 800 lb gorilla sitting in your dining room all day but the fact is , your jewelry hunting sucks because there are so many more people doing it and competing with you. There have always been , and will continue to be , alternative metals to make rings and things out of,,,I have a gallon size plastic bag full of them ,,that's nothing new. And people continue to wear and lose the stuff but the fact is that someone is simply beating you to it,,,,period. You don't see everyone out there by any stretch of the imagination and , if you think you have some "private" venue that only you go to , you're just fooling yourself. The cost of gold is irrelevant as well , believe me , the ring someone bought when they were making $5/hour and gold was $32 was every bit as valuable to those people as it today when most is bought with the swipe of a card and cheap revolving instant gratification credit. If anything that gold ring probably has less value to the owner today then it used to. ALso:

People are also going to LOSE LESS because of the psychological affect of seeing a hoard of detectorists sweeping the beaches and sports fields and seeing TV shows about the magnificent treasures people find detecting. It becomes a constant reminder not to forget your ring on the beach towel or , are you're going to take it to the soccer game at all?

So read 'em and weep my fellow detectorists , you guys that are compelled to take a pic or make a vid of every rosie or handful of clad and post your "lookey what I found" videos on two or three forums with your silly C.B.DeMilles intros and wait for the standard "atta boy" responses have basically screwed the pooch and encouraged an entire barrage of more people to come and take another slice out of an ever dwindling pie. Every time you see your finds count dropping thank those manufacturers who produce the TV shows and their useful idiots who satisfy their egos while convincing more and people to come try dirt fishing with their internet productions and youtube channels.

That's enough for now

Excuse Me please while I got to the ER as I must be having a Stroke as I agreed with every word of what Shoveler just said.

Shoveler -- I'm sorry to say but I am going to disagree. There is no metal detector made that can accurately ID just gold from everything else. If that were the case, we would all have one. But it is not the case and the reality is that to get gold jewelry, you have to dig everything and leave nothing behind. If the beaches I am hunting have other people hunting them and beating me to the punch, then they must suck at it. Because they leave a lot of targets in the water...including those stainless and tungsten rings that all read right in the nickel/gold range...I think the last several I dug were 12-14 and 12-16 on the CTX which is right there in nickel/gold range too. The point being...those could have easily been gold rings by their conductivity reading, and I would have found them. The only way for your logic to make sense is if they have a detector that can distinguish between the nickels, aluminum, foils, tungsten, etc and only dig the gold rings out of a site....which ain't happening. If it were being hunted, there would be a lack of those signals there. Plain and simple.

You remind me of a local guy that relic hunts. He is all doom and gloom too; blames his lack of finding stuff just like you are...on forums, on tv shows, youtube, etc. Yet if you watch him, you see what the root problem really is. He goes to the same site he always hunted and found stuff at in the past. He walks the same lines, and hunts the same lines. The only thing that changes is that he will get a new detector every now and again. Sure, there are other hunters out there but they aren't super human and don't have super detectors. You just have to outsmart your competition and break out of your own set patterns. Find new and different places to go. My area has had a very mild and wet summer which also equals a lot less people heading to swim. Still yet, I have averaged a ring per hunt, and in several cases, multiple rings and other pieces of jewelry. Plus all the clad...most of which was turned brown from being in the water for a while. It's still out there fellas but you ain't gonna find it sitting at home bellyaching about other hunters.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/22/2017 10:29PM by Daniel Tn.

LoL

Daniel ,,,,,, the cat's eating your food.

I graduated from high school in 1980. And that was the time of the meteoric rise in gold and silver prices. And if I'm not mistaken, it was my graduating class year where the class-ring manufacturer started offering other metals (plated, etc...) instead of the traditional 10k high school class rings. Prior to that, all class rings (that I recall) were always gold.

And I remember a time when no self-respecting couple got cheapo tungsten, or stainless for wedding rings. I mean, sheesk, that's like getting Avon costume jewelry for your frickin' wedding ring ! I remember in the late 1970s/early 1980s digging junk rings, of course, but they were never junk WEDDING rings.

Hence, yes, after a good beach storm now, out of 3 or 4 rings, several will be junk rings, and only a single gold. In the early 1980s the ratio of gold was higher for rings.

Junk to gold/silver rings is way higher than it use to be without a doubt. I have hunted some local fresh water beaches that are not hunted much as lots of targets in the gold range but not hardly any gold unlike a few years ago. I think videos have caused a lot more detecting pressure on parks and school yards though. Most of the newbie hunters are not much competition when it comes to the deep old or masked coins that are left at my public sites but their shovels and careless recoveries sure put a damper on a few that are now off limits

It doesn't take much awareness to be able to tell if a site is being hunted and how it is being hunted by just the number of finds and conductivity range of finds. If your in a site and there aren't many high conductors like dimes, quarters, etc but a bunch of nickel, tabs, etc...you can figure someone is hunting it but running high disc or cherry picking coins/high conductors. Some jewelry hunters do the opposite and dig the low to mid conductive signals and leave the highs but you would still know by the finds whether it is being done that way or not. If you are making rounds to sites and seeing a wide range of low, mid, and high conductors, and a bunch of them, it doesn't take much common sense to figure out it probably ain't being hunted or not being seriously hunted. But then again not everybody has common sense. Now those tourist beaches on the gulf...there is a prime example of hunted beaches. You can walk for city blocks and not get a single signal of any kind. You see people out there all the time, day and night. To find stuff there, you just about have to be standing there when a ring comes off a person's finger. My places...here is how hunted they are. Back in early summer I was contacted to help find a wedding band lost swimming. I met the lady and found the ring. In doing so, she posted a big Facebook thank you and one of her friends contacted me about a ring she had lost a couple summers ago at another beach. It was a little outside my range and I didn't even know the beach existed til she gave me directions. I told her I would try but didn't know if other hunters might hunt that area...and the chances of it being there after the winter water drops might be low. But after 15-20 mins of hunting, guess what turned up in the scoop in about belly deep water. If that place was hunted, that would have been gone long ago.

There are dozens and dozens of little swim areas like that in this area. Some of them I am just discovering and I've lived here my whole life.

Another couple things against beach detectorists -

Just about every nice beach has those tractors that rake the sand every morning,... a sandboni. They only get the surface and recent drops and they don't do the wet sand. Years ago they didn't use these machines.

Also all these beaches get the sand replenished. That could be good or bad. If they pump the sand in from a mile + - off shore......well, look at a map of all the wrecks from hundreds of years ago till now......they could suck up some Spanish silver and deposit it on the beach. Or, a foot of new sand you have to detect through that has zillions of rust pieces from the hulls of ships, trash, hooks, sinkers etc, etc.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/23/2017 11:30AM by ozzie.

I notice that people just don't wear their expensive jewelry on an everyday basis anymore. My wife and I don't. We wear the silicone wedding bands mostly because they are work friendly. We each have beautiful gold bands made from gold nuggets that I detected. We would be loathe to lose them. Prior to the silicone bands I wore nothing during the work week (I had to fight the women off with a stick). The silicone bands have become very popular. They are cheap, comfortable, and come in a variety of colors. Many of my patients wear them as well. I see a lotof people and I notice what they are wearing. Not many wear gold anymore. The younger generation seem to prefer Tungsten or SS over gold probably due to cost. Just my experience and observations.

As to the You Tube argument...I don't buy it. Yes, the videos get people interested and they may even go buy a detector but they rarely become detectorists and, therefore, aren't a threat. I think they hit the easy places like tot lots and parks but rarely do they stick with it long enough to become proficient. I see the same guys hunting the same areas for years. I hunted a popular club claim a while back and recovered trash targets and nuggets in and around other people's dig holes. I hunted a park a couple of weeks back to test a new E-Trac coil and found the older pull tabs, nickels, and a bunch of clad in among someone else's poorly dug plugs. Could just as easily been gold jewelry. What does that mean? If there are a bunch of new people detecting because of the video thing....they suck!

I believe people just don't wear their expensive stuff as much as in years past.

Dean

Spot on Dean. Agreed 110%.

My wife's wedding band is a 1 carat princess cut diamond in 14k...its the whole set actually. She never wears it..has it put up. She wears a plain 14k wedding band in its place most of the time.

Jewelry is not really that expensive...its just that this newest generation doesn't go for the gold or silver like generations past. They won't bat an eye about spending $800-1000 on the latest cell phone but wouldn't dare spend that on jewelry....not when a $20 silicone or tungsten ring serves the purpose. That's probably why we find more iPhones, Galaxies, and GoPros than we do good jewelry. They take them with them everywhere.

So... y'all are saying "Gone are the days of Mr. and Mrs T".

I spend a lot of time noticing what people are wearing when beach hunting. I go several times a week. I have found far more un-precious metal rings than gold this year. So has everyone else in the clubs I go to. Has been topic a lot lately. Still see a lot of gold and diamonds being worn but not so much the chains. I have seen a large increase in the number of people swinging over last year. I know from experience and speaking to folks on the beach seeing that makes them aware of the chance it could be lost. Also with the forums there is a lot of better educated hunters and the beginners have their luck on vacation for the fresh drops. I found a nice ladies class ring last night in the wet sand and its crap metal that comes in at 12-02 on my E Trac. Second one like that this year.

We will adapt to our changing-environment/current-conditions. I'm still seeing a lot of gold adorned; yet, this year............. my beach sand is mush.........and can hardly support the weight of a hollow aluminum soda tab.....or light zinc penny. Yes, the junk-metals jewelry has become much more popular........... especially with the teenage crowd.

Nasa Tom -- How are you liking your Stealth scoop now that you've had a good while of use on it? As an update to mine...I really like the width of the basket. It makes recovery efforts easier....AS LONG AS the bottom of the beach is sandy/mud. I ran into a couple spots and sites where the bottom was hard pan shoal like rock, and or gravel, and the scoop was worthless in it. I guess that is to be expected. The other scoop I have is better for that...it is heavier and I can get a little more umph to make it dig into bottoms like that. Most of the time, the target is right on the surface and cannot penetrate the shoal/gravel, and in trying to scoop it up, I can't get underneath it...the lip of the scoop simply pushes the target around on the bottom. I'm still up in the air with the carbon fiber handle though. I like it for shallower water...but once I get in water that is belly to neck deep, it is very buoyant...and that is just with me hunting lakes. I'm figuring it might be a handful to keep still when in surf water/waves...I will find out next month when we are at the gulf beaches. I'm gonna take my heavier fiberglass handle just in case.