What Got You Into The Hobby???

Would be interesting to hear how and what started all of us into this hobby.
Let the ball roll.............

1977 ... Was 12 years old,living in Ft Riley,ls. Me n my buddies where playing football when we saw a guy detecting the grass strip by the sidewalk. So we hovered over the guy and watched him dig alot of old coins. That was it,I had to have one. I mowed lawns untill I saved up $60 and bought the entry level whites...no disc. I used it hard n heavy for a few months till someone stole it. Didn't get another one till 11-12 years ago.

A friend of mine, whom I deer hunted and fished with, bought a Garrett ACE250 and used it for a month, all the while telling me what an awesome thing it was to find old stuff at the old homeplaces on his property. I had no interest whatsoever, and...well..frankly...kind of wished that he would hush talking about it because it was not a shared interest. Finally, a month after he and his son started detecting, I was talking to him on the phone and he said that he would drop their ACE250 off and let me try it out. The next morning he dropped it by and showed me quickly how to operate it. And then he headed off to work. I was/still am somewhat homebound with momma being sick so I spent time in the yard during the day with the ACE250. I loved it. It opened up a whole new world of wonder. LOL I dug an old ink pen up in our little apple orchard and knew that it had belonged to my daddy, now deceased, because I could still see the Pharmaceutical logo on it where the drug salesmen would stop by daddy's office and leave pens and little trinkets along with boxes of samples. (He was a family practioner, MD) The feeling that a whole new unseen world had been opened up to me compelled me to go online and find the nearest Garrett dealer, which was 30 miles away in Corinth Mississippi. I had my aunt come down and sit with momma while I ran down there and bought my own Garrett ACE 250. The dealer also showed me a Teknetics Omega and T2 but I didn't have a clue about the difference besides the big price differential. I came home and unboxed my ACE250. In the first week I found 3 mercury dimes in one plug of dirt at the local closed down old school. That finished me off as far as being hooked. Been going every chance I get ever since and broadening my research skills and detector skills. Good thread.

When I was a teenager in Arizona I used to see the occasional detectorist at the park across the street from me. Had I had money or rather really knew anything about it, I probably would have bought one.

It would be many years later, when I was 33 or so and recently having moved to Germany that I had some extra money and time and remembered the old curiousity. I was sort of hooked from the get go, but never found silver for many years.

I ordered a Nautilus IIb and had a lot of success with it - What a machine to learn on. One of my first finds was a gold ring that was engraved with a ladies name on the inside. The lady I found out used to live in the same house (found it in the garden). We located her as she still lived in the same town of 10,000 people and I returned it to her 30 years after she had originally lost it. She tried to give me 5 Euros... I figure the marriage wasn't so great for her ;-)

Albert

After I retired being an avid hunter and fisherman just didn't want to kill anything anyore and the stocked trout were getting smaller every year so I bought a used radio shack at a flea market hit the local park and found a dime and 2 pennies..bought a used Big bud pro from a dealer and 21 years later still swinging just not as long or as often...and yes tried a few err lot of units over the years.......

Yes, I have tried a alot of units since March of last year. If I told y'all how many, you would know just how obsesses that I can be. But I'd like to think that I got my head screwed on a little tighter now. At least until Fisher unveils something sweet. Who knows, by then, I may be out of it and will just keep an AT Pro around for those times that I want to feel the sentimental feeling.

When I was in high school my uncle had one and got to use it a few times and I was hooked. I saved up $250.00 and bought a Compass Yucon 77b professional with an 8" and 10" coil at a local grocery store that was selling them. It still works. Unfortunately for me I didn't get another detector until I bought a garrett GTA 1000. I went all that time and should have upgraded my Compass.

Rick N. MI

Here's the culprit.....


I was 8 year's old in 1978 and I got this ...The Jetco Mustang.....I thought it was the greatest thing in the whole world....My brother had gotten 1 a year or 2 earlier and I wanted His bad ...So I got one myself for Christmas...

I dug up all the match box cars I had ever lost or all my friends had ever lost around the neighborhood...plus all the coins down around the swingset's at the local school's..

I ran the dog out of that machine till I was around 14 and got the B.H. Red Baron...then the B.H. Big Bud pro in like 87? .. Before finally getting me a Tesoro in 1990..

Now too many machine's to count later... nothing has ever excited me like the Mustang did ...It was a more simplistic period..I did not care what I found as long as I found it..

I dug my first Civil war relic in 1982...Yes I was 12 years old and it was a Dropped .54 caliber Mississippi style 3 ringer....I did not even know what it was..But before long I could tell you every detail of that particular bullet...I never knew you could find relics with a metal detector..Never thought of it...but living on top of a civil war Battlefield it was bound to happen ...


Keith

When I was a kid, back in the late 70s/early 80s, I found my grandfather's old blue-box White's unit (Goldmaster, I believe it was). I had NO clue how to use it; he was deceased and my dad had never used it, so I just took it out and started swinging it. I managed to find a few whatzits and a strange token with it, and was FASCINATED. But, not really knowing how to use it, not knowing anyone who did, and not having the money to buy all the batteries that thing took (plus the fact that I was too busy hunting, fishing, and playing sports at the time), resulted in the passion lying dormant for many years. While my dad did not detect, he DID have a small coin collection; I remember seeing an old Morgan dollar he had, and I ended up with his wheat cent collection, and as a result of this, also became somewhat fascinated with coins. These two things -- fascination with my grandfather's old detector, and fascination with old coins, would eventually lead me to begin pursuit of the hobby when I became an adult. So, about a decade or so ago, I bought my first unit of my own -- an old First Texas unit they made for Radio Shack that was essentially a Bounty Hunter SharpShooter II. I used it off an on, but about two years ago I finally went full-bore into this fascinating hobby and haven't looked back. Now, a couple years and several machines later, I have a nice beginning to my OWN coin collection!

Cool thread, coilfishing!

Steve

Two things got me started. This first one is an awesome story...
A friend of mine worked for Fontenelle Forest in Bellevue, Nebraska (well on the outskirts of Bellevue). One day he was looking at an old painting in Joslyn Museum in Omaha, Ne. It was painted by a man who was on a steamboat that had docked for the night right where Fontenelle Forest butted up against the river. Since Ed (my friend) worked for Fontenelle Forest he recognized the landscape. In the painting there was an old, delapitated, building that no one ever knew was there. He knew it had to be early 1800s.
So he had a metal detector... an old Whites that had vacuum tubes! Not transistors like modern detectors. He hiked to where the building once stood and started detecting. he started finding lots of relics and some pre 1825 coins. Turns out he found the Joshua Pilcher (of the Missouri Fur Company) trading post. More info from here: [www.fontenelleforest.org]
"In 1804, the Lewis and Clark Expedition undoubtedly crossed our lands, and in 1822, Joshua Pilcher of the Missouri Fur Company built a trading post near the present Great Marsh (in Fontenelle Forest). This trading post began the settlement of Bellevue, Nebraska's oldest community, and served as a major stopover during the illustrious days of the Rocky Mountain fur trade."
Well that discovery was a REALLY BIG DEAL! They excavated the entire area after he told them about it and found some very historic items.
Now this is what really sucks: Ed never got a single word of credit for any of it. Without him it probably never would have been found! What a bunch of ingrates. Ed quit and moved to Idaho where he studied at the University of Idaho and went on to be a doctor. So in the end I guess it all worked out best for him. So this story got me interested in metal detectors... but I did not buy one.... YET. A few months later I DID buy one. It was a Relco BFO that would not find a quarter buried 1" in the ground. I was so discouraged. But I got what I paid for. And I knew Ed's old Whites did much better than that. I knew I was going to have to pay a LOT more for a good one so I started saving money up for one.

In the spring of 1971 there was an Omaha annual event called the Omaha Home Show at the old Omaha Civic Auditorium (they still have it yearly to this day). Anyway my wife wanted to go so off we went. We were walking around... then I saw it... I stopped dead in my tracks! A guy named Steve, who lived in Council Bluffs (right across the river from Omaha), had a display table set up. And a big Whites Metal Detector banner hanging behind the table. There were some new Whites detectors on the table and something else... an absolutely amazing pile of dug coins/rings/jewelry. I mean there were thousands piled up there! Tons of silver in that pile. So I got to talking to him. He had just became a Whites Dealer a few months before that but had been using them for a couple years. He said he had gotten all those finds right there in Council Bluffs in schools/parks/yards. he said he never even bothered coming over to Omaha cuz the hunting was so good there. Man was I interested! He offered to let try one out. I went over to his house the very next day. He took me to Bayliss Park (mid 1800s park) right there in Council Bluffs, not far from his house. He had Whites 63TR all ready to go. He gave me a quick run thru on operating it and walked around with me. I dug a couple pop tops and some foil up. Along with a couple coins. Then BAM! A Walking Liberty Half about 2" deep. Demonstration over! I bought it. I also bought my next detector, a Whites 66TR, from him. Game on. Omaha was my pearl!

I can't remember why I was fascinated with metal detectors as a kid. Never saw anyone with one. Think I saw one in the 1970 Sears & Roebuck Christmas catalog. Spent too much time staring at that catalog dreaming. When I was about 12 I used up an entire roll of stamps requesting sale catalogs from every conceivable company advertising in the back of magazines. I got so much free stuff my parents were upset. Funny though, I'm still on the mailing list for a few of these places.

One of those catalogs sold detectors and I ended up buying some Jetco BFO at close to $100. It worked well enough to find park coins and a meteor. Boy my parents were upset - thought I'd wasted my money. They didn't understand. People stared or frowned at the park - but I just kept on finding coins so I didn't care.

Bought a White's 6000 Pro in about 1984 for $600 and hunted like a madman for many years. Heavy but effective. Still don't know what got me started or why the hobby intrigued me so much. Don't like crowds and prefer to be alone. Liked electronic gadgets, learning, and being outdoors. So an electronic thing that lets you hunt alone outdoors and discover things fit the bill nicely.

My wife still thinks the hobby strange (and expensive) and unfortunately the kids do not have the same adventerous spirit that I had (have). It appears that X-Box and the internet's main resultant is to suck the life force out of a kid and turn their otherwise inquisitive brain to mush. As a kid in the 1960's we never stopped playing outside until the sun went down - now kids can play a game that models an outdoor activity without doing leaving the couch. Very sad.

Wonder if the detecting hobby will eventually pass away due to neglect.

I was never exposed to metal detecting as a kid, I wish I was. My allowance was a quarter a week for doing chores. If I had a detector back then and found coins, I would have been the Richie Rich of the neighborhood. Candy bars were only a nickel back then, so you can imagine what that would have been like.
Back then if you wanted something, you had to save for it, not the "I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today" way of barter, and you always paid with cash.

Half a life time later in the 90's, I became friends with a fellow as our businesses crossed paths. We had some similar interests like fishing, target shooting, darts, pool, and one day years later, he said "we should try metal detecting". I said "you mean what those guys on the beach do? Where did you come up with that?" He said " I was reading about it and it looks interesting." Sure, why not, I'll give it a go. He got a Whites and I got a Fisher so we set off finding clad and a few relics for the next couple of months and learning our machines.

It was fun, but finding clad after a while got old. One day I went into the woods by myself where there were old stone walls about a foot to two feet high, dry stacked, and I assumed the stone was pulled from the farm fields and used as boundry markers. As I was swinging next to the wall, I got a good signal over top a big flat rock, 6" thick by 20" or so in diameter. I remember thinking, wow, this goes through rock or is it the rock that's setting off the detector.
I fliped it over and ran the coil over the area, still a beep, hmmmm. Dug down a couple inches and out pops this copper disc the size of a silver dollar but about 1/8th inch thick. I read a date clear as day, 1842. Man was I pumped. Called my wife on the cell phone, rushed out of the woods to get home to identify it.
I still have this big 3 Kopec coin which is in near perfect condition.
I wondered how this old Russian coin happened to be in an area setteled by Germans and Irish. Did more research and read that there were about 3% Russians living in the area at that time.
So I would say, my friend got me into this hobbie but that first old coin kept me in the game. Opened up a new world for me, and there is not a day goes buy that I don't think about detecting.

Moved into a new house about 12 yrs ago, when we cleaned out the attic of the old place I could not locate the shoe box with my money collection. I had stashed(hidden) it years earlier and that was many beers ago. Well I decided to get a metal detector instead of lifting up all that insulation and decking,so I bought an Ace 250. Never did locate the collection and firmly believe my old roommate got to it. Now that I had this detector the next logical step was to use it and I got hooked on detecting. Stayed with that ace for a couple years, then got a Vaquero and found out what deep is(rehunted all my ace spots), then discovered I like tones machines and went on from there. I've always been one that loves to dig through old garages etc. so detecting fit right in.

My Dad bought a Red Baron back when they were current and I was essentially latently hooked from that moment. The problem is he NEVER used it and that drove me absolutely crazy. In my early 20's, I got into archery and bow hunting and several times I wanted to use it to look for lost arrows, but NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, it was to remain cherry in it's case. So fast forward through all the motorcycles, girls, marriage, raising my son, and trying just about every other hobby in the book, I was fortunate enough to retire when I was 44 back in '97. I bought my grandparents property after they passed and planned on demolishing the old house and building a new one along with putting in a pond, etc. Got to thinking that I should FINALLY get my own detector and hit that property before I started any of the excavating. Not absolutely sure when it was built but it showed up on an 1880 plat map so I knew it had good potential plus any items that could be dated from the early 30's on, would have been lost by my grandparents or my Dad. That first detector led to a passion that has never been duplicated or surpassed in all my other hobby ventures. Since then I've had many of the past units and most of the current ones. This stung me hard!

I was interested way back in the early 70's, wanted to get one, but they cost to much, and heard this too much, you going to waist your time doing that, went to college , got married, I treasured hunted all a long, bottle dug from time to time, people told me I was a junk collector , I had my first child at 38, she was born with MD, my brother committed suicide when finding out, within the next 5 years after my daughter was born, I lost half my family, mom, pop, brother and half my aunts and uncles and grand parents, always doing the right thing, I semi quit work to take care of my daughter, after my mom died, at 63, I said to my self, your life will be over soon enough, do something you always wanted to do, I bought a cheapo detector to see if they found things and if I like doing it, oh yeah, and I could take my daughter out to the playgrounds with her new electric wheel chair to play, who would bother you if you were with your kid, people did I lived in a small town and there was a dealer 2 towns away, which had 2 clubs, but I never saw anyone, didn't know this til I joined both clubs, the guys would tell me places to hunt and I would go to them and find some real good finds and bring them to the meetings, that's when I new I found my niche, my daughter goes to college in September and I'll be able to go more than a half hour from the house, no where is safe after that, hoover is coming to your town haha, if you see me, say hi, and I'll buy you a coffee, I don't drink

Hey Brad, nice to see you post. Glad you are still around and swinging/digging! I'm still swinging an Explorer, and LOVING that unit. I'm headed back your way (western PA) to visit family for a couple of weeks in July...looking forward to a little detecting while I'm there...

Steve

As a young boy, I was fascinated with things most young boys are....fighting wars with stick guns and that sort of stuff. One summer we had driven to west Tennessee to visit a place called Land Between the Lakes...my parents deer hunted there and I was still too young to go with them on the hunts...BUT I could go on the scouting trips with them during the summer. Out at Land Between the Lakes, you pass right by two Civil War battlefields...well one is still there and the other is underwater, identified only by a historical marker and a few outer earthworks. The one battlefield is in pristine condition for a fort....it is Fort Donelson, on the Cumberland River. I remember sitting there seeing those field cannons staring silently towards the road at the visitors center and BEGGING my dad to take me there. So on the way back home he surprised me and pulled in there. We toured the visitor center and drove through the park...and thus when I got back to school that fall, I dove into the library and began reading about this Civil War. I got obsessed with it. If anybody asked what I wanted for birthdays or Christmas...it would be books about the Civil War.

One Christmas I got a book unlike any of the other books I had on the War. My grandparents got me a book called "Civil War Relics of the Western Campaigns" by Charlie Harris. In that book are pictures of various relics found in and about the western theater of the war. My other books mostly dealt with Lee, Grant, McClellan, Stonewall, and all those fellas fighting the war up in Virginia. But this book opened a new arena of it for me...this western theater of the war....was fought here in Tennessee and Georgia by commanders I had seldom heard of. Then I found listings in the relic book for places right in my back door....Athens, TN....Cleveland, Tn....Knoxville, Tn....etc. And for some reason it never dawned on me HOW they were finding this stuff. Til one day I was looking through my new Civil War magazine and there in a little 3x3 ad was a few Civil War relics surrounded by a Whites Blue & Grey Pro. It then clicked....I needed a metal detector!! I think I was all of 9 yrs old. My grandmother would pay us kids to do work in the garden and yard....I remember she would give us a quarter for a wheel barrel load of rocks that we picked up out of their garden. I saved quarters and birthday/Christmas money and bought my first detector....a Radio Shack Micronta something or other...I kept it for several years and didn't find anything with it...didn't know where to go and nobody had any interest in taking me. I think my parents thought it was a phase I was going through....but it never went away. Then one day when I was around 11 or 12, dad took me to a guy's house that he worked with....why, I did not know. He took us to his basement and there was a mini museum of Civil War relics he had dug. I spent probably 2 hours in there with him showing me everything. Then he brought it out....his metal detector. He had gotten out of the hobby and had his machine for sell....a Fisher 1265-X. It suddenly dawned on me...I needed this machine so I could find stuff like he had lol. I begged dad for it and he paid him and we brought it home. I found my first relics with that machine in our yard at the house....first eagle button, first flat buttons, first bullet, etc. And thus I've been warped and playing in the dirt every since. Still have that 1265 too, though many have came since it.

Daniel Tn:
"I found my first relics with that machine in our yard at the house....first eagle button, first flat buttons, first bullet, etc."

Yea, that would about do it
All these posts are so very unique and interesting!