My neighbor Chris is after a good metal detector.  The only thing he knows about metal detecting is that he once spent 100 dollars for a detector that turned out to be junk.

He came to ask me what I recommend as a good, reliable metal detector.  Besides looking for treasure, he wants to search his property for nails and/or other debris causing flat tires.

My advice to him was to invest in a used Garrett, Compass, or White’s machine. These can be found at Ebay for very good prices.  In regard to the Garrett machines, you can get the Operator’s Manual on Adobe PDF format (i.e. you can download it and print it out) from their website.  I had an old KellyCo Scorpion several years ago, bought it when it was on sale. It’s a great detector for finding ALL kinds of metal. It’s a little tougher to figure out how to find just certain kinds of things.

This is an interesting hobby.  I recently searched the parking strips in an old town and found 83 coins on just one street.  If Chris is willing to look for nails and debris then he will surely enjoy finding his first old coin.  My first oldie was from 1828.

From what I’ve seen, you need to spend $250-350 to get anything decent, so watch for sales and used ads, or shop online for a bargain.

Now all I’ve got to do is make sure Chris doesn’t get rid of all the nails and trash by throwing them into my yard! 😉

Get a detector with discrimination

I would suggest you buy something which has discrimination, this lets you know what signals are iron and what aren’t. I started off with a machine which does not have this and was forever digging up nails, broken bits of plough etc.

Also it may be an idea to get a second-hand machine first just in case it turns out that you don’t really like the hobby.  You could do worse than look on E-bay.  There are always loads of detectors at what seem reasonable prices.

You have to have permission from the landowner or you could have your equipement confiscated, but trust me this is a fun game. It doesn’t always happen at once, you have to perservere, not all fields have finds. Ploughed land I think is the best to detect on but any land will do at the beginning, if there’s a Public Footpath on it even better.

Anyway, to all beginners out there I wish you luck but beware this hobby can be addictive and it’s not just a case of going somewhere where there was say a historical road.  From my experience you just never know where the good finds will turn up.

Definitely get a discriminator.  Apart from that just go get a machine and have fun.