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I was wondering if anyone else uses a metal detector to try and find "treasure". I have been searching for treasure my whole life but I got my first detector in 1999, a Garrett GTA350, not real high-tech but it works for me.
I don't get to go as often as I like, (two full-time jobs), but when I do I NEVER fail to find something. I have bags of coins and rings and artifacts and "stuff". I only keep the pre 1959 cents and pre 1965 silver.
In 2001 I found my first and only gold coin, an 1890-CC $20 Liberty I found it near my Grandmothers home in Cimarron, NM.
In keeping with my personal luck and the Ying and Yang of the universe, my tranny blew up the week after I found the gold piece. I was able to sell it to help pay for the tranny.
My goal is to find a Civil War belt buckle or other related artifact.
Anybody else find anything cool?
I'm Treasure hunter I guess of a different kind....
My home was built in 1750, and the center area I live in is also full of historical homes...
The treasure I find are tools, rot iron hinges, old glassware, pullies, vices, farm equipment pcs, and sometimes the treasure i find are at flea market or yard sales.
My Post and beam barn I built 10 years ago is full of old relics.
(saws, mics tools, Old shutter hardware, old posters, old fishing stuff,...I also like old wood planes, old tool boxes, dove tail chests,
....my favorite OLD Barns.
I would like to get a nice metal detector....someday.
I really like all of that stuff. I don't have a metal detector and have always been afraid to truly look for artifacts due to the laws. Lots of 10,000 year old indian ruins around here and further south (Utah). Horse Trader I too have a thing for old barns. All that you have and have found sounds very interesting. Two hundered year old hinges are almost as cool as finding gold.
for a while i did that with a garrett too. went around the beaches of NY and found some jewelery a lot of small coins and many many pop tops from soda cans. another time we went around an old civil war battlefields and found some old bullet pieces. i got bored and gave the detector away very expensive hobby and it gets old quick. a friend i used to go with also dives with one and he finds more interesting stuff as a matter of fact i refuse to take him out on my boat cause he gets lost underwater for too long and if the fish arent biting i have to wait for him to come up
I have a whole bunch of old bottles mostly from the 30's and 40's. I found some out in the desert and some my grandfather gave me. He got me into finding cool old junk. Out in Arizona he found this old dagger out in the desert, probably from some kind of battle or something. I've seen it, about 7 or 8 inches long and heavy. You can tell it had been sitting out in the desert for years but overall pretty good for the average person. He also has a bunch of old stuff he has found in old dump sites and in ghost towns like coins, perfectly good watches, arrowheads and alot of old bottles, most of it is at least from the days of the old west.
My dad had a nice (at the time) Bounty Hunter discriminating detector when I was living at home. I remember that it was tricky to set up the detector for discrimination (lots of ***** for ground exclusion balance and what-not), but once you got it set it did a fair job excluding the pop-tops etc. We had a lot of fun with it, going around to old schools (kids drop a LOT of change out on the playgrounds), houses etc. It is hard to find spots where you can legally dig around for civil war stuff, because most of the major battlefields are parks now and you can lose your gear and get fined big time if caught digging on parkland. I've lately been thinking about getting one of the new machines, they are a heck of a lot lighter and more sophisticated than the old ones. I think it would be a good hobby to do with my son too, since I enjoyed doing it with my dad.