You must have found some interesting stuff back then... got any pictures and/or stories to share?
Metal Detectors
- Thread starter Bob77064
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dirt ditch
Platinum Member
The glory days of metel detectors...:thumbsup: Back then there was no such thing as trash discrimination. BFO (Beat Frequency Oscillator) was all the rage. It sounded like a motor boat. My dad had the top of the line Garrett with every coil they made, along with the hard case. One was a small coil. The medium and large coils had a small coil built inside the larger coil and with a switch on the detector you would use the small coil to pinpoint the location of targets found with the larger coil. Then there were the two huge coils. 8' and 16' were the advertised detection depths but I don't remember dad ever digging anything at those depths. The last coil had a 50' cable and an eyelet for tieing a rope. It was for lowering into a cave or well. Don't think he ever used that one. I still have that Garrett and all the coils still in mint condition. Lots of great memories of time spent with my dad.
Redbug
Veteran Member
Back in those days we would come home with pounds of change. Literally. We would find all sorts of jewelry. It always made my heart jump to see a gold ring in my long handled sifter. We never looked at anything till we got home, so as not to cause any commotion on the beach. Just slipped it in our oversize pockets. We always used headphones on the detectors and that helped to fine tune what you were listening for, as well as ignoring any people asking questions as to what you were finding. I remember finding one of the first digital watches ever made. It was stainless and we looked at one the next day in a jewelry store. It was like $400. Many of the rings had diamonds or other jewels. I need to look through some of my old slides. I remember taking pictures of coffee cans full of rings, and jewelry. Gold was not worth much in those days, remember. You could go down the beach at night and recognize the other detector guys by their tracks and the pattern they made it the sand and see what had been gone over. It was a quiet sub-culture of people. We would all try to beat each other to the best portions of the beaches that usually had more finds. My father funded his house with the profits from those finds. Those were good memories. My father is passed away but sometimes in years past we would talk about those days and smile about being in the right place at the right time.
All summer they've had a local river drained down while they work on the dam... a friend suggested that the bridges would be a good place to use one, finding rings from failed marriages over the years, as well as weapons dumped after being used in robberies. I doubt the latter so much but he could be right about the former. Any experiences with this?
