Congrats on the amazing month TS! I can only drool, dream, and hope to aspire to a month like that!.....
Thanks. By any measure you're doing great! Getting out and still having fun even after the "newness' of the hobby wears off and nothing but junk is recovered is a success in my book. I try not to expect too much and I'm just as interested in tokens and relics as silver. I hope to find one interesting thing each hunt. My favorite things to find are.....toy soliders! I'd go crazy if I hovered over every high tone begging for it to be silver only to be let down again and again. I check my attitude when I catch myself getting annoyed after a plug comes up with another piece of junk.
....Now for what I'm really curious about and no one else gave a mention about, I am busting with curiosity about that very attractive and professional layout display and the identifying printing. Is this something you can create on a computer, or buy at a hobby shop? The cardboard layout I mean.....
Thanks for the compliment! I create those collages on the computer. It doesn't take long mostly because I make it a point to keep up with photographing and logging my finds after every hunt. My metal detecting photos folder has a folder for each property. To make a collage, I already have all of the pieces and just need to put them together. I've been doing photo editing for a long time and have also figured out some tricks so I don't have to start from scratch each time.
You can do this with an excellent truly free photo editor that's been around for years called Paint.net (link below). It's better than the Paint program that comes with Windows. The basic workflow is:
-Create a new "canvas" that fills my monitor screen when it's at 50% zoom.
-Open each photo I want, cut and paste what I want from them into the new canvas,
-Stretch them to the size I want, and arrange them.
-Type the description text.
-Save that higher resolution copy if I ever wanted to print it.
-"Save as" a second copy for email or posting on here where the size/resolution has been reduced by half and compression increased.
https://www.getpaint.net/
I sometimes do these for property owners after the ends of hunts when they've asked to see what I found and they're not around to show them. Or I offered to do it right up front because I thought it would help get the permission. I'll email the collage or print it as a glossy 8x10 at a drug store and mail it to them or drop it off in person. I might also include a couple of the house relic items I don't care to keep. In some cases I've sent along the oldest wheat, or even one of the more common keeper coins like a Mercury dime. (Everybody like a Mercury dime!) Almost nobody has ever asked to keep anything I wanted to keep. Most people are just satisfied seeing what was found and perhaps there's also some respect for the obvious effort I've put into it. I'm certain that both my follow up and transparency has also led to additional permissions.
Occasionally I've included a separate photo of the trash I found. This one lady apologized for her yard being so trashy. She said "I had no idea!!! How embarrassing!"