Hey Old timers! - Tell me about the good ole days.

[zeemang]

Interesting read so far. I can't comment on what it must have been like but I imagine some folks out there saying things like this remembering the good old days...
"Back in the day you could just walk down the beach and eyeball gold rings and chains laying on the surface. We didn't even bother picking up silver as there was just SO much gold around, and when we got hungry you just grabbed a few of the lobsters that had been crunching under your feet all day and boiled them up right there! Back then we would travel up and down the coast detecting and eyeballing gold and throwing back silver because you could fill up your gas tank for a nickel!"

 

[Tom_in_CA]

The "good ole days" was when you could detect without anyone bothering you and places to hunt were wide open.

Nobody bothers me when I detect, and I have a list of places , as long as my arm, begging to get around to hunting

 

[Tom_in_CA]

....
"Back in the day you could just walk down the beach and eyeball gold rings and chains laying on the surface. ....

Not sure about "gold rings and chains" just lying all over the beach. But I did hear of a southern CA surf-fisherman, who arrived at the beach in 1980 to do some surf fishing. It had been just after rough surf, and there were cuts all along the beach. He happened to notice some circular disks. He reached down to pick a few up, and discovered that they were crusty coins, lying all along the base of the cuts.

So he stopped fishing, and just walked around for an hour or so, looking for more of these circles. Eventually he bumped into someone metal detecting. And he proudly showed the md'r his 30 or-so coins he'd eyeballed.

The md'r opened up his apron and showed the guy hundreds of coins in his apron. That was more than the fisherman could take ! He promptly rushed out to buy his own detector, haha

 

[Tom_in_CA]

I read somewhere that back in the 1950s, under Coney Island boardwalk, that some people had wised up to the amount of coinage that had fallen through the boardwalk over the years, into the dry sands under the boardwalk. And they would simply spend the days shoveling the sand into rocker-box screens, to sift out the coins.

Imagine what a good detector could have done , in those conditions ? Doh !

 

[diggin4clad]

Nobody bothers me when I detect, and I have a list of places , as long as my arm, begging to get around to hunting

How long are your arms?

 

[I C THE LITE]

Did your brother ever apologize or pay you back ?

Don't I wish. He also sold my other brothers 1916D Merc for a dime.

 

[hazben]

In the early 80s I remember a retired neighbor who had the only detector I had ever seen (Garret?). He had old potato salad half gallon tubs full of old silver coins, probably 1000s. Surprisingly he did not have that many Indian head pennies. In fact I think he only had a few coins from the 1800s and not as much jewelry as you would think. He said there was 2-3 guys in Little Rock that detected but he was the only one in North Little Rock that detected.

I saved for a few years and bought a 6000di pro when it first came out. Had limited success because I never really learnt the machine. Soon went back to fishing where I could make some money. Don't own a detector now. Just live vicariously thru you'll.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

... Surprisingly he did not have that many Indian head pennies. In fact I think he only had a few coins from the 1800s and not as much jewelry as you would think.....

Yes, the vast amount of hunters in the earlier days (mid 70s to earlier) tended to get scores of 1940s/50s losses at the school yards. This was true EVEN if the schools they were hunting dated to the teens.

The reason was partly depth related, but mostly d/t the fact that after WWII, (starting in the mid to late 1940s and through to the mid 1960s), the USA entered into it's most prosperous affluent era. Thus EVERY kid had a nickel and a dime jingling in his pocket in the 1940s & 50s. But not so in the teens to the 30's. Thus there was simply more later silver to get in those early days.

We noticed this phenomenon at older school yards: We'd find lots of common 40s/50s losses. And if/when we DID find 20's wheaties or silver, it was apparent that they were worn down and lost in the '40s/50s. At first we just figured that the older stuff was deeper out-of-reach.

But as machines came along that made 7" deep child's play, we went back to the same schools assuming we'd "load up on all those teens to '30s losses we'd been missing". But it never much materialized to the same ratios. The kids simply weren't loosing as much in the teens and 20s, as they did in the '45 to '65 range.

So unless someone was forward thinking and doing exotic relic mindset sites (virgin picnic grounds that went defunct by 1920, etc....) then yes: Most md'rs were tame, and happy to get mercs, silver washingtons, wheaties, etc.....

I get TONS more 1700s & 1800s coins now, than I EVER did in my first 15 yrs. In fact, I don't even think I got a seated coin till the very early 1990s. Despite having started in 1975-ish. And now I routinely rake in barbers, seateds, a smattering of reales, a gold coin every other year, etc....

And most of the hunters I know had NOT "graduated up" to the super old stuff. But as a few pioneers started to show off their stuff, then the rest of us got jealous, and started to be unsatisfied with common silver as the decades went on

 

[hazben]

Tom funny you should mention high schools. He lived across the road from the only high school in North Little Rock. In fact next to his house was a large field which his family owned and they charged students a monthly fee to park in the field. If I remember correctly he did mention finding a crazy amount of silver coins in that field.

 

[kamogawa]

My first year of detecting was 1975. We were coming out of the Beat Frequency Oscillator days and emerging into the early days of TR-VLF/discrimination. But those bells and whistles likely caused us to be very trusting of it where we lost a lot of items like jewelry and significant depth. A tragedy for those budding detectorists who hunted in "pull tab cancel" mode. There were lots of pluses and minuses of the early years. An old school yard that is now a condominium now was loaded with silver in the 70s. I crossed the street from the school to a church yard. That was full of silver. Then I hunted the grassy strip by the side of the road and that was really loaded with silver. There were places to detect and it seemed more relaxing back then. There might have been more things to find, but as Silverhorse65 said is exactly true. Our detectors back then lacked the depth and people with their Nox and Deus today are finding stuff we missed. Back in the 70s and 80s, detectors were a big thing. Gold prices really jumped in 1980 and it was a booming time for detecting. A lot of the organized hunt could easily have over 500 people and the hunt field were loaded with great finds and prize tokens. Hobby shows had metal detector dealer booth with display cases of finds. It was the Wild Wild West age of detecting where detectors had personalities. All shapes, sizes and colors. From the usual Green Garretts Relic Master Hunters, Compass Yukons and Judges, Blue Whites Coin and Goldmasters, A & H Pro Backpackers and C & G Wildcats to the yellow and white colored Treasure Sensors, Gray Jetco Mustangs and Daytonas, Red Barons, Orange Radio Shack BFOs. It was serious business back then, but I have to laugh (or cry) today because many of those were all fancy bells and whistles with little depth ability. Heavy machines were a pain and battery replacements were a constant frustration. It was exciting in the 70s when Timex came out with the famous metal detecting the beach commercial. I think that gave an added boost to metal detector sales. Local dealers were huge sources of inspiration and very exciting places to visit for the latest detector releases.

We might be restricted with where we can search today, but with the extreme capabilities of today's detector, it is still the good ol' days where it is proven over and over that a favorite accessible site is seldom truly hunted out completely. Final thought, though, that is very emotional to me. Most people I knew out there metal detecting in the 1970s were around the age of 50s to mid-70s and today, most are likely up there in real golden treasure of heaven. I went to an organized hunt in 2018 where there had been 700-800 people out in the hunt fields back in the 1970s and early 1980s. That weekend in 2018, there weren't more that 40 people at the hunt. I know detecting has faded out in popularity, but I knew most of those I hunted with over 40 years ago had long ago passed away. In a way, when I signed up for that hunt,I felt like I would be out there in the old fields honoring their memory.

 

[kamogawa]

BiCentennial Tom

I started in 1976-ish, in about 8th grade. But our city had already had some md'rs since several years prior to that (even in the late 1960s). HOWEVER, the only place that any of them and us were hitting, was the obvious school yards. We tended to avoid parks (at least where picnicking and eating and BBQ pits were concerned) because they were extremely junky (foil and tabs), and we didn't have discriminators yet (they were only then starting to be seen in the treasure magazine ads, and there was rumors to avoid them "lest you miss a ring", blah blah).

So we stuck to the elementary school yards in that first year or so that I was into it, since those were cleaner grounds. And the machines we used at the time (77b and 66TR is what my friend and I had) only went perhaps 4" deep. And foil sounded great. No way to disc. it out. They could avoid nails though, but all other conductors sounded the same.

Believe it or not, as virgin as things were, we were doing good just to come in with a merc & some wheaties. And we had utterly no concept of relicky sites in my area . I simply didn't know anyone else who had graduated up to more exotic things. And was limited to where my Schwinn 10-speed bike could take me, haha

When discriminators came out (TR first, then quickly motion disc in '78 to '79-ish), that's when it became child's play to pull silver from parks and schools. But for us, it was just common mercs, roosies, silver washingtons, wheaties, etc.... We didn't have the brains to exploit virgin stage stops and such. I'm sure there were more forward-thinking people around, but I wasn't exposed to them/that early on. The couple of times I did indeed try some local cellar hole/stage stop type site (about 1980 when I got my driver's license and could borrow my folks car) I distinctly recall getting some bullet shells (which , I later now know, were rimfires). And camp lead, etc... And after 15 minutes got bored of "junk" and left. I kick myself now for not realizing that was "good junk". In the late 1990s, now thoroughly hardcore, I went back to that exact same spot and pulled seateds and reales. Doh ! But when I was a kid, I simply had no concept.

And even when our city formed a club in 1980, and I began to meet others, they too were , for the most part, quite tame. Eg.: sandboxes, parks, schools, beach, etc.... A few guys were forward thinking and getting into oldtown demolition sites, stage-stops, etc.... So I began to learn from them.

And if you find others who started in the 1960s to mid 1970s, this is the oft-told story. Only a smaller minority were wise enough to research out virgin defunct carnival sites, defunct scout camp sites, stage stops, CW battle sites, etc...

Hey Tom! Around the patriotic summer of '76, I got all of my friends interested in metal detecting. Most all went my local dealer and bought the blood red Bounty Hunter TR 550-D. After all of that initial excitement and hullabaloo, all had given up on metal detecting within a week of not finding a hidden cache in their back yards. That makes you an extraordinary individual for having stayed true to detecting for all of those decades. And now just four years away from the amazing half century of hunting. And you are still young!

 

[kamogawa]

Totally hunted out? Nawwww

How interesting it would be to put a million frame, single frame snap, one photo every hour, fixed camera, aimed at a coin laying on the ground, and walking away from it for 50 years. The coins I walked over in 1975 have changed the amount of exposure to my coil from a scant portion of the rim to a full frontal and back to the rim a thousand times. Depending on the weather, soil condition, my detectors ability and the time I have to search, I may, or may not find the coin on this particular search. And surely, if I don’t find it with my AT Pro, ideal soil and loads of time, the guy with the $39.95 Harbor Freight detector probably won’t either. There is no such thing as no targets, or having a area “searched out” but there are several conditions which dictate whether you found that keeper in 1975 or 2005. But, what has changed is the difficulty finding permissions which haven’t been hunted out, for the minute, and the propensity of people to use plastic rather than coins as currency. These, at least tomorrow, are the good old days, if you have the patience to keep looking.

AT Pro, AT Pro Pointer, Fiskars diggers

Totally agree on there being no such thing as a "searched out" area. That coin that has been on precarious edge for 140 years may gradually shift 20 degrees and be someone's lucky coin for the plucking.

 

[kamogawa]

Compass Green for the riches of yesteryear.

My first really good (for its time) detector was a Compass XP Pro. We're talking mid 1980s, although it could have been a little earlier. I don't remember when,exactly. But it was in the relatively early days of GOOD detectors. The first time out with that detector (just received it from Kellyco) I went to an old baseball field I had played on as a youngster. It had been abandoned 20 years earlier and now was overgrown woods. I put my detector coil down on the ground and turned on the detector. It obviously was not operating properly since it immediately pegged at the top end of silver when I just turned it on. But I dug it anyway. A half inch down was a standing liberty half. I didn't even swing the coil once and found a standing liberty! In the many years since then I have found only two other SL halves. With that old detector I found the only shield nickel, liberty head nickels, indian head pennies, civil war eagle buttons, standing liberty quarters and Franklin halves I've ever found. So even though the Compass XP Pro was rather limited in depth (6 inch max, 8 maybe, with a 12" coil} I found a lot more good stuff with it than I did with the Deus, White's, or Equinox, simply because there was a lot more THERE back then. You can still find good stuff, but it ain't as easy. And when I got into it, it was mainly because I saw other guys coming into a coin/bullion shop I used to hang around in in the 1970s, and they would have handfulls of gold class rings to sell for melt value that they had found with even older TR and even BFO detectors.

Praise be to the old Compasses! Workhorses and fortune finders of their era.

 

[kamogawa]

The Limits of YouTube Learning

I could kick myself for not hunting high school fields here in California when I started in 2009! Tons of great silver and probably gold has been relocated to who knows where when they redid them!

And it makes me sick that I didn't try to learn my friends detector in 1982/3 .No one taught me how to use it.

How true. Let that be a valuable lesson now that were are wiser and in a position to teach others and offer to teach others who are showing enthusiasm and excitement for detecting how they work. I have seen hundreds of posts from enthusiastic people who posted about how they couldn't wait to get started and learn more about detecting. They would post heavily and then they would have problems finding a hunting buddy or someone to show them the ropes in person. Then their posts just eventually stopped completely as they gave up on what they hoped would be a rewarding new hobby. We have to open up our time and take on the role of instructor and mentor whenever the opportunity arises. I now actively look for posts from locals who are just starting out and need someone to show them the ropes in person.

 

[kamogawa]

Pacific Coast detecting

Well, I hate to bring even more remorse to your side of the aisle, but you've twisted my arm : Seeing as that you're in the north of SF area, and seeing as how you cite "1982-83", get this : There were several hunters in your area that wised up to the beach erosion that was going on during that winter of '82-83. And Stinson beach was one of the CA beaches that was severely hit.

Decades later, one of them related to me that there was a day when he got into a pocket of targets so thick, that for 1 to 2 hrs, all he could do was endlessly scoop around him, as the targets were literally layered ! At the conclusion of reaching bottom of this pocket-of-targets (targets all grouped and trapped in a sandstone bedrock depression thing), he literally had to climb out of the hole he had dug ! With his apron full of silver coins and a handful of gold rings. He described being so-sore, that he didn't think he had any strength left to claw/climb his way out of the hole .

Then move over 10 ft, and repeat the process

Thus explains the riches uncovered by the Pacific Northwest beach hunter Kay Modgling in the Compass Metal Detector ads of the 1970s.

 

[kamogawa]

Good ole days

The "good ole days" was when you could detect without anyone bothering you and places to hunt were wide open.

Yes, a much kinder and gentler era for sure!

 

[Tom_in_CA]

..... Thus explains the riches uncovered by the Pacific Northwest beach hunter Kay Modgling in the Compass Metal Detector ads of the 1970s.

Some of Kay's tallies came from storm erosion hunting. But a bunch of it came from simple astronomical amounts of time spent md'ing the beach

 

[kamogawa]

Kay's Beach treasures

Kay Modgling - Washington State 1975

 

[WeirdGuyInPark]

I started in 1981 with a Compass Coin Hustler..Then upgraded to a Compass Relic Magnum 7 in 1983(12 AA Batterys)...Even though those first machine were slow,lunky and awkward to swing that's all we had and made them work...I found my first silver coins and jewelry with those compasses at age 11,12 and 13..All in a local school yard right behind my house..One thing i remember about the early 1980s is people would want to watch you dig things up and huddle around you for a while...Now a days they don't seem to care or just ask if you ever find anything...

 

[Rattlehead]

I got into the hobby in 1987. A couple of things I can remember that were different then vs now, is that getting permissions were much easier, and there weren't nearly as many "Karens" to give us a hard time.

I think nowadays land owners are more stingy with permissions due to fear of someone getting hurt on their property and suing. Either that or they're afraid we're going to find a pot of gold and get rich. No idea why there's so many more Karens nowadays.

Back then there was definitely a lot more virgin ground to hunt. Detectors were a lot heavier and more awkward to swing. A lot less people in the hobby. No internet forums to read. We kept up with the hobby by subscribing to magazines.