Excellent thread guys. Love reading about the 70's/80's/ and even 90's and what it was like. The good ol' days for me started in 2018 with a $60 detector that didn't even have a name attached to it. It was sitting in my brothers garage after he'd used it to find the boundary pins for his property. That thing was good for about a dozen or so freshwater beach hunts where I found plenty of bottle caps, clad, and toy cars. The rest, as they say, is History! I'm here now and swinging a nox and finding all that silver that the old timers left behind.
Same here. Good ole days for me started in 2016 with a Teknetics Gamma.
I'm hooked on this hobby but feel like I'm late to the party.
The parks in my town are pretty old and I've been over them many many times. Never found a single silver coin. - Probably never will. They're the true definition of "hunted out".
But they must have been carpeted with old coins at one point n time. I bet the first people to get to the old parks in my town with capable equipment made amazing finds and had quite an experience.