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

Mtc8966

Full Member
Joined
Mar 29, 2016
Messages
192
Location
CT
Question for you folks that have been into this hobby for a long time. 1970's / 1980's or even longer.

What was it like pretty much being the first people to detect the parks and pretty much all the cellar holes? What was it like being the first people to break ground with this technology? (Pun intended). What was it like knowing that no matter where you went it was the first time the place was detected?

We now live in an age where we're just finding the left overs. But what was it like when you were the first ones there?
 
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...
 
Well for starters we had to walk ten miles to permission, up hill in both directions.
 
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...

This is amazing info! Thanks for sharing. People must have pulled great finds one after another in the early days.

Last week I hiked an hour in the woods to an old road that has a bunch of 1700's / 1800's cellar holes. I thought to myself that no one is going to have been here. - It's way too remote and not visible at all from the roads.
When I got to the location I found little holes dug everywhere. And tons of iron junk leaning up against the trees. So it was obviously hit already. I worked on it all day long anyway. - Found nothing.

It got me wondering what it might have held at one time. What did others find? Something amazing maybe? Who knows what was pulled from here. It's in someones collection now.

Then that got me wondering about all the amazing finds in the now hunted out
parks and other locations in my area and what they must have been like to hunt at one time.
 
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Back in my early serious beach hunting days I was on my own. Then started meeting a few old timers and learned some from them. Of course I thought I knew what I was doing. They told me to look for how things group in certain areas. Sure I found some of those and some scattered gold here and there. For a good 7,8 months I would find pockets where it was loaded with coins. Maybe pull 1 gold ring and 8 or 9 silver rings. But I would get bored and leave for greener pastures. Because I thought I would find a pocket of gold targets. As in gold everywhere like coins , because that's what these old guys told me. Targets tend to group. But then I told them what I had been doing. They said " and you walked away from that ?". Yes , I said. They go " you idiot , the gold is down deeper , go slow." And the gold isn't littered all over...or in pockets like you are thinking of. So yes , that was an awakening. Gold did group in some areas , but not in bunches of 50 like l thought of.
 
We now live in an age where we're just finding the left overs.

I'm a relative noob of a few years myself, but just wanted to comment on your comment above
......in my small town that seems to be pretty accurate :lol:

(I think finding unhunted permissions seems likely the best chance of detecting older finds)
 
.... People must have pulled great finds one after another in the early days. ....

No. As I said it wasn't as easy as you're making it out to be. As my post said: We were doing good to bag a merc and some wheaties. I do better nowadays than I ever did in those early years.

The machines had no disc. and no depth. Disc. got introduced by the mid 1970s (and was slow-to-catch on, since there was no internet to spread info. in wildfire fashion like there is for new-mousetraps-now).

And actually, those first discriminators (TR, like on the 5000d series I, the groundhog, etc...) were lousy on depth. The minute you switched over to disc, your depth dropped a lot. ESPECIALLY in mineralized ground.

The real leap, IMHO, came when the 6000D got introduced in 1978. And that was slow-to-catch on, d/t the unconventional swing speed, and slow traveling of detector gossip in those days. I never saw one in action till '79 or maybe 1980. And even then we laughed at those guys for the way they swung like they were golfing. But the moment we saw that they spanked us 5x to 1x on silver from the parks, we stopped laughing and quietly went out and bought our own motion discriminators. Doh ! :roll: They added an immediate inch or two of depth, and did it a lot faster.

But prior to that, I'd say ... no ... it wasn't "one great find after another". Unless you were a pioneering wise guy who perhaps wasn't fooling around in school yards, and was researching virgin carnival grounds, or virgin country picnic sites, etc..... Or someone who was wise enough to capture the "relic mindset" and hit stage stops and ghost towns.

But the average hunter then, as I say, tended to do tame stuff. And it wasn't as prolific as you think. I'm sure there were exceptions, to guys that were wiser and more patient and forward-thinking.
 
... We now live in an age where we're just finding the left overs. ...

I still manage to find virgin ground. Surprisingly even some stage-stop type locations that defy the imagination as-to-why prior md'rs haven't exploited them.

There's also the virgin frontier of old-town urban demolition. Eg.: park scrapes (to prepare for artificial turf install), sidewalk demolitions, etc.... And beach storms can erode and give scores of goodies, etc.....

Yes it's true that the obvious spots have been hammered. I can think of parks we used to get easy silver out of "back in the day", that I would pity-the-poor soul who goes there now to try to detect. He will find himself in an ocean of zinc pennies, screw caps, clad, foil, etc.... The added depth of today's whizzbang machines will do him no good. And if he tries to be a hero and strip-mine, I pity him indeed. But back in the day, we were bagging silver any time we went there. In that sense you'd be right. But on the other hand, there parks that still, to this day, I can reliably find silver any time I visit, that mimics yesteryear results/tallies. Just depends on what park , etc...
 
With the machines we have at this time, I would think these ARE the “good ole days”. I had a 66TR for a short while a few years back, bought it as a novelty. What a crude POS that thing was....COMPARATIVELY. With the depth, and the depth with ID we get today, we are seeing REALLy old stuff that nobody could see in the 80’s. I say that because if they COULD...I wouldn’t be finding those coins, would I? You know what a thrill it is to find a Barber SPILL? Just happened a week ago. A SEATED half dime at 9”? BTDT. NOBODY was seeing these coins back then, and in some cases, the 70’s and 80’s have graciously sucked up all the 0-7” stuff and left the best for last...for us.
I’m sure there are stories of bushels of silver recovered in a season....yadda yadda...just never actually seen it. Some people have great collections they have dug, but that’s an accumulation over years. And most of them, many years.
 
It wasn’t all that. In fact it wasn’t much of anything. 1975 and I was almost 15 and swung a new $1,200* White’s machine that had more bells n whistles than I knew what to do with. I remember I could get 2 or 3 inches depth and it was just too complicated for a new user.

I hung it up after a half dozen outings with no luck and switched to bottle digging, and had much more success with that.



*cost adjusted for inflation
 
These are the good ole days

I started metal detecting in the late 1970's with my Dad/brother and used Compass Judge-1/2 machines. I remember a bad day occurred if I found only one Mercury dime. Strangely enough, we considered many parks to be picked nearly clean by the earlier generation that started in the late 1960's. I now think the best part of metal detecting in those days was just going out with my Dad and brother...lots of good memories.

I stopped metal detecting around 1982 with college and later a career of sorts, though I now wish that I had kept at it. I started metal detecting recently as I wanted to create similar memories with my eleven year old son. So far he has not caught the bug like I did; video games are tough competition.

I lived in Utah during the late 1970's, but now live in Connecticut. I remember that it was a really big deal to find an IHP in Utah, but in CT during the past 1.5 years I have found ~3X more IHP than Mercury dimes. Finding a large cent in Utah was beyond bucket list; so the dateless large cent I found recently allowed me to drink a guiltless 12% ABV beer. These are now the good ole days for me!
 
With the machines we have at this time, I would think these ARE the “good ole days”. I had a 66TR for a short while a few years back, bought it as a novelty. What a crude POS that thing was....COMPARATIVELY. With the depth, and the depth with ID we get today, we are seeing REALLy old stuff that nobody could see in the 80’s. I say that because if they COULD...I wouldn’t be finding those coins, would I? You know what a thrill it is to find a Barber SPILL? Just happened a week ago. A SEATED half dime at 9”? BTDT. NOBODY was seeing these coins back then, and in some cases, the 70’s and 80’s have graciously sucked up all the 0-7” stuff and left the best for last...for us.
I’m sure there are stories of bushels of silver recovered in a season....yadda yadda...just never actually seen it. Some people have great collections they have dug, but that’s an accumulation over years. And most of them, many years.
I fully agree. When I got back into the hobby after almost 35 years in 2008, my first year I dug over 80 silvers and about 600 wheats and other old coins, all from hard hit public locations. Many multiple silver days and I didn’t get out as often as many do. Dozens of silver and oldies each year since, although it is getting much tougher.
 
These are the good old days. The quality of machines now is light years ahead of what was available even 30 years ago. Like I stated before, I received a Radio Shack metal detector for Christmas in 1988. I used it a few times and only found junk. Sold it at a yard sale in the early 1990's and didn't pick up another one until 2013. What a huge difference 25 years made! Even my Ace 250 was head and shoulders above that Radio Shack detector.

Bottom line, don't dwell on the past and think it's pointless to detect now. You just have to work harder to find virgin spots, due to all the competition out there. But you have much better machines to work with, so you actually have a better shot at finding the good stuff now.
 
I started in 77 while I was in college

I saw a guy detecting and got interested in the hobby.
My first detector was a non discriminating Bounty Hunter boxy detector.
I then bought some Whites detectors later on with discrimination.
That White's 6000 was really heavy and it didn't have much depth.
I didn't find too much back in the day , but I did find gold and silver items.
During the holidays I would get into the school play areas and grounds.
One Christmas break I found about $100 in clad, but now they are all fenced in.
Many of the sites we hunted here have be replaced by businesses and parking lots.
Yes, those were the good old days.
 
I started in 1976 , I was in a Off Road Club and it started getting boring , I bought a Compass 77B to use at old mountain cabins as we passed by. Then I met two guys who hunted Civil War with Garrett machines , I started going to resaca and rocky face georgia and Corinth Mississippi. I switched to a Deepseeker , and then moved to a Fisher 553D and then a 555D then a Tesoro Inca and Fisher 1260X .....I found a lot of civil war relics , I have laid on the ground in Farmington Mississippi and dug bullets all day without standing up. It is a park now so do not bother going there. I is still magic and there are places everywhere waiting to be found with new detectors , I still love it ! I use a Tesoro Vaquero , Tejon , Fisher F 75 and a Nokta Impact and thinking of a Equnox someday
 
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.
 
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