Minelabs are great but warnings are out.

[goldentruth]

I went on ebay, I found an authorized seller sayin beware of GPX 4000 & GPX 5000 models selling cheeper.
A rash of "Knock offs" are being sold: MADE IN CHINA ! Australlia's Minelab Company are getting bad reports about the knock offs with fake Electronics & bogus Serial Numbers. The High Quality Minelab top of the line models are getting hit hard and the customer lose! Minelab has set up a toll free number for you to call and check the serial number before you buy so you don't get stuck with a counterfit piece of junk and loss of $$$.

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

A History of Mining on the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska - Grab it through Amazon!

[The Governor]

The Chinese are ripping off everything electronic that we make so metal detectors are just one of many products that they rip off. They also make cheapo knock of ipads, and anything else they can get the blueprint for. Trust the old saying," if it sounds to good to be true it prob. is!" As far as price gouging goes, if you look at whats in a md, I think that they are all way overpriced. the manufacturer prob. has about $300 in a $1500 detector. Add in r&d of about another $100 and then the mark up at the local level. I figure that half of the $$$ is pure profit.

They have been and will continue to do so as long as people buy it.

I think buying a metal detector for say $600 and it cost them $300 to make is half way fair considering all the employees and manufacturing process companies have to deal with. Although they get supplies cheap, there's also lots of returns to deal with and the initial development of software, boards, and coils along with fine tuning it all to make sure it's a quality product. That in itself is like paying for "labor" kind of like a car or computer repair. I'm okay with it, although I wish some of the Minelab and OKM detectors were more affordable, they can charge what they do because of how well their products work.

Back to the point of this thread; the Chinese manufacturers aren't very stupid from seeing some of the quality knock offs I've seen before. The sticker/serial deal will be cracked or broken if not already to make it even harder to distinguish. I'd stay away from "used" and "ebay" type sites and grab them from someone like Bart temporarily. He hooked me up with a killer deal not very long ago and his stuff is legitimate; always even if he does star on Duck Dynasty. (lol, just kidding.. saw that video on youtube and rofled.)

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

How to Research for Treasure Hunting and Metal Detecting From Lead Generation to Vetting - Grab it through Amazon!