Performance. If a machine doesn't perform, it would not sell. Period. A bad detector might sell intially with some hype, but sales will die if they don't perform in the hands of the user.
There is no greater example of this than in Northern Virginia, where a whole bunch of serious relic hunters have a GPX 4800 or GPX 5000. Why? Performance. In that dirt,
nothing else works as well as one of the $5000 Minelabs. Its all been tried...
And the thing is - when (not if) something else comes along that tops it, all of those GPXs will be for sale while everyone jumps ship to the new machine.
Now a lot of those guys will buy a used machine to make it a bit easier on the wallet, but even so not many make up the cost of a $5000 machine with a bunch of $3 Civil War bullets from the 1860s. They buy them because without one, they probably are not going to find much. The performance gives them the chance to have a decent hunt.
Its a specialized hobby... sometimes people will pay to have fun.
