What are your biggest regrets in the hobby?

[seeker46]

As with many of you, the biggest regret is not having started detecting long before I did.

 

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[DetectingGodlikeOnOlympus]

I can't even begin to list them here. I would have a nervous breakdown before completing the list.

Metal detecting giveth, and metal detecting taketh away.

 

[DigDug891]

OMG.... 'coffin' analogy aside, sad you didn't get the Lotus. Had a poster of one in my room for years. Then to see the one in 'Pretty Woman'..... One of the best body designs of all time, IMO. But alas, probably too much car for the both of us, and a money pit at that I'm sure.

 

[DigDug891]

That was for Back-of-the-Boat. Still getting the hang of this.

 

[Honest Samuel]

My regrets was being out of the hobby for many years. I am back with a new detector.

 

[Scrappy]

Living on Martha's Vineyard before I detected. A few years ago a fella eyeballed a tree coin on a beach there....

 

[DeepseekerADS]

After a great run in the 80's, I dropped out of the hobby for 25 years. Life happens to us. I look back at those 25 years away and I can't remember any real delights or pleasures. But I'll always remember the delight of digging up that very pretty junk pendant a couple months ago - worth only the beauty to me.

 

[boogeyman]

In my long list of metal detecting regrets my biggest one is that I didn't hit it harder in the mid 60's with my Fisher BFO machine. The ground was full of silver then, and lots of halves, of course we spent it about as fast as we dug it, after all it was just normal money then.

Darn indolent youth!

Now you brought that up, I always get a big kick out of talking to the younger newbs and then watching their expressions when you tell them about eyeballing silver etc. I wonder how many of those guys are drinking beers talking about me. You know, the old coot babbling about eyeballing half dollars and searching ghost towns or coming home with more silver & wheats than clad! "Hope he got outta the sun before it's too late!"

 

[coinman123]

Now you brought that up, I always get a big kick out of talking to the younger newbs and then watching their expressions when you tell them about eyeballing silver etc. I wonder how many of those guys are drinking beers talking about me. You know, the old coot babbling about eyeballing half dollars and searching ghost towns or coming home with more silver & wheats than clad! "Hope he got outta the sun before it's too late!"

Too bad I am not old enough to have experienced the days when that was possible. So many places are so hunted out now that you can't even find shotgun shells, let alone silver. Even in three hundred years people probably won't even be very excited about finding a clad quarter, it will be like how it is finding a square nail or shotgun shell now, old but not extremely interesting and can be found almost everywhere.

 

[FriscoT06]

Mine was sometime around 2011 or so. I was sifting the creek for fossils (mostly shark teeth, there were so many it was insane), and I noticed that a woman was watching me. She started to ask me questions about what I was doing that got more and more specific that I felt like I was taking a biology exam. One example question was, "What species of shark is that one?" "Isurus hastalis." "How can you tell the difference between those two?". "Oh, this one is the same shape as the Great White, but doesn't have serrations." There were plenty more questions, but it was actually fun answering, since I knew it. She then asked if I was interested in shipwrecks, and I told her they were my favorite, and that I grew up at the Graveyard of the Atlantic. She invited me on to go dive and work on the Queen Anne's Revenge, but it was a ways from home and on a volunteer basis, and being newly married it was the first summer I absolutely needed to make money, so I politely declined. Still haunts me, that's my favorite ship in the world, captained by one of my most interesting historical persons. It's funny too, because I had a teacher previously who did sluice work on it who I had spoken to often about the subject.

 

[Keppy]

I would have to say my only regret is i have not found 2 million $ in gold yet.

 

[Getter]

I grew up as a kid in Ocala Fl. 200 yards from my front door was an area that was filled with Indian treasure. The entire area was filled with pottery shards and artifacts, even as a child, I had a good collection.

Any time it rained, an arrowhead was almost a certainty. One day, the university came and dug every last bit.

I regret I was a child and did not know enough to amass a collection to set me for life.

 

[Mud Hut]

I regret having used eagle breastplates as skipping stones back in the 1960's. I also regret gettin old to quickly.

 

[ky keith]

I regret living in a town, run by liberals, that has 90 parks and bans MD'ing.

Where i used to live this was caused by one certain idiot family of hill jacks that detected parks, left holes, cut bad plugs, would dig trash and leave it lay on the ground.

 

[RGINN]

I regret not getting all the research, writings, maps, etc. my great-great uncle had related to his search for a certain treasure in SW Oklahoma. I was supposed to, but you know how family deals sometimes go, all that mysteriously disappeared when he died. Then again, I might have avoided a curse. I would be spending half the year working to build up finances, then the rest living out in the Wichitas, poking around in every nook and cranny and turnin over every rock, rest of the family always makin fun of me. Then again, that wouldn't be such a bad life, you think?

 

[AlienLifeForm]

I regret buying cheap digger after cheap digger instead of doing it right the first time and getting a lesche.

 

[dsdigger]

Not sticking with it after I stated years back and then coming back in. So many places I could have hunted then are gone now or no longer huntable and my health is not as good as it was 25/30 yrs ago. A lot of what was out there has been found and I missed it doing other things that were not as enjoyable. Regret it, just can't change it. Research, check and hunt when and where able to.

 

[creskol]

I regret having used eagle breastplates as skipping stones back in the 1960's. I also regret gettin old to quickly.

SAY W H A T?

 

[coinman123]

I regret having used eagle breastplates as skipping stones back in the 1960's.

I hope you are being serious

 

[ThirtyDollars]

My regrets all had long hair and were flirting with me, but I usually figured it out a day too late. A few were obvious sure things. If I knew then what I know now.