Who has the most years of detecting?

[Dan Hughes]

I'm working on an episode of my podcast (http://thetreasurecorner.com) that will consist of short interviews with people who have been treasure hunting for a long time.

I'm not looking for the oldest treasure hunters, but the ones who have been at it for the longest period of time.

I bought my first detector in 1973 - who has started earlier than that?

Thanks!

---Dan

 

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[Real de Tayopa Tropical Tramp]

HIO Try June 1955 - sigh. but it has been an interesting, adventurous, fun filled life. Still at it, plus trying to lure our lovely TN gals off to my secluded, Tropical Island to swing my hammock and feed me grapes. err etc etc..blushing.

Don Jose de La Mancha

p.s. Incidentally, the first detector was a Gardner, a wonderful machine . Cost almost $900 US then, sheesh, but it had a rudimentry ground balance and discrimination. It could be used in black sand areas. Had a 3 ft coil, among others, for fast sweeping of a cleared area down to 18 ft on a large target. Found 7 mule loads of siiver 8 Reals with it, among others.

 

[bomber]

check with sherm,i believe his first shaft was carved from a dinosaur femur

 

[kane23]

September 1968, 40 years,275,000 coins later....kane23

 

[Tom_in_CA]

This question has always intrigued me too. The real early detectors were only capable of finding large objects, not coin sized objects. Even conventional looking single loop type (verses 2-box types) wouldn't find coin-sized objects. So when Fisher advertises that they are the "oldest" manufacturer, you have to remember that their earlier types only found large objects, not coin-sized things. It wasn't till the late '50s or early '60s that Fisher had models that could find smaller objects. By that time, other companies had already been making machines capable of finding single coins. There was one made for mine detection in the Korean War, that was sensitive enough to find individual coins, but the WWII types (at least as far as I'm aware) would only find large objects.

The Jr. High school chum who got me into this in the mid 1970s, had an older brother who had been into it since about 1963 or '64. He had seen an ad in the back of one of those "True West" magazines enticing people to send away for a Whites catolog and "Find Buried Treasure!". He sent away for info, and ended up buying a humungous Whites BFO. It could indeed find individual coins, to a depth of perhaps 3". He was, as far as anyone around my area knows, the first person to ever swing a detector at parks and school yards here. At that time, silver was still in circulation. They got boatloads of silver coins, to the point of filling up shoeboxes of it (or so they claim ) But nothing really old. It never occured to them to go to exotic places, do demolition sites, etc.... They just stuck to school yards and sand boxes.

 

[Real de Tayopa Tropical Tramp]

Hi TOM: The Gardner 3 ft coil would pick up coins fairly well, but it came with a 7" coil as standard, which did very nicely on coins.. The 7" coil used a flat aluminum strip 1/2" wide x 1/8 mounted on edge in a horizontal plane, wound in a helical form with perhaps 7 turns, which was exposed on the bottom, but not waterproof..

t also had a 2 or 3 " coil for nugget hunting in black sand. All in all, it can still give modern detectors a run for their money, EXCEPT, that it was a complicated B---h to balance. 2 basic controls which were adjusted alternately, plus a third which was also integrated into the ground balancing act. It had auto tuning as well as manual.

I picked up one of the first Garrett BFo's with the aux.2 Ft. coil which I recently modified to use with the Sea Hunter. Don't ask why I still had it after all of these years, just say that it has been hanging on the back wall out of sight until one day I had a bit or serendipity regarding frequencies.

Peeps today don't know / realize how much detectors have changed for the better. They now do everything but serve cold drinks while detecting. .

The first fisher twin box was a monster, it had two rails to hold it requiring both hands.. It used hard to find batteries, any one of which weighted more than most detectors today. The boxes were about 2 ft square each. The entire unit was made of wood.


Don Jose de La Mancha

 

[johnnycat]

I don't remember what year it was but, I bought a brand new to the market White's Coinmaster 4.