Writing a fiction book; need early detector info.

[Turtleman]

Fellow treasure hunters,
I am writing a book (fiction) which involves the use of a metal detector in the storyline. For all of you who have been at this hobby for many decades, I am asking for your help (1970's or earlier). When did you buy your first metal detector? Where did you get it from? What did it cost? What type (brand, etc.) was it? How accurate was it? What did you find? How deep could it detect (please be honest and realistic). I don't imagine many of you have a picture of your detector but if so, that would be a bonus.
I'd love to hear the tales of detecting in its earliest years.
I thank you in advance for helping me understand metal detecting in a bygone era.
Peace,
T-man

 

[Tom_in_CA]

I had a Whites 66TR (circa late 1960s/early '70s vintage) which I got used in about 1976. It would detect a coin to perhaps 4" (maybe 5" if I really pushed it). A friend I hunted with had a Compass 77b (circa 1971/72-ish), and it got about the same depth, maybe a bit more. His was a smoother better detector than the 66TR, IMHO.

By 1977 or so, any of these all-metal TRs was left in the dust, as we began to see people detecting with TR discriminators. They could effortlessly pass up the foil and tabs, so it didn't take long for us to join them Then by 1978 and '79, we began to see people with motion discriminators. We laughed our heads off at the swing speed (because very few people understood "motion disc" at the time). But believe me, we stopped laughing when we saw the silver they were finding :P So we ran out to get motion disc! In each evolution, you can see that a machine that was a mere few years old, was already a dinasour! Contrast to NOW, and a machine that's 10 yrs. old is still highly competitive (the explorer, for example, is over 10 yrs. old now!).

But despite parks and schools being so "virgin", I recall finding mostly common silver. The depth was limited, and our junk threshold (by the time TR and motion disc. came out) was very low. So it never occured to us to try the exotic places like urban demolition, old stage stops, etc.... We just stuck to turf, and perhaps beaches at best. We would have had no tolerance to henry shells, pistol balls, harmonica reeds, and other such "junk" that you'd have to wade through at a relicky site. NOW though, I know that such "junk" means you're in a place that can give up seateds and such. We would leave for "greener grounds", and it never occured to us to go for the really early stuff (we just assumed that anything pre-1900, must, by simple definition, be too deep Doh!

So although sites were prolific and more virgin then, the average md'r of that era was doing sandboxes, easy turf, etc.... A few pioneers headed out to ghost towns and such, and knew to "hunker down" for 100 to 1 coin ratios, because they were aware of the potential for earlier coins. But the average Joe (at least that I knew of in md'ing circles) was more into parks and schools.

I actually get older/better coins now, and a lot less clad, than I did back in those days. Not because of technology or sites being better, but just due to more attuned to where and when to hunt, and being willing to wade through lots of junk to get those older coins.

 

[U.K. Brian]

What could save you a lot of work and time is to see if you can pick up "Finders Keepers" by Warren Smith (Belmont Books-New York).
"Turn 60 cents into a million dollars!"

Its dated 1967. Guarantees you can find treasure near your home but more importantly lists treasure sites, discusses equipment and manufacturers and talks to the treasure hunters of that period.

Well worth a read for anyone.

 

[Charlie P. (NY)]

I had an "Archer" kit built detector back from the early 70's (Radio Shack). Looked like a tan exposed circuit board (of an "etched" loop circuit) on the end of a telescoping car antenna that came out of a 2" x 3" x 5" plastic box with a sheet aluminum lid. In fact, that is what it was. The earpieces were two tubes off a single transistor radio type earbud.

You could find a quarter burried as deep as 1/2" on a good day.

Check the Garrett website for images of older units.

 

[mick56]

In the mid 60's, my dad bought a Goldak md from a guy he worked with. I remember going around with it, but it beeped at everything. We dug a ton of gum wrappers, I don't think we ever found a coin. The fun quickly wore off.

 

[vayank54]

I bought a Metrotech in 1969. It cost about $150.00. In good ground you could pick up a civil war bullet about 6 inches deep. There is some highly minerlized ground it would not even penetrate. In that ground you could lay a quater on top of the ground and it would not pick it up. This was one of the better detectors of the day. I think they started making the Metrotechs around 1959. The early machines had no ground balance or discrimination. If you knew your machine you could tell the difference in some signals.

 

[Shortstack]

The earliest Garrett's detectors were BFO's and the biggest problem with BFO's was they were not stable. The tuning would "wonder" off freq. and if you bumped the coil, it would sound off. Also, wet grass would cause the detector to sound off.........especially if you were trying to operate in TALL wet grass. I think the problem was finally solved when they put a PLL (Phase Locked Loop) into the circuit that would "hold" the detector on the adjusted freq. Also, the wet grass problem was corrected when the designers started to use shielded cable in the coils.

Another old company was RELCO. And Bill Mahan marketed a detector, but the name escapes me right now. There was an off-brand detector named Koin King that was junk and the old Jetco machines were BFO junk. You could buy Jetcos at local discount stores for about $20 for the Jetco Mustang. Sad to say, but most of us fell for that old Jetco Mustang.

If you want to see the advertisements for the early machines, get an issue of the old treasure hunting magazines. Treasure World and True Treasure are the two main mags. They were published alternately by the same publisher. One title one month and the other title the next month. RELCO, Whites, and Garrett's were the main companies with the larger 1 and 1/2 inch column ads and in the back inside the regular For Sale ads you'd find a guy in Phoenix, AZ advertising his machine. He was Gardner and his company was Gardner Electronics. He sold a lot of machines and they were somewhat advanced for the time. He worked out of his garage and mainly use mailorder for sales. I went to see him while I was stationed at Luke AFB, but could't afford one of his machines on the salary of an "Airman 2-striper".

 

[Turtleman]

Thank you to all who have replied to my post so far. I appreciate the info. Anyone have any stories about finds they made or places they hunted in the early 1970's or so?
T-man

 

[Shortstack]

In about 1974-75 time frame, I was detecting at an old, abandoned school house a few miles south of Bossier City, LA and noticed an odd situation. I found at least a half a dozen nickels that day, Jeffersons with some war years and a couple of Buffs. What was a little strange was WHERE I found them. The yard area was well worn grassy lawn with a LOT of bare areas and tuffs of wire grass. Someone was still mowing the grass, so there was no problem of fighting high grass. I found NO nickels in the bare areas. ALL of the nickels were found in the roots of those tuffs of grass. If I moved the coil over the grass tuff and got a signal, it was as nickel; no other coin, just nickels. I found a couple of Merc dimes in the bare areas and the usual bunch of pennies, also in the bare areas of dirt. But all of those nickels were hiding in the roots of tuffed grass. I haven't noticed that phenomenon BEFORE that day or after.

 

[gleaner1]

There is a guy that filled a coffee can with silver working an ancient sliding hill in my town, back in the late 60's and early 70's, with a machine that could not have been very user-friendly amongst the bazzilions of caps, foil, pt's, you name it. It was BFO technology at the time, no scrim. Discrimination of any sort was almost non existent back then I guess. The vlf technology (better depth with scrim) took over in the later 70's. There must be a million other stories like this, back in the day there were so many silver in the ground, I know there are old timers out there that raked in hundreds upon hundreds if not into the thousands of silver coins. I started in '93 and caught the tail end of reasonably expecting at least one silver per outing.

 

[U.K. Brian]

Unfortunately most people think B.F.O. (Beat Frequency Oscillator) machines are cheap rubbish with little depth and no discrimination.

In fact in the early days they were THE professional machine as the wide range of coils made them one of the most versatile detectors of that time. Garrett had introduced "zero drift" circuits and full range discrimination. Many of the coils were dual coils (two in one). Use the outer for deepseeking and the inner for small items and pinpointing. Use the information from both to tell if the target is near coil, at mid depth or deep.

Complete treasure hunting and prospecting capabilities in one package. Coils from 3.5 inch to 13" X 24". It was even claimed you could pick up a piece of gold or silver in the middle of a junkyard.

All BFO's were noisy if used at higher sensitivity so if you mention say gold detecting in your book, the user would not use headphones.