Why’d you wrap your new metal detector around the tree?
I’m a fan of the of hunt videos that you’ll find on youtube. It’s enough to make the average Joe run out and get a new detector!
And yesterday I learned that there will be a National Geographic TV show called “Diggers” about metal detecting that will air in a few weeks. I then saw the news on Stout’s Standards. Having watched the videos by the same group on-line we’re going to see find after find of shimmering gold and silver, with cliffhangers to keep you watching through the ads.
The problem here is that they are only showing a small percentage of the actual effort that goes into detecting. For every video that makes it to YouTube or NatGeo, there are 25+ more which are deleted. This is the part of the hobby that nobody sees. And for me, you don’t see the documentation / GPS readings / notes and other information I gather about the provenance of items. It’s not that different from Archaeology projects where the take aways seem simple and “obvious” until you look into the huge amount of work that was required to get to those answers.
For the beginning detectorist who hits the headwinds of piles of modern litter, this is quite discouraging. “Why am I not finding artifacts like DaddyDigger Treasurefiend, Lookn4Seated and AmericanCoinShooter?” The new detectorist probably doesn’t take the time to think about the endless hours of nothing, junk or clad that led up to getting out the camera for that short clip of gleaming coins in the dirt. Not to mention the research it takes to find virgin sites out there.
Now, with our hobby bound to national TV, the same thing is going to happen (I predict.) This Fall, I expect the used metal detector market to be flooded with $400-500 machines (at least the ones that weren’t wrapped around trees) after people hit their personal limit of pulltabs and memorial pennies. The word “skunked” will soon be in their vocabulary.
All I can personally hope for is that these people don’t do much damage along the way.
So keep expectations in check, capture provenance and take the time to do the hobby right.
It like the fishing shows…they don’t show the hours that all they did was slap the water and then show trophy bass after bass. Maybe some good comes of the exposure, in a while it will soon boil back to the real hobbyists that do it for more than money anyway.
Hi Pocketspill! You are absolutely right. There are hours upon hours involved in researching old sites that have the potential of producing old silver, but don’t necessarily produce. Sure, some detectorists are better than others, but that is only due to patience and persistence. I have seen other MD’ers swinging their coils 6″ off of the ground… Sorry, but you can’t expect to find a 10″ deep target doing that. You’re cheating yourself from 6″.
And yes, I dig a TON of trash compared to the amount of silver coins I pull out, but I do not discriminate depth or VDI numbers and trust the tones I hear. But, If I did not dig all that trash, I would not have found as much silver as I have either. Enjoyed your blog, and am working on my own as well at: http://www.midwestchronicles.com
P.S. It’s Lookn4Seated, not Look(ing)4Seated
nice site. Added to my blogroll! Also updated the typo.
We dig lots more trash than the new detector user or the general public realize.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XceNmqeH_O0
Great point, I see A LOT of editing in these videos. The other problem with most of these videos is they do not show the technique that each uses to detect, dig and clean their finds, how they store them, how they determine value or most importantly how to find important clues on where to dig and where not to. I realize that time constraints probably have a lot to do with these omissions, I hope to attempt this soon so I guess I will wait and see just what goes into it before I get too critical…
I usually shoot ~1.5 hours of video and it ends up being 10-12 minutes of digs. I remove a lot because I know the attention span is pretty short for most watching the content. I ask myself what I’d want to watch – and live digs and reveals are what I like. Some detectorists don’t even fire up the camera until the item is recovered and I find those boring. So the 1.5 hours I shoot are mostly good sounding targets that turn out to be clad or falsing iron, etc. Thank you for visiting my site!