Treasure hunting

[Actor]

I want to do some treasure hunting and other adventures this summer. I think I might get a metal detector for my birthday but that's not until the middle of August.

Do any of you know of other ways besides metal detecting? I know there's some guys in NYC that fish dropped coins and other stuff out of sidewalk grates and one guy found a diamond ring worth a few thousand.

Also just looking for dropped money/items in places where people are likely to drop stuff or where it ends up, like along fences at parking lots where the wind blows paper rubbish and other wind traps. I've found a dollar one time from that.

If you have any tips/helpful info that would be great thanks.

[SHARP]

Funny I should bump into this thread, I've been thinking about making a thread about metal detecting but I haven't had the time.

Anyways, I regularly take my detector for a walk, and I reckon I have in the vicinity of roughly 1 ton of tips and tricks...

Let's start with the detector, mine is a Minelab X-Terra 30, now that particular model has been discontinued and replaced by an improved version called X-Terra 305.
Both detectors are what you'd call a "beginners detector", but there's tons of detectors out there way worse (as in "don't-buy-that-piece-of-crap, worse"), Minelab detectors are at the top if you ask me, so for a beginners detector, they're good.

Now, I upgraded mine with a better search coil, usually the detectors are born with what we call "CC" coils, or "Concentric Coils".
The reason is that the CC coil is made up of two concentric rings, their search pattern is cone shaped, penetrating deepest into the ground directly under the center of the coil. This makes them extremely easy to pin point with, but you need to overlap your swings more than with what we call "DD", or "Double-D" coils.
That's what I just installed on mine.
The DD coils search pattern isn't conical, but more like a "wall" sweeping sideways through the ground, so you get full coverage across the entire diameter of the coil.
If memory serves, the X-Terra models are all equipped with a 8" CC coil from the factory, the matching DD is 10.5" so you get even better coverage, although the DD is slightly heavier.

The model 30, 50, and 70 (discontinued) as well as 305, 505, and 705 comes with a pin point function, just press a button and the detector switches to "non-motion" mode. This probably demands an explanation; normally you need to keep the detector in motion for it to function, you get a tone every time you sweep a target and depending on conductivity and size that tone can be a low sort of "blop", or a high pitched "beep", or a few others in between, iron is always low tones, but can be high tones if the iron is corrugated and in salty ground.
When you use the detector in pin point mode, you get a continuous tone, increasing in intensity the closer you get to the target, as well as a graphical representation on the display.
Whenever you hit a target, the detector assigns a number to it based on what the detector "thinks" it is, a Danish 1kr for example reads out as 8 on my detector a 2kr is 12, a 5kr around 20, a 10kr 24-28, a 20kr is usually 32, a gold necklace I found read out as 24, a pull tab from a can is usually 16, a bottle cap is -4, a rifle cartridge is 28 and so on and so forth. The scale goes from -4 to 44, in increments of 4. I believe the 305 is similar as it's basically just a model 30 on steroids. I can only assume the 505 and 705 works like their predecessors, meaning their target numbers are incremented in 3 and 2 respectively, thus giving you a more accurate idea of what you've found before you decide to dig or not.

I've never tried a 305, but I've never had any problems with my 30, and I've only heard good things about Minelab, so if I should recommend a detector I'd say go for a 305 (if you have any say in it); it's got the same features as the 30 and then some, at this stage you don't need a flag ship model, and it'd probably just confuse the fuck out of you anyway, a 305 will be plenty complicated till you get to know it, even with its standard CC coil.
My detector will only accept 7.5kHz which is a good all-around frequency, but the 305 will also accept a 18.75kHz coil, which is better for small targets like gold nuggets - think high frequency=small targets, low frequency=deeper penetration.

There's tons more, but some of it is impossible to explain before you've had a detector in your hand and familiarized yourself with it, so I'll move on to locations to hunt.
Beaches are always a hit, last time I was out beach hunting I found 63.50 dkr, raising my total score to 664.00 dkr in present day usable coins.
Then of course there's the jewelry, people tend to drop rings close to the water (or in the water) as their fingers shrink a bit when they get wet.
Necklaces and bracelets appear to be dropped where people are physically active, playing beach volley for example, mony are dropped all over the place, but it's often a good idea to check choke points as more people pass through these areas. Another good spot is near where they buy ice cream, hot dogs, and so on as people fiddle around with their money these places, and once a coin is dropped the beach swallows it in an instant.
Also, beaches are reloaded with fat loot periodically, so you can score for years on the same beach.
Take note of where people are, and what they do.
Where people lie down to get a tan, they lose things like cell phones, car keys, and wathces, where they rub on sun screen, their hands get slippery and they lose rings and bracelets, where they dive to catch that frisbee, they lose necklaces and ear rings, just like where they tumble around in the water.
Oh, and don't forget to be helpful when someone has lost something, often they'll give you a reward for your "trouble" (finding stuff that's been dropped recently is easy as it's close to the surface, and you usually only have a rather small area to focus on)

The 305 isn't waterproof, but the coil is, so as long as you keep the control box dry, you shouldn't have a problem finding stuff a couple of feet out.

Old farms and fields is another good spot, over here we can find stuff there's been lying there for a few thousand years, but that usually takes a good deal of research in order to track down the right site, so I'd advice you to start out on the beach, and you should almost be guaranteed to find something good.
When you've become bored with stripping the beach of valuables, I'll teach you a few tricks about relic hunting.

BTW, there's a couple of expressions you might run into in the future, so I might as well explain what they mean.

Coinshooter - a metal detectorist that hunts primarily for old coins.
Beach hunter - that's obvious.
Relic hunter - a metal detectorist that hunts primarily for old objects, for example medals, weapons, and treasures hidden long ago.
Beep-digger - a metal detectorist that digs on every beep regardless of target ID, these guys often find good stuff, but they spend more time diggin' junk targets.
Discrimination - the amount of target ID's your detector is set to accept, I usually block iron on beaches, saves me digging a crapload of bottle caps.

And now my gf showed up, I'm sorry I have to end this post now but I'll be back with more later.

[SHARP]

Got a bit more...

Scoop - a (usually) long handled stainless steel, or plastic for the short versions, sand scoop with a load of holes in, to scoop up targets on the beach, the holes let the sand run out if it's dry, or wash out if you're hunting in the water.

Ground balance - an adjustment of your detector to fine tune it to the specific area you're in, the GB function cancels out any mineralization in the ground.

Honey pot - a coin spill where several coins have been dropped at once, I assume this happens where people sit, look after charred wood as that indicates someone having had a bonfire in the sand, often you'll come across honey pots around these locations.

Black sand - ferro magnetic sand that can screw with your detector giving you false positive signals (the 305 should be able to ignore this), black sand is heavier than regular sand and forms a layer that might be close enough to the surface to reach, the bonus is that it works as a sort of "trap" for heavy items like gold that would otherwise slowly sink.

Noise cancel - an adjustment of your detector to prevent it from picking up electro magnetic disturbances from the surroundings, for example from power lines.

Junk target - self explanatory.

Pin pointer - a small, hand held, short range detector for pin pointing exactly where a target is, I've got a Garrett Pro Pointer as it helps recover targets faster when using a DD coil.

Recovery speed - the time it takes for the detector to recover from having hit one target, till it can register the next. Targets of different conductivity lying close together can give you some strange readouts but you'll just have to learn to interpret what the detector is telling you.

Masking - one target shielding another, often deeper target.

That's all for now, I'll be back.

PS: I forgot to explain why a DD coil is called just that, the reason is that it looks like 2 D's back to back...

[SHARP]

Here's a few beach hunting tips; if you've got a detector (coil) with good pinpointing function and a decent depth indicator, I find the easiest way to recover a shallow target is to just sweep the target area with your foot and then check again to see if it's still in the original spot, or in one of the piles you just made.
In the spot where you get a positive response you just scoop out a load of sand with a sieve and shake the sand through, what's left is usually your target, and a bunch of pebbles.
The point of using a sieve and not a traditional scoop is that on the (factory produced) scoops, the holes are too big and will let small pieces of jewelery pass through.
Mine is metal and thus prevents me from waving the sieve and its contents over the coil (yup, a coil will register metal above it as well) to see if I got the target, but once you get the hang of reading your depth indicator and compare it to the pitch of the tone, you don't need to check.

Close to the water's edge, you might get false positives for some reason, I can't tell you why, but it happens.

Deep objects are easier to spot the bigger they are, I found a bunch of beer cans 70cm down (2ft+ should be well out of the detector's reach), and for some reason my detector goes crazy deep on copper; I've found 0.25kr and 0.50kr down to about 0.5 meter with my standard coil and the largest of the two coins is roughly 20mm across, the smaller a little over half of that.
Of course orientation in the ground plays its part as well, its harder to find a ring or coin on edge, than lying flat.

You might want to bring a plastic trowel on beach hunting, when you're already kneeling with your detector besides you, it's easy to wave a bunch of sand above the coil to check, when you've found a small, deep target.
That way you don't have to dig up the whole beach layer by layer and sweep it to recover the target.

Something I totally forgot while ranting 'bout detectors...

Some people have had success with magnet fishing, which is basically "tying a strongass magnet to a sturdy line, chucking it into a lake or river, and draggin' up anything that sticks"...
Look up "magnet fishing" on the Tube and you'll see.
If you happen to live in a country that's been ravaged by war within the last 70 years or thereabouts, it might be a good idea to read up on your country's history; where I live, fuckloads of German troops were sent home after WWII, and they had the courtesy to dump tons and tons of gear into lakes, ditches and streams on their way home to the Vaterland, some of it of a highly explosive nature, some of it of a highly valuable nature to people who collects this stuff, depending on condition of course.
What I'm trying to say is that metal detecting in DK is pretty safe, as most of the war was fought between the Germans and the resistance, which didn't exactly fight the same way the Germans did, so there's very little explosive ordnance within reach of a metal detector in Danish soil.
It's not necessarily so along the German lines of retreat after the war, and in Germany, Poland, Russia, Holland, Belgium, France and so on, battlefield detecting should be considered a high risk hobby, and so should magnet fishing.

Hope it helps, any comments so far?

[Jojoman]

go to the library and look up rich people from your community 100 years ago and dig up their old yard. Also look for building foundations. I read an article earlier and some guy dug up a revolver from the civil war that was all rusted but still loaded, and another guy up in shithead new england found a '5 figure coin'. Also dig every target because you have to clean an area methodically if you want some results. I rather gold pan

edit: i rather dredge