Why'd you wrap your new metal detector around the tree?

I’m a huge fan of the hundreds of hunt videos that you’ll find on youtube.  Most of these are 4-6 minutes long and show detectorists with pure, clean signals, gorgeous silver coins and coinspills at every site.  It’s enough to make the average Joe run out and get a new detector to take part in the bounty!

And yesterday I learned that there will be a National Geographic TV show called “Diggers” and another on Spike called “American 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, some are surely to be more of the same – 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 the hobby.  For every video that makes it to YouTube or NatGeo, there are 25+ more that ended with “another pulltab” or “friggin’ memorial” which are deleted to the digital cutting-room floor.  This is the part of the hobby that nobody sees – and the same will be true of the TV-show.

For the beginning detectorist who hits the headwinds of clad and junk, this is quite discouraging.  ”Why am I not pulling silver out of the ground every 2 minutes 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.

I hope the new detectorist will take the time to watch videos like those from NuggetNoggin who keeps his energy and enthusiasm high even when pulling slabs of iron from the ground after getting a large silver signal.

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, and take the time to do the hobby right.