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That time I spent $200 on a metal detector just to find bottle caps.
I got into the whole conspiracy thing about buried treasure near old Civil War sites around Richmond. Tried an entry level Garrett 250 for six months and found nothing but rusted bottle caps and a 1984 dime. Then I read a forum post about studying old property maps first, cross referenced them with the library's 1890s land records. Found an actual 1863 Union button near a forgotten creek bed. Has anyone else had luck ditching the gear and using old maps instead?
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alice_allen510d ago
My buddy tried to drag me into metal detecting years ago and I was the guy saying "just go out and swing the thing, maps are a waste of time." Then I watched him spend three weekends in a field that looked perfect on paper but turned out to be completely wrong based on some old newspaper archives he found. I finally tried it myself last summer on a spot near Manassas that matched up with an 1880s farmstead map and a civil war skirmish report. Dug up a confirmed .58 caliber minie ball on day two, something I never would have found just guessing. Honestly the gear is just the tool, the real secret is in the research and knowing where to look before you even leave your driveway. Maps changed my whole view on this hobby.
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theas2810d ago
Maps are great but they only get you so far. I've spent plenty of hours cross referencing old property lines and newspaper clippings only to show up to a spot that had been bulldozed for a parking lot in 1975. The library records are only as good as what actually survived, and around here half the 1800s maps were drawn by people guessing at property lines anyway. I still grab my Garrett 250 and just walk woods near old roads, bottle caps and all, because sometimes the best finds come from places nobody thought to document.
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I was in that "just go swing it" camp for my first two years of detecting. Dug a lot of old beer cans and rusty nails thinking I was covering ground. Last spring I actually sat down with an 1890s atlas from my county historical society and plotted out three old homesteads that showed up on the map but are just woods now. First spot I hit, walked maybe 50 feet and got a clear signal on my Simplex+, turned out to be a 1907 Indian Head penny. That one coin changed my mind about maps completely. How many of those old maps have you found to be actually accurate when you got to the site?
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