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How Old Were You When You Started Metal Detecting?


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Think I was about 16 when I purchased a Micronta detector from Tandy Electronics (oz version of Radio Shack).  Thought I was going to find loads of gold nuggets and ended up finding lots of buried fencing wire and an inch thick steel plate about a foot down, and also had plenty of bump sensitivity issues with the coil.  I first tested out the detector in our front yard and used Dad's wedding ring as a target and couldn't locate it - it was found eventually.😂

Ended up ditching the Micronta and purchased a second hand MInelab XT17000, though had little time to use it once employed in the gold exploration industry in some pretty remote areas.  

Later on for some silly reason I thought of trying to locate an old Micronta detector for nostalgia sakes, probably a good thing that it never eventuated.

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Interesting replies, thank you for sharing 😎

I have been detecting when I was little boy. 

My first find are coins my first ring is plastic, my first chain is gold chain, my first earring is gold earring. I’m doing well in this younger age. I had much fun😊

All the best to everyone 🙂

Thank you 😎

Sincerely 

Hamid

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I was 13.......the rich kid down the road had a Whites and a Compass detector. I had this piece of junk (Micronta?)......but I loved it. Cost me $19.95 back in the day. A couple of years later I bought the Compass from the rich kid for a great price.....I think mainly due to the fact that I was a solid kid for my age and took care of a couple young punks who liked to beat up the rich kid. A couple of years later I “discovered” beer and girls and it would be another 20 years before those novelties wore off and I rediscovered my real passion of detecting again 😗

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I was 41 and looking for a new path after quitting alcoholic lifestyle that was most certainly going to kill me. Contractor i worked for bought a 5000 gpx and found a guy out of gold hill that would train us, so we went down and stayed over night on one of his claims. None of us had any experience with a detector so i was hooked the next morning when we found a 1 gram nugget in the wash. After that day the other guys were over it seeing we did not find an ounce, but i knew enough to know just to find a nugget first time out was impressive. Well then i found out you could find meteorites too, i went off in that direction for a few years, and now i have an equinox 800 that has found me coins and jewelry, and hopefully some natural gold someday too!  😁👍 ht

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5 hours ago, Tony said:

A couple of years later I “discovered” beer and girls and it would be another 20 years before those novelties wore off and I rediscovered my real passion of detecting again 😗

Good for you it took only 20 years to right the ship.  😉

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Spring of '69 for me. It took us a while to try and figure out when it was, but lucky for me my cousin (actually my dad's cousin) was 10 years older than me and he introduced me to metal detecting. I was 7 years old in the spring of '69. He took me all over the place detecting, roughly once a week. During the winter we would refinish antiques or go post office hopping and get all the new commemorative stamps that had just been released. He figured out when I started because his girlfriend had bought a 1970 Nove SS and we were detecting a good while before that. I wish I would have kept a log of my first day detecting.

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For me, it was around 1973 or 74. Money was tight, and we just had our 2nd child, so really no money for a hobby. But I really had the desire to get some sort of metal detector, and with working overtime and 2nd jobs to just pay the bills, I managed to save enough to buy a Judge. Very poor ergonomics (did they even think about that then?), used 12 AA batteries as I recall, and had it's other quirks, but it worked. I used it along grassy strips at a nearby school, and wherever else I could find the time. And I got hooked. That was more than 45 years ago.

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It was 1976, I was 12. My dad bought me a detector with green stamps. In 1977 I was able to upgrade to a White's 5000-D using money I had saved doing odd jobs.

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