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Question For Dealers Re: Customized Detector Sales


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I'd say easily 75% of the younger people who asked me for detector advice when I was making videos were asking about sub-$1000 range machines. It's easy to see how someone who finds themselves in that price range but then convinces themselves that they want to go all in on prospecting and get a 7000 or 6000 will be scrimping to save $800 or $1800 wherever they can.

I used to be the youngest on the forums, but now I'm sort of in the middle. So I see and hear things from the young and old crowd. I am constantly amazed at the number of older people I meet in the field who are millionaires because they just sold a house in California for $1.2 million which they bought for $75k or something in 1990. I hear this story over and over every year I go to the field and start talking to the older guys around me. Unfortunately, for people my generation and younger we don't have that luxury. Most people my age were born too late to get the cheap housing, got hit by 2 recessions and layoff and real estate busts (and now a pandemic) during our prime working years when our parents had stable economies and affordable housing, and as a result almost no one I know even owns a house yet, into middle age, and probably never will barring inheritence or a family that helps out. These aren't lazy or uneducated people, most my friends have degrees in engineering, science, nursing, etc. 

So money tends to mean different things for different people I suppose.

Some might find it ridiculous that a person like me scrimps for $1000. And I assure these people that I find it every bit as equally ridiculous when I see people with too much money spending $10,000 on a metal detector who need basic instruction on where to even start using such a machine. You can find a zero nuggets equally as well with a $800 detector as you can with a $10k detector. If you need advice on where to even begin hunting then starting with anything other than the $800 detector seems incredibly wasteful and poor financial planning to me. Learn to prospect first, you can do that with any detector, and you aren't going to learn that in a 1 to 3 day class, it takes years or a decade of boots on the ground to really learn to prospect, and to get to the point where (IMO) you really need a machine like a 6000 or 7000. Most people I've met who started from day 1 by being pointed to places to go have almost zero ability to prospect or find their own places even if they've been at it for a year or a decade. Knowing how to use a machine and knowing how to prospect are 2 different things. Unless you have someone to keep showing you new areas to go to, you run out eventually, as is the case with a large number of people I meet in the field who struggle to find even a 1/2 or 1 ounce a year now even with a 7000.

So. It's all relative to who you are and the times in which you were born into I think.

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Jasong I'm on the end period of life and detecting, but that is the best advice I have seen from a younger person on gold and life path. I hope other learn from it.👍

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23 hours ago, Gerry in Idaho said:

It amazes me of a high % of younger people who call and ask about a couple different detectors...

...

A week later I'll touch base and they inform me found a killer deal they could not pass up.

It's not just the young people, Gerry, unless you consider me young (and I got you beat in experience on this planet by what, 10 years?).  However, I wouldn't stoop to taking advantage of your knowledge knowing I was going to turn around and find someone to undercut your sale.

One more comment (this relates more to your earlier post on this thread).  Since returning to detecting in late 2015 I've looked into buying from over a half dozen brick-and-mortar dealers who mainly dealt in MD'ing & artisan mining equipment.  Not only are you at the top of the list for knowledge, but only one other even knew as much as I did at the time I talked to them.  The other thing is, half didn't even know how to sell!  (They knew how to take my money if I had offered it, maybe even with a smile, but after that....)

So when you compare your brick-and-mortar competition to the big box stores, that's one more piece of the puzzle that tells why they aren't making it.  When it's down to choosing between dishonesty (i.e. businesses that sell Long Range Locators) and ignorance, we aren't getting much of a choice, AFAIC.

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Hey Gerry,

  I have to agree with you, the days of us hard working dealers being supported from the Manufactures is long gone.  In my honest opinion, the US is not the primary market anymore for gold nuggets, coins or relics.  Places like Africa/Asia and Europe have much greater markets for all detectors and I feel like the major manufactures are more focused now in those regions.  

I talked to a dealer in Africa about 2 weeks ago, they have no shortages of metal detectors over there, but we can't even get a unit here in the US.  I have backorders from 4-5 weeks ago still waiting.  

We can offer all the training & support, but without a detector to sell what do you do? 

One thing we do that is unique to our business, since we sell a lot of accessories/coils is to customize bundles for the customers.  This would be free items we include that are customized to their level, basic needs (pick, scoop, pouches and such vs. an advanced user that might need more such items a signal enhancer or coil for their new detector.  

Cross your fingers we can get more inventory into our region soon to supply the customers that are searching for them (before it too hot again)! 

Rob

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