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Metal Detecting Stats


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I was recently asked if I knew how popular worldwide metal detecting is, and I realised that I have no idea.  Would anybody roughly know or suspect how many people may be involved in metal detecting or how many detectors being used may be out there?  I became curious.

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I took a stab at estimating the answer.  It uses 'Fermi Estimation' - a fancy term for breaking up the problem into smaller bits, best-guessing their values, and arriving at the order-of-magnitude range of estimates.  The idea is that as long as the guessed values are not all biased in one direction, the estimates will likely even out and possibly give an indication of what a reasonable range may be.

In this case I simply used the Codan/Minelab annual reports to find out the revenue from metal detectors sales as a starting point.  The rest should be self-explanatory. 

The actual computations can be found here.  You can change the input values in the white cells (possibly to something more reasonable, as mine were mostly wild guesses) and see how the results change and if you can narrow them down.

So, it seems to me that there are perhaps some half million active detectorists worldwide (within a factor of ten).

Would anybody have a better idea?

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Here in the U.K , some archaeologists are very critical of metal detecting. One reference article used when assessing the prevalence of detectorists is this Hardy article:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23311886.2017.1298397

I haven't given it more than a quick scan, it may have worthwhile info in it.

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Cheers for that!

At one point the author is apparently trying to do something similar to what I tried.  He guesses that in the US alone there are some half a million detectors sold each year (is that true?), and that a detector lasts 3 years, and that scanning MD forums is a good way of estimating the ratio of population actively detecting metals, and that people in Florida detect with the same enthusiasm as people in e.g. Minnesota, and therefore there are at least 1.5 million active detectorists in the country (I'm not sure, but I think he's only interested in estimating detecting for relics).  A few other countries he considers pale in comparison.

It probably needs to be read more carefully to judge the methodology, but I have a feeling that despite a veneer of rigour, it may not be that much better than the order of magnitude estimate method above.

p.s. 'Critical' is a gross understatement - he vents his spleen every chance he gets.😀

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I think to do this right you need to break Minelab revenue down into artisinal/hobby and the remainder (military, security).   These latter shouldn't count, IMO.  You also need to account for sales of acccessories (e.g. spare coils and pinpointers), although these may not be much of their revenue.  Someone like Gerry might be able to tell you what percentage of his revenue is actual full scale detectors.

Going at it from a different view (e.g. forum participation) might also help bracket the estimate better.  Still going to have large uncertainties.

A sanity check is to use a locale you are familiar with.  You know that population and you know the population of the world.  If you assume everyone in the world is equally likely to be a detectorist (not true, but hang with me) then you can estimate the number of active detectorists in your locale.  Then correct for the disparity in population (e.g. by age and wealth).  Finally ask if that resulting number is consistent with the number of detectorists you are aware of in your locale.

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Not exactly on topic, but from the graph of the Minelab revenue above, unless I've messed it up, it transpires that in 2014FY there was a $100mln slump that took them some 5 years to recover from.  Anybody knows why?

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Compare your Minelab curve to the price of gold over the same time span and you'll have your answer. A very large percentage of ML revenue is in African gold prospecting and sales there are very dependent on the price of gold.

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15 hours ago, King-Of-Bling said:

Here in So.Cal , there are several million people. And I can tell you every unemployed male under the age of 45 has a metal detector.  And they are all out on the beach trying to scratch a buck. I haven't counted , but it is alot out there.....

Is this a recent photo of what you're referring to?

images6.jpeg.c0d3a9e68c5db539b79d0df2686160a6.jpeg

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If there are only half a million people metal actively detecting worldwide, it hardly seems worth the effort for metal detecting companies to keep doing the R&D. I have no idea how many active metal detector users there are worldwide. But if I look at the clubs in my area and the number of people who have memberships and triple that number (to account for people who don't belong to clubs) vs total population, it's less than 1% in my area. take the total population of the US and you have roughly 3 million users in the US. That may be way off, who knows.

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