Hello Dan T. I am new to this forum, I joined on the 13th of December. I was reading your post about which detector to buy. I have the Minelab 5000 and it was hard to justify paying alot of cash for a detector. I have a vlf Garret scorpion gold stinger metal detector as well. The Minelab is far and away the best. I bought mine used on ebay and was nervous about getting ripped off. I did alot of research to make sure it was an authentic Minelab but have never regretted buying it. It is a very easy machine to understand. It comes ready to go out of the box. Is all you have to do is turn it on follow the instructions in the book and the factory presets do the rest. I have had mine since 2015 and am still learning but have found just about 8 ounces, which is more than enough to pay for the machine.The main thing you have to do is go where gold has already been found or do some research on your own. On ebay the price has come down considerably since I bought mine with the Minelab 7000 coming out. If you haven"t purchased anything yet really take a good look at the Minelab as you won't regret buying one. Good luck.