Big Five Now The Big Four - First Texas No Longer A Player?

[phrunt]

Sounds like time to dust off the ice skates and skis Jeff, I'm jealous.  I love winter! 

Garrett has had a turnaround in prospecting, going from the AT Gold and not really being a contender for people wanting to buy prospecting equipment to having the 24k and Axiom, and now being quite a big player when it comes to gold detectors.  The AT gold is a decent detector but in today's market it's been left behind, a higher frequency detector was desperately needed in their line-up so the 24k was the perfect fit.  Now I'd say they're easily a close second for gold detectors when before they were not really in the game at all, Nokta and even First Texas were ahead of them.  Garrett for this reason is well and truly a big player, they desperately require new SMF VLF detectors though to stay current or they may just ride on their popularity in the US to sell to the market now that First Texas is largely selling to gradually creeping down to being big box store beginner detectors for grandparents to buy their grandkids for Christmas and just be in the Gold Detector market as a bigger player.   There are still dedicated AT series users but they're not out buying new ones.

The Legend probably would have been a better detector if they waited longer before releasing it, the firmware updates some of which were vital as they fixed quite big problems have caused no end of complaints from buyers, and also, I guess a new term we need to adopt called firmware anxiety where people are scared to update as they don't want to make things worse so they stick with the old versions and their problems.    The Manticore caused this a bit too but that's settled down now as people learnt the detector further as it seems the reported problems were not so much problems but differences with it.  In the Legends case though the general consensus is the newest firmware is the best firmware yet many complaining customers have not updated for whatever reason, some just can't get updates to work and that was a quite big problem at the start until they updated their flashing tool, again I think it was all released too soon, rushed to market due to competitions releases, I think.  Now it's matured into a a great detector by the look of it, but it's got the Legacy of problems associated with being released too soon tarnishing it.   I kept wanting one, not wanting one, wanting one then finally I just stepped over it by going with the Manticore, and no point going backwards in technology so it missed out, maybe the Legend 2 might be for me in the future.  I'm more interested in their prospecting PI, especially if they take the good value for money option which I'm sure they will, it's their policy and will again work very well for them.

Codan have announced they want to focus on acquisitions in the near future, and they've been doing so constantly with their other facets of the business but never the metal detecting arm, it's a wonder they haven't tried to take over some of the flagging metal detector manufacturers such as Fisher if they hold patents to something they could use to further their product development, maybe they just don't need to.  Garrett sure benefitted from Whites by getting the 24k and now being the holder of the best in my opinion single frequency VLF prospecting machine, and possibly the last we will see of new single frequency prospecting machines.  A tough product to sell in a SMF world.

The way I judge big players are the ones available to buy locally, if I have to import something it's not a big player 😉 Minelab, XP, Garrett and Nokta have local dealers and can be purchased to a degree quite easily, especially Minelab, XP and Nokta, Garrett's dealings locally are very questionable with insane pricing and no stock, just buy to order by the looks of it so you buy it, they buy it and bring it in then send you it, I'd prefer to buy myself internationally and cut them out to get the better pricing, so they won't sell much doing that, First Texas and while alive Whites didn't have dealers.  Quest is now available locally so they're creeping up to be a big player here.

[Sinclair]

Funny.. today we had -1,5m water level - I've never seen a level that low since at least 2016 (we have no tides at the baltic sea) - arriving at the parking place, I saw an older guy unpacking his stuff.. We had a nice talk, he said he's detecting >20 years.. and guess which detecor he was using down at the waterline?

A Gold Bug Pro with 11" DD coil! I think I have never seen one on the beach before 😀

[phrunt]

17 minutes ago, Sinclair said:

Funny.. today we had -1,5m water level - I've never seen a level that low since at least 2016 (we have no tides at the baltic sea) - arriving at the parking place, I saw an older guy unpacking his stuff.. We had a nice talk, he said he's detecting >20 years.. and guess which detecor he was using down at the waterline?

A Gold Bug Pro with 11" DD coil! I think I have never seen one on the beach before 😀

I wonder if it was a real one, it has to be the most cloned detector in the world.  Either way, it's a pretty good beach detector, it works well.