I had one very briefly. My wife lost a rather expensive bangle on the beach at the back of our house. She realised, went back and dug around trying to find it and in the process probably buried it further.
She was quite upset and so I went back with her to take a look and as soon as I got there I realised it was pointless just kicking sand around. I had a brainwave and called about, (JR Hartley style), to find a metal detector. I didn’t want to spend crazy money unless I had to and had on a couple of occasions seen kids with little metal detectors on beaches round and about. So I phoned local toy shops. Toys R Us had a National Geographic kids metal detector for around £30. I reserved it, went and picked it up and headed straight to the beach. I did doubt whether it would be effective but after shiftying around with it for maybe 15 minutes I found her bracelet.
My sister was a primary school teacher at the time so I gave it to her for her class. So ended my brief dalliance with being a detectorist.
One of my close friends does it on his parents farmland IIRC. Found a couple of oldish coins from what I remember. We were shit faced when he mentioned it.
He was going bust and went to clear his mind in a field and took a unit with him. He found some rare coins an hour later and by the end of the month, he had a new RR SVR out the front.
Dude got divorced recently so either got mad money or spunked it all.
