The Most Common Finds When Metal Detecting

Whoever coined the phrase “the chase is better than the catch” must have been a detectorist. Outside of jilted lovers, no group of people appreciates the bittersweetness of this idiom better than those in the metal detecting hobby.

I’d argue that most treasure hunting is solely about the chase if only because there never is a catch. Despite what Indiana Jones might have you believe, the holy grails, fountains of youth, and pirate hoards are rarely found. Just ask the Oak Island lads. And in those rare cases when the treasure is found, you can bet your sweet bippy that the catch far surpasses the chase. Just ask James Cameron.

That’s where metal detecting is a bit different. Oh, there’s plenty of chasing to be had. Lots and lots of chasing. But there’s also lots and lots of catching. Indeed, every single chase ends in a catch. If it didn’t, a detectorist would never know when to go home.

Is The Catch Better Than The Chase?

The problem is that a lot of the time, the catch is not the catch you hoped it would be. In fact, sometimes the catch sounds very much like the catch you hoped it would be until you dig it out of the ground and discover that it most definitely is not the catch you hoped it would be. At which point, not only is the chase better than the catch, but it might be the only thing keeping you from snapping your detector across your thigh like a driver that just sliced your ball into the right fairway woods.

This isn’t meant to discourage anyone from taking up the hobby. Metal detecting can be very rewarding. Sometimes the catch really is the catch. And sometimes the catch is THE CATCH! Both are gratifying, though the latter is more so. Until you must return it to the rightful owner, that is. Damn ethics.

I just wanted to come clean on the realities of metal detecting. It’s good to know what you’re getting into beforehand. Here then are the most common finds you’ll uncover with your metal detector. Eventually, you’ll learn to tune many of them out. The others? They’ll haunt you to your grave.

Pull Tabs

Ah, the lowly, yet infamous pull tab. The bane of detectorists everywhere. I cannot impress upon how many of these you will find. Even if you have a fancy detector capable of screening out such junk, you will still, inevitably dig one up.

It seems the desire to fidget and ultimately remove pull tabs from beverage cans is a universal human fixation. However, what is most often done with these removed pull tabs suggests that I might be an anomaly.

I don’t imbibe canned beverages as often as I once did, but my preferential habit is and always has been to slip the pull tab into the can itself. While I’m still drinking it. I don’t know why I do this. Now that it’s been written down, it does sound a tad unsanitary. Gross, even.

At least I’m earth friendly in my disgusting habits. The rest of you, it seems, are quite content to toss your pull tabs onto the ground. Be it beach, park, campsite, or backyard the evidence of your party, delinquency, or relaxation is sprinkled across the globe and detectorists are finding it regularly and cursing your name.

Bottle Caps

Bottle caps, particularly those of the beer bottle kind, are pull tabs’ baby brother. Slightly less prevalent but just as annoying. Their signal too often mimics larger coins such as quarters. And in this case, I’m equally culpable as the rest of you litterbugs.

I suspect there are fewer bottle caps in the wild simply because it’s more natural to toss them out immediately after opening a bottle. But, damn, it is hard to resist the urge to shoot a cap with a snap of your finger and thumb. I’ve launched my fair share over the ages. I suppose each time I dig one up, it’s a small part of my penance.

Foil

Foil is both plentiful and cruel. It’s plentiful because food packaging is infatuated with the stuff. I recall a time when cigarette packs and burger and gum wrappers were prime culprits. Now its candy bar, granola bar, and chocolate wrappers, not to mention those aggravating protective covers on plastic milk and yogurt bottles. This time it’s the kids’ fault.

Foil is cruel because of physics. For many detectorists, the holy grail of finds is gold. Unless you’re lucky enough to be hunting in Old World locales where gold coins are a possibility, that usually means jewelry.

As luck would have it, foil and gold jewelry can elicit a similar, sometimes identical, signal on a metal detector. Since your kids are discarding far more foil than you are losing gold jewelry that makes for a lot of heartache. Hence, in part, the motto, dig everything.

Toy cars

Speaking of children and their tendency to lose things, beaches are practically a Hot Wheels clearance outlet. There’s nothing more fun than digging holes at the lake and it only stands to reason that toy cars are getting left in the holes or hidden beneath the excavated material.

You might wonder why I’m not making some snarky remark about taking better care of one’s belongings. As you’ll soon learn, I account for every tent peg I use. Surely, I am equally careful to guarantee all our dinky cars have been gathered.

Well, when I first returned to my childhood home after our metal detecting hobby began, I was keen to hunt my parents’ backyard. They’ve lived in the same place since it was built in the late 60s and with a history of gatherings back in the day, I was certain I’d find plenty of lost coins and jewelry. And, yes, pull tabs.

What did I find? A toy car. Found in the vicinity of where my old sandbox once resided. I even recognized it. Hadn’t seen it in probably forty years. Didn’t even know I’d lost it. So, really, who am I to judge?

Tent Pegs

Maybe I’m just more anal than your average camper, but I make sure I have all my tent pegs accounted for when packing up. Judging by our discoveries at various campsites we’ve been to, other campers don’t share my attention to detail.

Then there’s those sun shelters and portable gazebos people take to beaches nowadays. Packing up with squirrely kids running amok surely makes accounting for all tent pegs more difficult. My sympathies. But I wish I wasn’t finding them so often. I don’t need them. I’ve got all of mine.

Bobby Pins

This is one that continues to surprise me. Outside of our wedding day, I’ve never seen my wife use a bobby pin and that was 21 years ago. Before that, I’d only seen these curious metal creations in my mother’s place of work when I was a child. She ran a small salon in the basement of our house and there was a selection of bobby pins amongst the rollers.

Beyond very special occasions and salon curls, I didn’t know women still used bobby pins. But apparently, they do and with regularity. Particularly at the beach. Where they are lost, also with regularity. Who knew?

Fishing Weights

Metal detecting beaches and other shoreline environments is common and often lucrative. So, too, is fishing. I’ve found evidence of this pastime’s popularity in the dozens. Not lures; those are lost in the reeds or the lake bottom. On the shore, in the sand, this is where you’ll find the fishing weights. Little lead ingots of various shapes and sizes. Enough that I could sink myself.

Ammo Casings

Fishers aren’t the only outdoorsmen losing their gear. Well, losing isn’t accurate. Disposing is a better description. I’m talking shell casings.

Now, finding shell casings in some situations isn’t a shock. Old battlefields, for example. Or former/historical military installations. In fact, some detectorists are rather keen on collecting these remnants of former gunfire.

What may surprise you, however, is how often these things are found in playgrounds. I’m not even kidding. 22s are the common culprit. How they end up in playgrounds is beyond me. Just don’t be surprised when you dig some up in the gravel beneath a swing.

Keys

This one is likely no surprise. Keys have a long history of being lost. It’s almost a time-honoured tradition for humans; a right of passage.

Still, I’m continually shocked at how often the target you dig is a key or set of keys. Or in the case of one of my fellow club members, an entire janitor’s ring of keys. Oh, to know what each key opens. Perhaps a true treasure?

Pennies

All is not doom and gloom. One of the most common finds you’ll make has genuine monetary value. Minimal monetary value, but monetary value, nonetheless. Pennies!

In 2012, Canada stopped making pennies. You might be wondering what happened to them all. Apparently, we collectively threw them to the ground here, there, and everywhere.

That’s a fun premise, but the truth is we’ve been losing pennies for decades. It’s been several lifetimes since a penny was worth much. We just don’t care about them and haven’t for a long time. Certainly not enough to expend the effort of finding a dropped one. Or twenty.

We hoarded them in jars, sure, but we also discarded them with willful abandon. We all know tales of people putting them on railroad tracks to be flattened. I can recall willfully throwing them away while strolling back home from the convenience store sucking on a popsicle. Heck, there are tourist sites with vending machines that purposely destroy pennies.

The result of this disrespect towards our smallest currency denomination is a windfall for detectorists who retrieve these copper coated treasures in the hundreds. Year after year, accumulating enough wealth to buy a piece of bubble gum. Like your great grandfather did in 1907. For a penny.

Iron

All the aforementioned items, as quaint, frustrating, or strange as their proliferation may be, pale in comparison to the king of common finds when metal detecting, iron. You will find iron as surely as you’ll find sand in a desert and water in an ocean.

Society was built with steel and remnants of this truth lie beneath our feet literally everywhere. The amount of metal in the ground is astounding. Swing a metal detector across your suburban yard and you’ll appreciate how much waste construction buries with topsoil. Swing a metal detector across a centuries old homestead and you’ll think you’ve discovered an iron mine.

It’s not all garbage either. Many old relics and trinkets are made of iron and can be quite valuable from a historical perspective. Old tools, too. They’re windows into a past that shaped our present. It’s all quite fascinating.

But it can be annoying as hell, too. Sure, finding a vintage padlock is cool but by the twelfth rusted tin can the novelty has worn off. For every genuine curiosity found by “digging everything” there is plenty of uninteresting, irrelevant junk. And it really draws attention to our wastefulness and disregard for the planet.

Thankfully, iron is relatively easy to weed out with almost any metal detector. Many detectorists ignore iron signals, preferring to chase more interesting and potentially valuable treasures. But for those with a love of history, those iron signals could be the catch of a lifetime.