Different Perspective – 20 Gold Rings of Yesteryear Equal to One Today!

[LawrencetheMDer]

If you have been detecting for a while, say since the 1970s, or if you’ve read a lot about old time metal detecting, you know of or have heard stories about MDers going out and finding 10, 20 even 30 gold rings in a single outing. I recall one post of a frame with 56 (?) gold rings found by an MDer in a single day. Truly depressing when compared to the finds today where we celebrate finding, say, three gold rings in a day. Heck, I’m absolutely thrilled to find a gold ring once a week or month.

For nothing else then perhaps mental health reasons, another perspective is in order. For example, if you found, say, 20 gold rings in the early 1970s they would have be worth a total of $32.00/oz for gold content. A reasonable estimate would be that the 20 gold rings (14k, 6g each) would be worth about $74.00. But wait, that is in 1970s (say 1972) dollars. Adjusted for inflation, that $74.00 in 1972 would be worth about $574.00 today (assuming the gold rings were scraped).

If you find a 14k 6g gold ring today, gold scrap value (gold spot = $5,000) would be about $560.00! So in this example, one 14k 6g gold ring found today is as valuable as almost 20 gold rings found 55 yrs ago! Boy, that sure makes Me feel better.

Of course, there is always a caveat: If the MDer had kept his/her 20 gold rings of yesteryear and scraped them today, they’d be worth a cool $10,000+. Let’s not go there…

Happy Hunting

 

[ronaldj2]

Because I dont get to beaches or parks that much ... Two or three gold rings in one year would be my norm.... I love old homesteads , cellar holes out in the wilderness / woods or forests. Carriage roads.. Mostly colonial or victorian aged stuff. My wife and I get out to the ocean beaches two or three times a year, mostly off season. We will be headed out in March , Anniversary / Birthday celebration. Cape Cod. I might cash in some of my gold to buy a small pickup truck.. Its crazy how high the prices are , won der when they will crash. Hmmm. RJL

 

[Nauti]

Yes,certainly slim pickings these days,even coins are getting harder to come by.

 

[Sand Sifter]

If you have been detecting for a while, say since the 1970s, or if you’ve read a lot about old time metal detecting, you know of or have heard stories about MDers going out and finding 10, 20 even 30 gold rings in a single outing. I recall one post of a frame with 56 (?) gold rings found by an MDer in a single day. Truly depressing when compared to the finds today where we celebrate finding, say, three gold rings in a day. Heck, I’m absolutely thrilled to find a gold ring once a week or month.

For nothing else then perhaps mental health reasons, another perspective is in order. For example, if you found, say, 20 gold rings in the early 1970s they would have be worth a total of $32.00/oz for gold content. A reasonable estimate would be that the 20 gold rings (14k, 6g each) would be worth about $74.00. But wait, that is in 1970s (say 1972) dollars. Adjusted for inflation, that $74.00 in 1972 would be worth about $574.00 today (assuming the gold rings were scraped).

If you find a 14k 6g gold ring today, gold scrap value (gold spot = $5,000) would be about $560.00! So in this example, one 14k 6g gold ring found today is as valuable as almost 20 gold rings found 55 yrs ago! Boy, that sure makes Me feel better.

Of course, there is always a caveat: If the MDer had kept his/her 20 gold rings of yesteryear and scraped them today, they’d be worth a cool $10,000+. Let’s not go there…

Happy Hunting

Ahh yes, those were definitely the good ole' days! And there's another BIG difference to consider as well, Technology. I started detecting as a kid back in the 68/69 timeframe. My mom bought me a Heathkit BFO detector that we had to build, not just assemble, but actually build as in soldering components to the pcb, soldering coil wires, etc. Around 71', we upgraded to an all-metal White's Coinmaster IV, which was TR technology and before detectors with discrimination came onto the market, so a jump up from a BFO. But back then with the TR Coinmaster IV, if I found a target down 5" or 6", that was considered DEEP, lol. I don't remember exactly when VLF technology came out but I ran that Coinmaster IV for years, and I'll never forget taking it to the beach one time. I dug an old looking, dark coin that looked to my young eyes to be a doubloon, so I was jumping up and down screaming "I got a doubloon". But alas, turned out it was just a crusty quarter, but for those few seconds, I thought I really hit the jackpot with some real Spanish treasure, lol.

Back in those days, the beaches, land, and just about any place you'd want to search was pretty much virgin territory, and the number of detectorists was just a tiny fraction compared to the numbers of hunters today. We of course didn't have the internet or YouTube, so to learn about detecting, you first had to know that the hobby existed, then you'd buy some treasure magazines to research the hobby and then join a treasure hunting club to see what other hunters were using and to learn from their experience. Metal Detecting back then was much more of a word-of-mouth type hobby; you had to be aware of the hobby, then seek out information or people involved in the hobby to learn more. It wasn't anywhere near as widely known as it is today. For instance, back then, people would come up and ask us what we were doing, where today, people come up and ask us if we found anything. Most people today know what we're doing, but back then, not so much.

It was an interesting paradigm. Not a lot of people were in the hobby compared to today. Most sites were pretty virgin and wide open for hunting, not a lot of hunters cleaning areas out, so we had virgin sites probably holding tons of goodies. BUT the technology of the detectors we were using wasn't even in the same universe as the technology of today's detectors. So, if you were finding gold rings on a beach back then using a BFO or TR detector, or even early VLF, just think what you would have found back then if you were swinging a modern SMF, or even previous BBS technology, ala Sovereigns and Excals. I don't remember if we had PI's back then? I was just a kid and an all-metal TR Coinmaster IV was all I knew at the time, lol. I know at some point, Whites had a PI 1000, then 2000, but don't remember when they came out, maybe the 80's? So, we had all these great areas to hunt, loaded with goodies, really no competition to speak of, but detection depth was much more limited compared to today, due to the technology we had available at the time.

 

[sube]

I started in 69 bought a $19.99 BFO which was a fortune lot's of papers delivered to own it . It was in the back page of a comic book had one button on and off was a tuning button also . You turn it on had to keep your finger on it was your auto tune constant adjustment all day depth was pushing 2 1/2 inches but there were coins everywhere .
No pull-tabs lot's of bottle caps those caps are almost rotten and gone now replaced by pull-tabs .sube

 

[Sand Sifter]

I started in 69 bought a $19.99 BFO which was a fortune lot's of papers delivered to own it . It was in the back page of a comic book had one button on and off was a tuning button also . You turn it on had to keep your finger on it was your auto tune constant adjustment all day depth was pushing 2 1/2 inches but there were coins everywhere .
No pull-tabs lot's of bottle caps those caps are almost rotten and gone now replaced by pull-tabs .sube

Man sube, I can definitely relate. I loved looking at the ads when I was a kid, in comic books and also the classifieds in the tabloids my mom would get at the store. Every week I'd wait patiently for her to finish reading that tabloid paper then she'd hand it to me and up to my room I'd go, searching for detector ads at the back of the paper, lol. Those ads were magic! And the detectors were cheap off brands, but I didn't know that at the time. I seem to recall one was a "Jetco" or something like that. Seemed most of those detectors had futuristic model names. But I used to drool over those ads, with dreams of heading west and finding treasure in old ghost towns. Then, I called Garrett & Whites and requested their catalogs.

For the younger guys here, that's what we had to do back in the day, either call or write a letter requesting a catalog, no website to visit to request or download a catalog, we either had to use Ma Bell or snail mail. I waited patiently for days, checking the mail every day until the catalogs came, waiting was painful, lol. Then I'd spend hours drooling over all the cool detectors in the catalogs. And after a couple years swinging the uncomfortable Heathkit BFO, we upgraded to a Coinmaster IV TR. Man, that big meter was so friggin' cool, I thought I was swinging the pinnacle of detector technology, lol.

Here's some pics of the Heathkit and Coinmaster IV. These aren't my detectors; I found these pics online. I have no idea whatever happened to the Heathkit, but I still have the Coinmaster IV around here somewhere, I gotta find it, load it with batteries and see if it still works after 50+ years. Notice on the Heathkit, the shaft is mounted at the center of the coil, and it swivels. But for a young kid, it was pretty uncomfortable to swing holding it by that metal handle, not very ergonomic. The Coinmaster IV was very comfortable to hold with the handle in the center of the control box, much more ergonomic. BUT on the Coinmaster IV, the shaft is connected to the coil via a small, fixed angle ramp that's molded to the edge of the coil, so the coil angle was fixed so not able to be adjusted. Because of the fixed angle, I had to maintain the control box in a certain position in order to keep the coil positioned parallel to the ground.

 

[sube]

I can relate too . Me and my buddy were at my house which was across from a city park we were watching this guy with a metal detector a whites 63t I think it was enormous .
We didn't know what it was so we went across the street and talk to him and found out he was finding MONEY wow we would throw penny's on the ground when he was not looking and bigolly he would find them lol.
So after watching him for several hours seeing him find silver quarters and dimes we went back to my house with dreams of getting rich lol .

Found it
in a comic book save money for 2 months and order lol we had dollar signs dancing in are minds waiting for the money machine to come 2 weeks later there they were .
56 years later here I am lol I got to say youngsters of the today did not earn the BADGE OF HONER running a complex machine I started with . sube

 

[LawrencetheMDer]

Love to hear about "The Good Olde Times" metal detecting. I started in the early 70s when I sold a $20.00 gold piece for $50.00 (that's right Fifty dollars!) to buy my first detector, all I remember is that it was a Whites. Never did find much with it and school and work got in the way for the next 25 years. In the 90s gave the detector to a nephew and bought an Echo II, that I still have as a back-up to my back-up...to my back-up. But it was nearly impossible to learn anything about MDing back then and being dirt poor had no mentors (or even a father) to learn from. The Internet has really changed everything.

 

[Sand Sifter]

I can relate too . Me and my buddy were at my house which was across from a city park we were watching this guy with a metal detector a whites 63t I think it was enormous .
We didn't know what it was so we went across the street and talk to him and found out he was finding MONEY wow we would throw penny's on the ground when he was not looking and bigolly he would find them lol.
So after watching him for several hours seeing him find silver quarters and dimes we went back to my house with dreams of getting rich lol .

Yeah buddy, back then people would come up to me and ask me what I was doing. But today, people come up and ask me if I found anything, because everyone today knows what a metal detector is and what we're doing with it. But back then, it was a mystery to most folks, lol.

Found it
in a comic book save money for 2 months and order lol we had dollar signs dancing in are minds waiting for the money machine to come 2 weeks later there they were .
56 years later here I am lol I got to say youngsters of the today did not earn the BADGE OF HONER running a complex machine I started with . sube

AND all those detectors back then were all-metal, so we dug everything because we didn't know any different, that's just the way it was back then. And although we now have electronic pinpointers to help find the target, back then, I used the best pinpointer IMHO, that the world has ever seen, which was a long-bladed screwdriver. The blade had become rounded by me constantly shoving it into the ground. But lemme tell the young guys, there was just something magical about shoving that screwdriver into the ground and hearing a thump/thud sound, which told me I had located the target. I usually could tell if it was a flat lying coin because of the feel and sound of that thump/thud.

But as an added bonus, that screwdriver was also the best depth indicator known to man. After I shoved the screwdriver into the dirt and hit the target, I would take my thumb and index finger and grab the shaft of the screwdriver down at the point where it met the ground. I'd pinch and hold, then withdraw the screwdriver. I'd just have to take one look at where my fingers were on the shaft compared to the end of the shaft and I could tell with absolute precision how deep the target was. Usually, it wasn't more than just a few inches because detectors back then didn't detect too deep compared to today's detectors.

 

[sube]

Screwdrivers were nice for locating but I always dug with a butter knife did not have to dig to China but broke a bunch of them .When my mother ask where all the butter knifes went to I just shrugged and went to rummage sales to replace them . That first detector I had was a BFO sounded like a UFO . My dream machine was a relco could not afford though . sube

 

[Sand Sifter]

Screwdrivers were nice for locating but I always dug with a butter knife did not have to dig to China but broke a bunch of them .When my mother ask where all the butter knifes went to I just shrugged and went to rummage sales to replace them . That first detector I had was a BFO sounded like a UFO . My dream machine was a relco could not afford though . sube

Oh yeah, glad you mentioned Relco, I forgot about that one, but I do remember seeing them advertised. IIRC, I think Relco was one of the bigger "off brands" back then. I forget how much my mom paid for the Heathkit, for some reason $37.00 is in my mind. I used the screwdriver to locate but had a trowel to use for digging. Except, sometimes, if I thought it was a coin and very shallow, I could sometimes use the screwdriver to get under the coin and pop it out, but it had to be pretty shallow to do that. Otherwise, I'd cut a small, circular plug about 3/4's around, then flip that plug up. Back then, we didn't remove the entire plug, just flipped it up and over the remaining dirt/grass in order to keep the roots intact as much as possible.

Don't know what it is with hunters today, but I've been seeing a lot of videos of land hunters digging huge, crater size plugs, then pulling out the entire plug to search for a wee bitty coin or target. Man, once I hit the target with the screwdriver, I knew exactly where it was so didn't have to cut a plug no bigger than a few inches around the target.

 

[OldBeechnut]

If you have been detecting for a while, say since the 1970s, or if you’ve read a lot about old time metal detecting, you know of or have heard stories about MDers going out and finding 10, 20 even 30 gold rings in a single outing. I recall one post of a frame with 56 (?) gold rings found by an MDer in a single day. Truly depressing when compared to the finds today where we celebrate finding, say, three gold rings in a day. Heck, I’m absolutely thrilled to find a gold ring once a week or month.

If you find a 14k 6g gold ring today, gold scrap value (gold spot = $5,000) would be about $560.00! So in this example, one 14k 6g gold ring found today is as valuable as almost 20 gold rings found 55 yrs ago! Boy, that sure makes Me feel better.


Happy Hunting

So true and I like the way you think on that..
Could have been one of my post on someone who found a crazy amount of gold rings during the late 70's into the early 90's. In my research to hunt the Chesapeake Bay I talked to several older hunters who did hunt back in the late 70s to the 90s, I've got many amazing stories and loved setting back and talking to these old pirates.. I never met this guy "Harry Fink" but had a friend who did and he shared pictures and stories of Harry's adventures thru the years.

Here is another, Little John who use to own a detector shop back in the 80s.. some crazy stories. And what is funny I got stories from other hunters that spoke of a guy that came into the places they hunted and would operate a dredge. And interesting Little John, just like Frank and Bob .. who had a detector shop in Glen Burnie would offer metal detectors on credit, the hunters would make payments with the gold they found.

And of course Frank Carter & Bob Trevilian, never meet either for Bob Passed in1998 and Frank in 2006? But I did have a opportunity to meet Franks daughters just as she had put the home place up for sale. Lots of great stories from her and information.

Over the years when I did start hunting the Chesapeake Bay (2014) I was Blessed with many great hunts but nothing even close to the early years pirates.. when they would use different mason jars mark 10k/14k/18k and would have them filled by summers end.

 

[OldBeechnut]

Whites had a PI 1000, then 2000, but don't remember when they came out, maybe the 80's? So, we had all these great areas to hunt, loaded with goodies, really no competition to speak of, but detection depth was much more limited compared to today, due to the technology we had available at the time.

Meet a guy named Ed and his brother John, many great stories of the 80s.. Ed still had his old machines.. I noticed them over in the corner and snapped a picture. Whites PI 1000 and a 3000 I think. Interesting the stories they shared the most gold rings they ever got in one hunt was 7. Back then you had no weather other then the TV and radio.. no windy.com to tell you the winds other then the news paper. So when you went it was pure luck if you got a good day. I have some pictures of them in wetsuits some where..