In my neck of the woods there are spots on the lake where 100s of boats will raft off on the weekends, every 7 years or so the water gets low enough so the boats can’t get in the usual spot.
That’s when the detectorists show up looking for jewelry, lots of wedding rings can be found.
One such place is right in front of where I live. I almost bought a metal detector during the last low cycle but you need one that will operate in a couple feet of water which took it out of my try something new budget.
Diving on the other hand can be lucrative, not finding treasure but people calling up because they lost something. One guy who did that and was well known in our are died of covid in 2021. You could call him any time, his success rate was very high.
A VPN on the desktop works great. A VPN on an Android device works great but you have to disable the GPS and the mobile network (SIM card). It does not work on an iPad, it might but I can’t figure out how to completely disable the location sharing. I turn everything off and it still knows where I’m at.
Next step, screen mirroring to the big tv. Google removed the ability to screen mirror/cast to any device that’s not theirs so no Roku or Fire Stick so I can’t use my Pixel 6.
I can screen mirror with an old Galaxy Note 8 but Roku and Fire Stick don’t like VPNs because you’re no longer in the same network. There are work arounds but I’m not making the effort for a one time thing.
So laptop with an HDMI cable it is.
Thanks for the tip, I can watch the special this week.
Why would you think it is particularly British? All of Europe has problems with detectorists.
Unfortunately it’s eccentric in the same way Jacob Rees Mogg and Boris Johnson are eccentric, i.e. damaging for society as a whole for the amusement or enrichment of the few.
I had determined myself not to comment in this thread, because I don’t want to be a spoil sport and I have absolutely no problem with detecting on the beach, but I will just say my piece and then bow out again: mass metal detecting for archaeological remains is a threat to human heritage.
Even in the US, there are ghouls who will illegally search at Civil War battle sites. Ethical detectorists know to stay away from sites with potential historical value and to call in real archaeologists right away if they happen to stumble upon anything really old. I am afraid to say that there are a lot of unethical sorts out there, though.
My dream is to find a Rolex or some blingy jewelry, maybe some gold or silver coins from 100 years ago. My nightmare is to find something truly ancient and accidentally scratch it while digging it up.
For the reasons i stated, just the impression i’ve always had about detectorists. Though i don’t understand why you say it’s a threat to human heritage, surely it broadens our understanding of our heritage by bringing these artefacts to light. If you’re talking about the casual detectorist with a youtube channel who goes digging holes wherever they feel like then i’d agree it ruins the landscape and risks irreparably damaging genuine finds.
Excavating a site in a way that provides an understanding of what the site can tell us is an exacting process that has to be performed by archaeologists who know what they are doing and who catalog everything. People pulling these things out of the ground all willy-nilly without regard for where everything was with respect to everything else or things like soil layers prevents us from learning what we might otherwise learn from these sites. It is critically important that ethical detectorists understand this and tread very lightly when it comes to history, which we only have one shot to unearth properly.
Today, I had my best day yet. I found my first 500 Yen coin! My total for the day was 810 Yen, which brings my total since I got the detector to 1,457 Yen. The detector is 20% of the way toward paying for itself! I also found my first ring (at least I think that it’s a ring. See below.)
I thought I’d take this opportunity to share a picture of the random knick-knacks that I have found over these past two weeks. These things are the spice of the hobby. You’re not quite sure what they are or how they got there (except for the fishing line weight; people do fish there). They have no real value, but you just can’t bring yourself to throw them out. They usually end up in a jar, which becomes a conversation piece in and of itself.
Back in Canada in the 90s, I knew an underwater detectorist. He combined SCUBA in lakes with a (dive-proof) metal detector. He was nowhere near mainstream in this interest, but I always found him interesting to talk to.
This works for me as well. When it asks for my address, the BBC headquarters works well. You can’t fake the address- it does some basic checks to ensure it’s real.
In which they found substantial nonevidence of any important settlement in the area, made several important contributions towards elucidating the ancient culture of fuck-all, and inspired a whole school of archeology dedicated to looking elsewhere
You can’t fake the address- it does some basic checks to ensure it’s real.
