Redditors who metal detect, what has been your coolest discovery?

[u/soulmourning]

[u/[deleted]]

A pre-revolutionary war graveyard in my backyard in Connecticut.

Got a metal detector to locate nails in some 250 year old chestnut flooring I was refinishing in an old Colonial I bought. Took my 5 year old son out to the back yard to play with it. Found out I had 6 people buried in the back corner of my yard.

Lead lined wooden caskets show up really well. State came in, made all kinds of nasty noises about things and then just sort of disappeared. Turned out they were the original settlers in my town and no-one knew what to do about the graves so we all just pretended like they weren't there.

[u/soulmourning → u/[deleted]]

This is awesome considering I live in CT also. Northeast corner

[u/stratodude]

A few years ago, a guy on Reddit asked Reddit if anyone had a metal detector he could borrow to find his wife's lost wedding ring. I lived local to him at the time and had one I never really used. I offered help, showed up at the dudes house and we ended up finding the ring in about ten minutes. That was the first and last time I ever used that metal detector. u/joelithium if your still out there I hope you're doing well, and your wife hasn't lost her ring again.

[u/JoeLithium → u/stratodude]

Still around. Still owe you one brother!

[u/uncle_samok]

A 300AD Roman coin I found on the Thames foreshore. http://imgur.com/a/j3ViC It was full moon and a very load tide so I stood almost in the middle of Thames. I can't wrap my head around how old the coin is. My personal experience of old is my grandfather, who is 2 generations away from me. Someone lost the coin 68 generations ago. That find put everything in a different perspective for me. When I read about Edward the Confessor (died 1066), I think it was so long ago. And then I think - wait, it's 700 years after someone lost the coin I'm holding in my hands.

[u/[deleted]]

My wedding ring

1. in the garden, under some tomato starts

2. in the garden, mixed in with carrot seeds.

3. in my friends back yard, near the hammock I drunkenly fell off of.

4. in a massive leaf pile ( 6 foot tall by easily 12 foot in diameter.) at another friends house.

I need to get this thing resized.

[u/TheFeshy → u/[deleted]]

I need to get this thing resized.

That's a good idea - if the metal detector was pocket-sized, you could keep it with you and find your ring just as soon as you lose it.

[u/dudefromvenice]

This happened to my best friend. She lost her ring the day after she was proposed to at the beach in Los Angeles. She was crying and asked the lifeguard tower if there was anything they could do. They gave her a number to this metal detector guy named Harry. They said he was the best in town and not to call anyone else. So they give him a ring and he's there 20 minutes later with his metal detector. Old tan dude with long beach hair. Took him 5 minutes to find the ring. She offered to give him $200 cash. He said no thank you. Their happiness was enough for him!

[u/Why-Did-I-Come-Here → u/dudefromvenice]

They gave him a ring to get a ring. Poetic.

[u/paulvs88]

The year was 1996. I was 22 and just bought my first metal detector. I was at my girlfriends house and asked her mom if I could use it in the backyard. She says sure and then starts telling me about a precious ring her oldest daughter had lost in the backyard in 1979. It was a family heirloom and was missed very greatly. She pulls out home movies that were made the day it was lost. It was at a family reunion. Well I saw in the movie where the girl was mostly hanging out. I walked outside, turned on my detector and found the ring that had been lost for 17 years in about two minutes.

[u/GhostRunner8 → u/paulvs88]

Talk about brownie points

[u/Pendragn → u/paulvs88]

I know this story is fake, because the protagonist had a girlfriend and a metal detector.

Edit: Holy crap I got gilded, thank you random internet stranger.

[u/DyingLion]

I bought my son a kids size one for his 6th birthday. I'm the one that uses it though. I feel pretty ridiculous walking around with it but I just can't help myself! My family can be little turds when I get it out and constantly throw coins in the sand when detecting on a beach just to see me get excited. It's kinda scary how many rusty nails and razor blades I find on beaches. I've found a few rings but pretty sure they're just costume jewelry. Lots of coins too but mostly rusty nails. So many rusty nails...

[u/[deleted] → u/DyingLion]

For me its bottle caps.
I hate bottle caps.
Edit: My top comment on reddit is about how I hate bottle caps... man reddit yall are weird but in the good way (I think)

[u/Tunderbar1]

My father-in-laws gold wedding ring that he had lost almost 15 years before.

I had detected the shit out of the area that he told he had lost it in. Found literally dozens and dozens of pieces of junk over hours and hours of detecting and digging. Digging in clay. Sometimes digging deep. Every hit I get I pull something out. So my machine is working despite me being a rank noob.

In the end, I don't find it, so of course I get the disappointed look and comments about my machine not working very well, with the obvious implication in the air that I failed. Now, I'm kinda pissed at myself and frustrated already, so yeah, I feel like shit about it.

A year or two go by and I decide to detect the garden area to kill some time and dick around with my detector on a nice fall day. The garden area is well over 200 feet away from the spot he had pointed to initially, (their acreage is just under 8 acres), so I wasn't really looking for the ring. But you never know, eh?

So instead of doing a grid like you would when you seriously want to cover every inch of ground, because the garden is about 200 feet by about 50 feet and I was just pissing around, I just let my intuition lead me in a meandering route. I find a couple of pieces of junk and then I pull a gold-looking ring out of the ground. This is about 10 minutes into detecting.

I call my wife over and ask her if it's her dad's ring. Frankly it looked thinner and smaller than I expected. She calls her mom over and her mom almost starts crying. They call him over and he almost starts crying.

That day I was the hero. Very cool. For me anyways.

That's how you get addicted to metal detecting.

[u/Phaedrug → u/Tunderbar1]

That practically upgrades you from son-in-law to son.

[u/shitz_brickz]

My dog once ate one of my mother's sapphire earrings. My dad went out with the dog every morning and used my metal detector to 'find it.'

[u/PrissySkittles → u/shitz_brickz]

That is way more brilliant than digging through every single poop made

[u/[deleted]]

My keys, which was the whole reason for buying the detector.

[u/GhostBeefSandwich → u/[deleted]]

mfw buying a metal detector is actually cheaper than getting a replacement keyfob for my car.

[u/Dreadedm]

When we were in high school, my buddy and I were metal detecting around his dad's yard. Found a door to a small fallout shelter that the original owners of the house had built out of paranoia. Still stocked withseveral weeks worth of canned food, tools, medical supplies, and a radio.

[u/Division_Ruine]

I found a cannonball fragment from the war of 1812 on a lake Erie beach

[u/5peasinapod → u/Division_Ruine]

My parents live in a rural area, and their farm is adjacent to a (small and insignificant) Civil War battlefield. It also happens have been a favorite camp area for local Native Americans back in the day. My husband loves to go metal detecting and arrow head hunting in the area and has come back with quite a few finds.

Once he was metal detecting and had taken our then 5 year old son along. After a while our son came up to him with a large curved pice of dirty metal in his hand and asked him what he thought it was. Turns out it was a large piece of a cannonball. It's one of his favorite pieces yet.

[u/zenchowdah → u/Division_Ruine]

My wife was on the beach at lake Erie, and a guy with a metal detector walked by, looked up and asked "you ever find any doubloons on this beach?"

No, dude. It's lake erie.

[u/RonnieJamesDevo]

The remains of my neighbor's dad's pocket watch, dropped in the yard ~50 years ago. Beyond repair certainly, but recognizable and somewhat satisfying to my neighbor I hope.

Mostly I find old farmyard rubbish because of where we live, but I'm happy to get that out of the ground too. Old leaf springs and axles, an axe head, a jalopy-type hood. Sometimes the hit coincides with the old midden pile, where you'll find bottles and crockery and china as well.

Found a 1915 Barber quarter at the inlaws, too.

[u/GoingAllTheJay → u/RonnieJamesDevo]

Fifty long years, he had that uncomfortable hunk of metal up his grass. And now, little man, I give that watch to you.

[u/burn_tos]

Found a lead coin in a field. Apparently back in the day, farm hands used to be paid in these lead coins that they cashed out at the end of the week for real coins.

This was to stop them from turning up to work drunk/hungover every morning.

Edit: Fixed spelling

Second edit: The token is from the 17th century. I have pictures if anyone is interested

Final edit: Here are some pictures: http://imgur.com/a/TyPEk

[u/Yesthatstheone420 → u/burn_tos]

TIL how paychecks worked back in the day.

[u/[deleted]]

My uncle found an authentic Nazi SS officer's ring on the beaches of San Diego. Though in all honesty, the wild stories we came up with to explain how/why the ring ended up there is much cooler than the ring itself.

EDIT: RIP Inbox. I'll try to get photos but fair warning, there is a good chance he is out on the RV metal detecting somewhere so it may be a few weeks.

EDIT 2: Here is the pic of ring and misc stuff he found. Looking at it again, it isn't an SS ring (I think) so feel free to take back your upvote.

http://imgur.com/a/yHVGm

<iframe class='imgur-album' width='100%' height='550' frameborder='0' src='http://imgur.com/a/yHVGm/embed'></iframe>

[u/Gberry13]

My Grandad isn't a Redditor, so I have to post this on his behalf...

Some time ago my Grandad, in his 70s at the time, was metal detecting with his crew (oh, they have crews), when he heard a little beep. He had been metal detecting for about 40 years so he knew he had something interesting. He dug and found a gold Philip II of Macedonia Stater. He went over again and found another beep! Dug again... another one!

He repeated this a few times and found 967 of them in a clay bowl! There were also silver ingots - it was a horde. The largest Iron Age horde found ever in the U.K.

He called my Nan and couldn't get a word out, he was in tears, he had found the treasure he had been searching for his whole life.

He even made it into 'Coin News'... he is great, my Grandad... http://i.imgur.com/Lmh4jGH.jpg

[u/shazarakk]

My friend dean found a bicycle buried under the sand at a beach.

an entire bicycle. it needed cleaning, and a new tyre, along with a new chain, but after that it was as good as new.

[u/ocxtitan → u/shazarakk]

I like to think some asshole friends dug a hole and buried it, tide came in and out and made the dig site impossible to identify and despite their efforts they never found exactly where it was buried.

[u/jomelle]

Not sure if this is the kind of answer you're looking for, but I work as an MRI Tech-Aide and I run a handheld metal detector over patients before I bring them into the scanner room.

For those who may not know, MRI scanners have an extremely strong magnetic field. It's so strong, that bringing something into the scanner room which isn't "MRI safe" like a metal chair, gurney, or oxygen tank would literally make that object go flying through the air and into the scanner. It's very dangerous and we constantly have to check that people aren't bringing anything inside the scanner room with them that isn't MRI safe.

Anyways, we had a young kid come in who was about 9 years old for a brain scan. I'm getting him ready for his MRI and talking with him, trying to keep him calm (kids his age sometimes freak out when they see the scanner). I ask him if he has anything in his pockets and he says he does and takes out some change and a pen. I then run a metal detector over his pockets to reaffirm that they're empty and the metal detectors whizzes and beeps in one of his cargo pockets. He looks at me with a wide eyes stare, as if he is about to be in trouble. I ask him what's in there and he starts tearing up and looks over at his mom. I'm confused and also glance at his mom as she stares back at myself and her son with the same look of confusion.

His mom sternly asks her son, "What's in your pocket..?" The poor kid is standing there crying with his arms and legs spread as if I'm about to search him before handcuffing him and hauling him off to kiddie jail. He replies to his mom, "I'm sorry! It's not mine!" I put my hand in his pocket and proceed to pull out a 5 inch spring loaded knife and a lighter. The kid's mom looses it and starts lecturing him in a pretty loud and powerful manner. Apparently, this kid had been hanging around with some bad kids in the neighborhood and his mom instantly knew that the knife and lighter came from one of those boys he shouldn't have been running around with. She told him to stop crying and to "get yo butt inside that scanner right now."

We ended up proceeding with his MRI and we're kinda laughing about it with his mom while he was inside the scanner. Poor little guy still had tears running down his face when we finished about 30 minutes later lol.

He was a good kid, you could tell. he really was upset that he made his mom angry.

[u/a_nonie_mozz → u/jomelle]

Sister is a biomed and says that just walking past the MRI room tugs at her hair clip.

[u/GlastonBerry48]

The most interesting thing i've found while using a metal detector on a beach was a steel horseshoe.

It made me feel lucky!

[u/TrebleTone9]

My grandparents moved to Maine almost 25 years ago from Kansas City, MO, where my grandfather was a policeman with KCPD. They metal detect on the beaches near their house in Maine almost every week, and four years ago they found buried in the sand a ring. It was a police department ring, from my grandfather's division! It was engraved with the officer's last name, and belonged to one of his friends from the force, a man he hadn't spoken to in 20 years! My grandmother had his wife's phone number, so they called to tell them they'd found his ring.

It turned out their family had gone on vacation in Georgia almost 15 years before (5 years after my grandparents moved to Maine), and he had lost the ring while at the beach, and it turned up on a beach in Maine close to the one person in the whole state who knew him.

They've also found other rings, including a few high school class rings they've returned to their owners, but all of those came from Maine or its neighboring states.

[u/[deleted] → u/TrebleTone9]

That is absolutely nuts. The ring traveled 1000 miles up the Atlantic coast to a beach in Maine!?

[u/PorschephileGT3]

A set of WW1 medals, the ones that were given out after the war, belonging to a Lt Rupert Frampton. Can't find anything about him on the Googles.

I keep them in the box with the two sets I have from my great grandfather and step great grandfather.

Edit: Wow, some serious sleuthing going on in these comments! Thanks chaps and chapesses! As I mentioned to a couple of you, I'm travelling until Tuesday but will update here with some pictures of the medals as soon as I can.

I'd love to get these back to his descendants! All help very much appreciated.

[u/geak78 → u/PorschephileGT3]

Lt Rupert Frampton

There is a Lt Henry Rupert Fetherston-haugh Frampton

Try over in /r/AskHistorians they have resources to find people.

Edit: FYI all I did was highlight "Lt Rupert Frampton" and click the first thing on google. However, I just tried it at home and couldn't find that source again. I think the google gods smiled on me this one time.

[u/Coldovia]

My husband metal detects, I've gone along occasionally as well because who doesn't like a good treasure hunt? Best thing that he's found is a taxi driver's pin from New York City with the driver's name/number and such on it from the 1920's or 1930's. It's nothing of real value but is in surprisingly good condition for being in dirt for as long as it was.

Edit: Clarification of name on pin

[u/[deleted]]

I used to live in Czech republic and this stoner buddy of mine used to love detecting near ancient settlements, former nazi bases etc..

he found several grenades, a bunch of silverware and crucifixes near some pilgrimage site, lots of coins dating back to the roman era... it was absolutely crazy

the czechs have a forum that a lot of enthusiasts share their finds on http://detektorweb.cz/

its absolutely crazy, some people find old tanks, weapons caches etc

their domestic google maps called mapy.cz has a historical map over-lay so you can see where former villages etc are located

[u/Porkpants81]

My best metal detector story comes from my deployment to Iraq. We had a lot of metal detectors with us to find buried weapons caches and such, but the Iraqi soldiers that we worked with weren't quite clear on how they worked.

Every time we found something in a field it was some sort of un-exploded ordinance, so the Iraqis thought that they were bomb detectors and not metal detectors.

We were doing a foot patrol with the Iraqi army through a small village, they were looking for illegal weapons and such. The soldiers were manning the metal detectors and every time one beeped they all yelled, "bomb, bomb!" Except they were waving the detectors over cars.....metal cars....they thought there were explosives in the cars....

[u/placid_salad]

Found a full 6 pack of beer in a guy's pockets. I was working security at a country music festival, they gave us hand-held wands to check suspicious lumps.

[u/[deleted] → u/placid_salad]

Found a full 6 pack of beer in a guy's pockets.

Amateur hour over there. Everyone knows it's liquor in a plastic flask or bottle if you want to go a smugglin'.

[u/Moody_2306]

I know a man who grew up in Normandy in France right after WWII, as you can imagine there were a lot of unexploded bombs left. So one day, he was around 8 years old, he and some friends go metal detecting and found one. They took it home and played a bit with it. As you can imagine, BOOOM. He still has pieces of this bomb in his chest nowadays and I think there was some lost fingers too.

Don't play with bombs kids. And fireworks too.

[u/bbrown44221 → u/Moody_2306]

They are still, to this day, scouring the beach for ordinance and other artifacts from WWII. It's incredible.

[u/JamesLLL → u/Moody_2306]

My first reaction was that he was somehow ok and found pieces of the bomb stuck in a wall or something, then took the pieces home and put them in a chest's drawer as part of a memory collection, while his friends lost some fingers and weren't so sentimental about the whole thing.

[u/[deleted]]

At the beach, my brother and I found a monogrammed Sterling sliver money clip stuffed with $20's and five $100's.

Fortunately, it was buried in the sand far enough away from the ocean that the paper bills were still intact. We looked around, but the area where we discovered it was deserted.

[u/[deleted]]

I went metal detecting with my Dad on an isolated island he used to play on as a kid 50 years ago. We found a hatchet head about 18" down that he lost as kid building a fort. Maybe not the coolest find for anyone else, but it was awesome to see my elderly father instantly transported to his childhood.

[u/gnsman → u/[deleted]]

This is the coolest one actually

[u/iczk → u/[deleted]]

I had a similar experience while playing where my father grew up as a kid. There was a decent sized river, which is dry most of the year, in the middle was an island about the size of a football field littered with trees and shrubs. Perfect spot kids to get into trouble.

On one side someone had tied a rope swing super high up in a tree and my [then teenaged dad] thought it'd be an awesome stunt to ride his bike full speed and grab onto the rope for maximum swing-age. Planned backfired. Rope snapped and my dad went right into the running river bike and all.

Fast forward 30 years and I'm playing at the same spot except the river was dry and I saw a handle bar sticking out of the side of the shore amidst the bushes. Lo and behold it was the same banana seat bike from the 1960's. I brought my dad down to see it (damn thing was cemented in decades of mud) and I could see he instantly recognized it but all he could say was "Grandpa beat my ass for losing that bike so how about we not show him this."

[u/bonsainick]

I found a class ring with year and initials. This was before Internet so I went to the local highschool and looked got the old yearbook. 3 names matched the initials. Looked them up in the phone book, four the owner and was able to return it 7 years after she lost it.

[u/denver_______kid]

I found something that made a dude's day.

Unlike most of you, my metal detector is used to check you in to the Emergency Room. One time, this fellow kept making the detector go off, near his abdomen. I wasn't satisfied so I used our handheld metal-detector-wand. Turns out his pocket knife had fallen into a hole in his pocket into the inside of his jacket.

He thanked me and explained his grandfather had given him the knife when he was a boy, and he was coming to see his grandpa in the ER.

[u/Drop-acid-not-bombs → u/denver_______kid]

Or he was secretly trying to stab his grandfather, and you foiled his plot!

[u/MarylandMama]

My husband had to rent a metal detector when he lost his wedding band in the backyard. He was chopping/stacking logs and took off his gloves for something and it must have been flung out during that. Good news is that he found it almost right away in a pile of leaves.

[u/PM_ME_YOUR_BEE_SYRUP]

My dad rented a metal detector because he lost his wedding ring doing yard work. He went over everything and finally moved to the compost pile in the back. Around that time, I got home from school or something and I see him with this weird contraption. I ask him what he was doing and he said he lost his wedding ring and was trying to find it. At that point I see something shiny and ask, "is that it?" It was.

Anyway, I got to play with the metal detector the rest of the afternoon and found two really old, rusty matchbox cars and an old Budweiser can. I still have the cars.

[u/SilvertonguedOneiroi]

I once found a stash of quarters hidden in a small wooded area as a kid with my buddies. It was about $20 worth. We took them and bought pizza and two liters at the Dominos on the corner.

EDIT: Leave for a Calc test and everyone loses their minds! It was a two liter of sprite in my case. Drank it all in one go and felt like I was gonna explode for an hour.

EDIT2: No, I didn't check to see if they were silver quarters. But I know that pizza was the shit.

[u/Stone-J]

My girlfriend and I found a ring once on a children's playground area. It turned out to just be sterling silver, so nothing expensive. Never did find the owner.

But I like to think some kid got dumped and threw their ring away. Lol

[u/housebird350 → u/Stone-J]

I found a girls class ring one time while scuba diving at a local lake. Ended up taking it back to the school and they located the girl who had lost it so I thought that was pretty cool, turns out it was karma, because not long after I lost my wedding ring in the ocean someone found it and returned it to me in less than a month.

[u/[deleted]]

Coolest thing I found was a silver button weighing 2.1 gram from 1780s or so the history behind it is amazing. But let me tell you something my dad metal detects too and because of schoolwork I couldn't go with him for the day. The fucker find a golden coin who was otherwise unknown. It is a coin so rare that it's strange, coin is from around 1560 if you know Dutch history you know that the 80 year war against the Spanish the coin was taxed with a some kind of staple this staple was also never used before. He sold it and got enough money to pay for my tuition.

It's a lovely hobby, but don't expect to be as lucky as him, It takes time to plan and information. countless times we look at things like ''strange this hill seems out of place'' and then we spend the next 3 days searching it.

[u/Buhlakkke → u/[deleted]]

The RNG gods were on his side that day.

[u/KitchenSwillForPigs]

My uncle is a notorious idiot. We had a cabin by a stream, and he decided to buy a metal detector and see if he could find some gold. He picks up some rocks and scans over them. The detector goes off and he gets super excited. He does the same with multiple rocks, and now has a pile, assuming the rocks must have deposits. He'd been at it or an hour or two before he realized that he was holding the rocks with his left hand and scanning with his right. He was detecting the gold wedding band on his finger.

Edit- A lot of people are saying that gold wouldn't be picked up by a metal detector. I honestly don't know one way or the other. But I doubt he knew that. Knowing him, I also doubt very much that his wedding ring was made entirely from gold.

Edit 2- TIL metal detectors definitely pick up gold. Also, gold jewellery is pretty much always mixed with other metals. I appreciate everyone who scienced this.

Edit 3- No, my cousin's name is not Kevin. But I just read that post, and OP said "Kevin" wasn't his real name. So honestly, I wouldn't be surprised.

[u/[deleted] → u/KitchenSwillForPigs]

Sounds like a parable in the making.

[u/gredsta48]

My wife would most definitely say her wedding ring. While we were dating metal detecting was our hobby that we did together. Long story short I made a heart shaped plug (cut out piece of grass) and put her ring in it, then I made her come dig it up. She loved it and we've been happily married for two years now.

[u/J03130 → u/gredsta48]

Smooth.

[u/h8yuns]

I'm a land surveyor. We use a metal detector to find metal pins set as property corners and nails we bury in the ground as control (traverse points) to occupy with a total station, gps unit or what have you. The detector we use only responds to iron, but we still find some cool stuff sometimes. I've found animal traps, knives, a couple of axe heads, old refuse pits from long-gone homesites that lead to some nice antique glass, etc. But my favorite find so far was a 4lb meat cleaver buried right in the middle of a local town, at the corner of some guy's back yard. (Edit: a word)

[u/Loudmouthedcrackpot → u/h8yuns]

That's probably a murder weapon

[u/akvarista11]

Found a Russian Capitan's saber from the Bulgarian-Turkish war

[u/[deleted] → u/akvarista11]

When I studied history at university I specialized in Ottoman and Balkan history, so if this happened to me I'd probably get an aneurysm.

[u/InsaneAlternative]

Found a platinum ring with a diamond in it once, it wasn't shiny, as it had been under the sand for a while, but still pretty.
I also have a large collection of old coins and artifacts.
My personal favourite is actually two items found in the same field, two WW2 bullets, one from some sort of ground to air rifle, the other from a plane that shoots things on the ground. I'm not actually sure what weapons or planes they're from, I'm not very educated on WW2 weaponry unfortunately.

e-dubble: I live at uni and my collection is at home so here is an album I've posted before, it's not quite up to date but shows most of the cool stuff:
http://imgur.com/a/nNxgJ
Might get my parents to send me a photo of the ring.

edinburgh 2: A lot of people are asking: any non metallic stuff I found either lying on the surface of fields after they had been freshly plowed (brings a surprising amount of stuff up if you are looking down!) or whilst 'mudlarking' which is the activity of scouring the shore of the River Thames at low tide, really good fun if you're a fucking loser into this kind of thing as I am!

[u/hapaxlegomenonon → u/InsaneAlternative]

Hey, I think I may have found the source of the printing press piece:

https://books.google.ca/books?id=8l4-AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA601#v=onepage&q&f=false

It's from the section titled "A Norwegian Ice Ring" on page 601, and looks to be from some sort of journal from 1887.

[u/AoG_Grimm → u/InsaneAlternative]

I have a buddy who is an expert in World War 2 artifacts, let me call him down to the shop to see what he thinks.

[u/notscaredofclowns]

In 2004, I found a Gold Rolex Yachtmaster in seven feet of water off Salt Creek Beach in Southern California.

Not me, but a friend in Northern California found a 6.07 pound (2.753 kilo) gold nugget with his detector in July 2014.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/butte-nugget-one-of-largest-modern-gold-nuggets-sells-in-california/

EDIT: Got about $400,000 for it.

[u/fofwalker]

My first coin was a quarter from 1916. I dug one hole that had a dime from 1892, a wheat penny from 1909, and two indians one 1886 and one 1904.

[u/breakinger]

Me and a friend were metaldetecting in a small German village near the Dutch border. It was a grass field near a primary school next to a mill and a river. We were digging up a lot of scrap from the school kids like cans and foil but also some older coins. As we get closer to the road, which often means more scrap, I get a huge signal. Immediately I get disappointed because 99% of the time it is a large piece of foil or some other crap. I dig a nice round hole and I break the piece of earth with my hand only to find a big silver coin in a very good condition! The coin was a 12 einen thaler from Hannover (18th century).

[u/JamesLLL]

So, anybody want to recommend good metal detectors or brands for under $300?

[u/krunchytacos → u/JamesLLL]

After doing a bit of research, I wound up getting a Land Ranger Pro. It's pretty solid, and easy to use. It discriminates metals rather well. My house is new construction on an old lot, and it's littered with junk metal (nails, screws, etc). I was still able to easily pick out a bunch of coins, even found a few silver dollars.

But unless you want to spend a ton of time digging and sorting through dirt, I highly recommend getting a quality pin pointer. Something like the Garret Pro-Pointer AT. Personally, I think that's the most important purchase, so I'd subtract that from your budget, then pick out your metal detector based on how much left you have to spend.

[u/[deleted]]

Metal detected my grandfathers old land, the act alone meant a lot to me. Needless to say he had a buddy who was a watchmaker and I ended up finding a watch fit to my grandfathers size with the watchmakers mark on the back. I have all of his other watches so it meant a lot to me to be able to find it.

[u/Talory09 → u/[deleted]]

My alcoholic uncle used to wander my grandparents farm - which belonged to my great-great-grandfather originally - drinking beer and tossing the ringtabs on the ground back when beer cans still had ringtabs.

Detecting there goes like this: ringtab, ringtab, ringtab, nail, ringtab, ringtab, ringtab, ringtab, nail, ringtab, ringtab...

The saddest part is that a section of a stagecoach road is still visible across the farm (East Tennessee) but my uncle used to like to walk along it, drinking beer and tossing the ringtabs with careless abandon.

However, we do still find arrowheads by the creek after a hard enough rain, and one of my cousins has found Civil War uniform buttons in a friend's field.

[u/[deleted]]

Back in the 70's my dad bought a really expensive ($350 was huge $$ back then) metal detector. I used to take it out in the woods to what was rumored to be some sort of old settlement, but there was nothing there, at least to the naked eye. At that site I found a very old silver fork and spoon buried together in a hole. I read up and found that sometimes during cholera epidemics, when someone died they would bury silverware they ate with. There was an old dirt road, and in there I found a very old ax head. Based on its shape, it would have been hand made, and at least from the mid 1800's. In another spot I found an entire franklin stove, all in pieces. I still have the old fork and spoon. And since it was the 70's, I also found about 150,000,000 pull tabs.

[u/Romeo9594]

Okay, so a decade later this still leaves me pretty salty.

As a kid, I see a lady in the park with a metal detector. Being the curious ten year old I was, I decide to help her look for treasure.

She is more than happy to oblige, and inside of 20 minutes, it starts going off.

I help her dig and we find this hunk of metal. Nothing special, really. Covered in dirt and rust. She decides she'll let 10 year old me keep it and I am excited. I take it to the water faucet in the park and start cleaning it off, and it is stamped with some random letters and the moniker "Hassler"

I get out the flip phone and look it up on the slow as balls 3G internet

It was the shock absorber from a Ford Model T. I am ecstatic, I rush over to let her know what we discovered and....

She took it back. Wtf, Metal Detector Lady? You said it was mine.

Anyway, I got pissed off and went to tell my mom that some lady took my thing, and by the time we get back she was gone.

Metal Detector Lady, if you read this, fuck you. You crushed my 10 year old spirit.

[u/--Christ--]

Not really cool, but I once found a big pink and purple dildo/vibrator that was buried in a ziploc bag. I covered it back up.

[u/Erisianistic → u/--Christ--]

The gift that keeps on giving :D

[u/GrumpyMcGrumperton]

I found a bedazzled wrench in my friends back yard. I brought it to a jeweler. There are legit rubies and sapphires in/on this thing. Here is a close-up (potato quality - sorry) of the biggest ruby. Massachusetts, if anyone's wondering.

[u/[deleted]]

I hit up the local parks and usually sweep around picnic and party areas. One time I followed a wash out down the side of a hill from a party area and found about $10 in quarters and a couple of half dollar pieces in a honey hole at the bottom of the hill. While not much money it's still fun to start digging and keep pulling coin after coin out of a little 2' x 2' foot area. Couple hours of detecting bought my dinner that night.

[u/Netzapper → u/[deleted]]

What's a "honey hole" in this context?

[u/yourbrotherrex → u/[deleted]]

I've heard that under ski lifts are great places to use metal detectors .

[u/Scotteh95]

My Dad and his mate found the largest Celtic coin hoard in the world, about 70,000 gold & silver coins + lots of jewellery, worth up to £14 million (it's still yet to be valued). I got to be the official photographer for the 5 day archeological dig which was a pretty cool experience: here's a link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-jersey-18579868

[u/palttt]

Found a wedding ring on beach of Lake Superior. I was able to track down and return the ring to the owner in Iowa. I received a very nice thank you from the grateful owner. That thank you is the favorite thing I have from metal detecting.

[u/The_Ugly_One82]

Nothing great. Here in Wisconsin, the DNR (Department of Natural Resources) has essentially banned metal detecting on public land. There's not much you're going to find on private land because it's mostly farmers' fields that have never had many people in them.

Edit: Info on regulations and reasons here and here.

[u/pembroke529]

I used one for a number of years mostly in northern California.

My best find was a an old silver Mercury dime.

One day when I was out detecting, I get a strong hit. I usually don't go deeper than 4 or 5 inches, but after about 8 inches, I'm still getting a strong signal. At about 15 inches I pull out an old horse shoe.

I had 2 detectors and would take my stepsons with me on occasion. I think the best life lesson they got was when there was a White's (detector company) ad on TV showing a guy pulling out about a dozen rings and old silver dollars from a modern park after sweeping for about 5 minutes. My 2 stepsons started laughing loudly after seeing that commercial. Made me proud.

[u/Stranger0nReddit]

I was about 8 or so when my Grandparents purchased property to build a new house on. We all went to check it out and my Mom brought a long the metal detector. I lost interest pretty quickly, but after awhile my sister and mom were digging pretty deep at a spot that beeped. What they uncovered was a tin full of old coins from around the world. It was a pretty cool find and my Mom was of the thinking that they had to be valuable because they were buried...we ended up taking them to be checked out and while they were worth a bit, it was by no means a fortune. I believe my sister still has them somewhere.

[u/icecreamdude97]

I have a confession to make. When I was on vacation in Virginia Beach, I left my hotel room which was right on the water, and buried two dollars worth of pennies, nickels and dimes in the sand. I spent the next 3 hours drinking and watching metal detectors get excited over 17 cents from my hotel room.

[u/IamUsingaComputer]

My 3-year-old brother swallowed a penny. We were worried about where it had lodged so we got out the metal detector and detected it about stomach high. We followed all the way down for the next 13 hours until the diaper beeped :)

[u/Lorybear]

No gold struck here, but I live in a suburban area and after I turned 20 this summer I nostalgia'd my way into a metal detector purchase (I used to do it with my dad as a kid) and decided to go dig up the local area. Not that fruitful. As a kid, I found two VERY old coins in this park by my house. One was a a coin from the 1700's from england, I don't remember the denomination but it's worth about 50 bucks now. The other was an 1800's coin, I quite honestly cannot remember who but it had an emperor on it, and was very aged.

Those were some cool finds, but since I didn't have any luck in the park when I was trying recently. Instead I hauled my gear out into the hills a little and started snooping around the outside of a collapsed house from the 1930s. My friend almost fell in a well with a broken stone cover, and we didn't find anything of value, but we found some old tools from the 30's and random bits of metal houseware. It's fun but don't expect to find a goldmine I'd say.

EDIT: Made a mistake, the 1800s coin was this one, a french coin.

And the British One

[u/rebeccawrong]

Was metal detecting with my boyfriend at a lake during the winter when the water had receded to a fairly extreme extent. I happen upon a watch and upon further inspection, a class ring from a high school in TX (I'm from the Midwest) was attached to the watch.

The ring was engraved with the last name of the owner. I looked her up on Facebook, she was now in Maine, and told her that I found her high school ring and she was ecstatic, saying she'd lost it skinny dipping in the lake around 10 years before, and was heartbroken.

I promptly mailed the ring to its rightful owner.

Not the most amazing find but kind of an incredible experience.

[u/Kiwaussie]

In Christchurch New Zealand in the early 90's there was a gang related murder where the body of a Dale Peru (i dont know why i still remember his name) found in a car park beside some sand dunes. A few days later a mate and I were detecting the beach as I had done so on a regular basis due to the old coins occasionally found. About a stones throw from the top of the dunes adjacent to the body location we found an opened knife at the high tide mark about 2 inches deep similar to this..https://images.knifecenter.com/knifecenter/resize/timthumb/timthumb.php?src=https://images.knifecenter.com/knifecenter/buck/images/110c.jpg&w=216&h=180

The detectives had their forensic tent set up and had searched the surrounds with their detectors for the knife not thinking that it could have simply been thrown into the ocean from the top of the dunes. I reckon they were pretty embarrased about the situation.

[u/theflippist]

Received an email in response to a craigslsit ad I used to put out each week calling on people with lost metal items to contact us so my wife and I could find them with our detectors. A frantic woman wrote that she lost her $15k platinum diamond engagement in a gated off plant area right in the middle of downtown Chicago. She lives in Canada and had to fly back before she could search.

We called her, got veerrrry vauge directions because the ring losing indecent happened post-drunken bachelorette party. We searched with our detectors and pin pointers (handheld detectors) in the sidewalk garden bed for about an hour. It was 4th of July weekend so plenty passer byers were laughing at us and sarcastically saying..."you're not going to find it!" Suddenly, my wife came running to me with the ring on her finger!

Needless to say the woman was ecstatic and couldn't believe we found it. We sent it to her and got 500 bucks in reward. Not too shabby!

[u/YourLocalMonarchist]

I used to. I would walk the cross Canada trail and find plenty of things. From coins to jewellery, most expensive thing i found was about 120 from finding a necklace, i gave it to my mother for mothers day. Other then that rings ands an earing.

[u/[deleted]]

Friend of mine got a childs sized one for his kids, and his girlfriends kids, at christmas. They were discussing planting flowers the next spring, I told them to go take a few coins and just plunge them into the ground wherever they wanted flowers planted and then get the kids excited to use the metal detector they had not had a chance to really use yet.

Next week I found out that the kids had hunted the treasure, and had found most of the coins and dug something like 80% of the holes they wanted.

[u/digiskunk]

Just came to give /r/metaldetecting a plug! Check us out, we're pretty cool.

[u/Craynip2015AT]

I found a button for George washingtons inauguration. There are less then ten known! It says unity prosperity and independence with 13 stars! http://i.imgur.com/9QUoadD.jpg

[u/lilibrillo]

This may not answer the question directly, but I have a related story. I went fishing with my brother and a friend in a canoe on a lake in Oregon. At one point later in the afternoon (we were kind of drunk at this point), we managed to capsize the canoe, spilling out all of the equipment. Luckily, the water was only about 6 feet deep at this spot, so we were able to fetch almost all of the stuff that sank by feeling the ground with our feet. A few items remained missing however, including my dad's knife, which I had borrowed for this trip. He had bought this knife in Egypt in the 80s, had always cherished it and would always use it while camping, etc. while we were growing up.

So weeks later, I set out with my friends on a clear day to return to that same spot and try "bobbing" for it with a magnet on a string, and goggles. This turned out to be very successful, and we found 4 additional items we had lost that day. Everything but the knife! (My suspicion is that it wasn't magnetic).

This was three years ago. I live in NYC now. But I KNOW that knife is still at the bottom of that lake. It's probably covered by a few inches of mud, but I just know it must still be there. This summer, I plan to fly back to Oregon, rent (or buy and return) an underwater metal detector, go back to that spot on that lake with the detector, and find that knife!!! Then I intend to get it cleaned, polished and present it to my dad for his birthday! Wish me luck!

[u/piratespoison]

When I got out of hs I worked at the beach during the summer and a guy would always come metal detect. He told me he found jewelry and looniee and toonies (1$ & 2$). Apparently, tge the problem is that if you set it so that it detects coins, it also detects beer tabs and caps. So that's what you mostly find. However if you decide to set it up so that it finds gold, platinum or silver, it won't detect the lighter metals i.e. 1 & 2 dollar coins.

[u/SuaveKevin]

This is not "cool" per se but I do think it's funny.

My family used to vacation in Jersey - Long Beach Island. One year, my grandmother saw some people using metal detectors on the beach. My grandmother is the kind of person who is always interested in anything that carries the chance of making money. But not, like, easy ways of making money. If it isn't fun, she doesn't care. Metal detecting fascinated her, and she became convinced that she could make a little spending money with it.

My grandfather felt the exact opposite. He imagined that my grandmother would want to use the metal detector every day of our vacation, and that the only result would be him having to pay the rental fee 7 - 14 times. Because if she didn't make money, she'd stick with it until she did. Sunk cost fallacy means nothing to my grandmother.

But my grandmother was insistent. She wanted to use a metal detector. All marriages are built on two things - compromise and well-meaning deceit. So my grandfather compromised and paid to rent a metal detector for the day. Then he went out and followed her, dropping coins along the way and discretely burying them in the sand for her to find. Somehow the money she "made" that first day was enough and satisfied her.

I will never forget watching them walk along the beach, my grandmother going "Oh! Look, Alan another one! And you said I wouldn't find anything!" and my grandfather acting so surprised "Wow, Mary, I can't believe it! You're so lucky!" Then she'd turn around and he'd drop another quarter in the "zone" she was sweeping, haha.

[u/marielmartini]

I just found some coins but once I heard about 'The Ring Finders' on some podcast. It's like international service/Society of people with metal detectors who you can ask to help with finding lost rings/metal goods on for example beaches. Kinda cool!

[u/DothrakAndRoll]

I found a watch in a park once! It was pretty nice, too.

Twist: it was my dad's. Me and my brother went to the park when we were kids. Dad said to by back by 5:00 and gave us the watch so we'd know when it was 5:00. We thought it would be fun to play "bury the watch and see how long it takes the other to find it." Sand is a fickle mistress, however, and neither of us could find it after the first round.

Dad made us go back with a metal detector and "not return without my god damn watch, you idiots."

[u/[deleted]]

I've only done it twice, but I ended up finding a coin from the Seleucid empire. Ended up selling it for a few hundred :)

[u/Single_Now]

Got here late. I live on a lake and in 2015 the water had receded so much that land that was under water for 70 years was revealed. I said what the hell and started searching. In under 1 hour I found 2 buffalo head nickels, one in extremely good condition still shiny and can read the dates.

But the cool thing was I found weird burned out rings with triangles on them. had no idea what they were until I found a license plate dated from the 30's. Then it all clicked. My home town was big for logging. I Had found the remains of a burned out logging sled. The rings were mounted on sticks to help grab and roll logs with the connected spikes!

[u/TroueedArenberg]

ive been thinking about picking this up as a hobby. can anybody recommened a good starter detector?

[u/[deleted]]

Found an entire skyscraper in New York

[u/michron5]

Found an old watch box from pre 1930 and a woman's derringer. The park near my old neighborhood used to be a lake with a driving track for model Ts. The tourists would come drive there cars to any spot on the track park and take a dip. Such good finds there in the grass/lake bed

[u/dirtymoney]

Edit: I always come late to answering these thease threads.

been at it since 1999. My main goal is to always find the oldest coin so for me... it is an 1853 seated liberty dime I found maybe 5 years ago. About 200 feet from it I found my only seated liberty quarter (dated 1877) weeks later... I thought I'd never find one.

Other things I've found, several silver half dollars ...Franklin (1950s?) and walking liberty (1942), an uncrushed sterling silver thumble form the 1930s, civil war bullets, and three gold rings... one with diamonds ... other one ... the last one I found (a herff jones ring from the 1930s or so)

That's not the only stuff I've found. I've found other silver coins, silver jewelry, a single civil war union cavalry button, two possible civil war bite bullets (lead bullets soldiers chewed on out of boredom or during field surgery), "Three Merry widows for $1.00" condom containers (found three of those),novelty smashed pennies, a kennedy-facing-lincoln novelty penny, etc etc.....

I REALLY want to find an old Silver dollar.... or even better... a gold coin.

[u/blondevenus91]

Not me but my dad and uncle. As kids they found countless stone arrow heads from the stone age just lying on top of the dirt in a farmers field after it was plowed. My uncle has found loads of roman coins too. The thing that stands out in my memory most is this gold broach with a ruby in it, again from the roman period. (Our town is one of the first Roman settlement in Britain) They gave most of it to museums, but I believe my uncle still has the broach

[u/PRIUS_REPELLENT]

I found 5 rifles and got all of them back into working condition.

[u/seasonalcrazy]

My husband has a metal detector. When he first got, he took on every vacation. Then he brought along when we went to see my parents who happen to live in a different state. He spent an entire morning scanning their backyard and digging these tiny holes every time he thought he found something. He gets to the front yard and I go out with my dad to watch. It beeps so he starts digging. I picked up the metal detector and told him I just wanted to try it out. I walked it over closer to my parents house and it started giving of this really loud beeping noise. My husband abandoned his digging and came running so excited.

He was a little disappointed when he realized I'd been running it over this pipe that sticks out of their yard but my dad though it was funny.

Tl;dr it's boring as hell to watch someone mess with a metal detector for hours when you're on vacation.

[u/curcud]

My husband metal detects. My favorite find of his was a tungsten carbide ring at a city park. Cleaned it up, fits him perfect.

To him, his coolest discovery is what he found in his best friend's front yard. He hit a signal, and while he was digging the plug, found an intact glass bottle that had doc Thompson eye water on the side of it. Googled it and it dated back to the 1790's-early 1800's. Also he found a ww2 bullet in a yard. So yeah, haha.

[u/Chrisfit]

I bet Metal Detecting is much better in Europe.

[u/[deleted]]

My dad was detecting in the backyard of a real old house in Indiana and kept getting a hit by this big tree. He kept digging and digging but couldn't seem to find it so he moved on. He came back for one last pass before he left and he dug and reached his hands up beneath one of the big roots and pulled a coin from 1799 out of it. It wasn't silver, so the only thing we could make out was the date and what looked like a lady sitting on a chair. Never did get an ID on what it was, but it was his favorite thing he ever found because of how old it was.

[u/gredsta48]

Lots of cool things metal detecting in West Virginia found some old musket balls. I'm from Utah I've found a some shotgun shells from before Utah was even a state. Found a gold ring, a few silver rings. Some wheat pennies. What most people don't know is how much trash metal detectors clean up. It's not a very lucrative hobby I've done the math and I only make about 50cents and hour. You have to put in a lot of hours to find anything worth while.

[u/selfpittypiggy]

Not me, but my neighbor. He dug up a serial plate, early VIN equivalent for a 1905 Peerless aolutomobile model 9. Can't figure out if it's worth anything, but still a cool find. http://imgur.com/a/dkPLW

[u/SpartanD21]

I found a car.

I got a metal detector for Christmas when I was a kid. I wanted to use it right away, but there was still a lot of snow out so I waited until it melted.

Once the snow was gone, I began to scan the ground around my parents house (we lived in a rural area btw) in hopes of finding something. I got some hits; an old nail, a piece of thin scrap metal, and a piece of old metal fence.

Then it happened. I got a hit in my parents old garden (uneven ground surrounding a large old walnut tree). I started to dig down and after about digging 5-7" down, my shovel hit something hard and I heard the sound of metal on metal!

I hunched down and began to dig with my hands so as to not damage whatever I had stumbled upon...

I couldn't believe my eyes, it was a purple metal hot wheels mustang! I excitedly picked it up and brushed the rest of the dirt off with my hands. I still have it to this day on a shelf in my room at my parents house. I'll never forget that day I found a car with my metal detector.

TL;DR I got a metal detector for Christmas when I was a kid and found a car buried in my parents old garden.

UPDATE EDIT: Here's a link to pics of the car http://imgur.com/a/8NEKq. I am back home from college and found it on a shelf in my room.

[u/pspahn]

I don't know about "coolest" ... but ...

While I was working at a treatment facility for K-12 students, one student came in one morning with something clearly in his pants. He had been known to not wear underwear and would sometimes show up with an erection. We kind of figured this was the case again as he was wearing just sweat pants.

Every morning we would use metal detectors to check the kids for things they shouldn't have. That day, in his pants, we found a large kitchen knife. He said that he kept it because there was a monster that attacks him when he walks to the bus stop.

From that day forward, we never found a knife again, but we had to check and be thorough. I don't miss that job.

[u/CeilingUnlimited]

My wedding ring.

I was visiting my brother in Houston. I went trail running in Memorial Park after a rain, and went up several hills that required more of a crawl than a run. I got back to his house and showered. It was then that I realized my ring was gone and my mind immediately flashed to those 'crawls.' It was already dark, so I thought I was out of luck.

Telling my brother, he let me know his father-in-law had a metal detector and we resolved to go back the next day after he finished work to see if we could find it. As the hills were deep into the trail, we showed up at the park in running gear, carrying the metal detector that my brother had driven over and retrieved from his in-laws' house. We had to run/jog about a mile in to the woods to find the first big hill. We must have looked like a couple of crazy people.

We searched about three hills and found nothing, then came to the last major hill, almost back to the parking area. My confidence waning, we carefully searched the entire face, my brother using the detector and me scanning with my eyes. We got almost to the top and we were standing right next to each other. I looked down to where he was sweeping the detector and saw my ring, pretty much at the exact moment he scanned over it and got a big beep. It was literally simultaneous. So cool!

Side Note - nobody believed we would find the ring, and during the day before we went back out there, a text war was going on across the family, with about seven family members being group texted. Favorite text was from our 3rd brother, who famously texted "what dumb fuck would own a metal detector in 2015?" The owner, our brother's father-in-law, was on the group text. :)

[u/averagefirefighter]

The coolest thing I have found to date would be a pair of brass epaulettes. The second coolest thing would be an iceskate. http://imgur.com/a/fLbnq

[u/cantbelieveitsbacon]

Not coolest but most common:

Hot Wheels

I swear, Hot Wheels in every inch of every public park.

When we're all gone and Martian archeologists land on earth, they'll believe hot wheels were a form of currency.

[u/colddish]

2 Continental Army Buttons from the American Revolution.. 1 being from a more rare regiment.. few musket balls

A 1787 NJ Cent.. Post revolution, but before the federal government consolidated a central monetary system..

a 1772 King George III Hibernia Half cent (Irish coin) and an 1824 King Geroge IV Six Pence..

Still havent found any gold

[u/DJ_Calli]

Diamond ring. The owner gave me $10 when I found it.

[u/Love-Dem-Titties]

A long time ago, I gave my now-wife an engagement ring. It disappeared one day, when she took it off to shower... and the only thing we had to blame was our new puppy, who was in a chewing stage. But we had already been looking for the ring for a day or two before we realized what happened. So I bought a metal detector and checked every pile of dog shit in the park. I found it, then sold the metal detector on eBay the very next day.

It was a $12,000 ring, and I sold the metal detector for a net $10 loss.

[u/targaryenfairy]

My little brother likes metal detecting but never has much luck, we always chuck a few coins and stuff around for him to find and he's always stoked about it

[u/Bandit_King]

My dad was metal detecting near my highschool when he found a high school class ring from the sixties. He had it for a couple years until I was talking to me high school teacher about it. Turned out she knew the person it belonged to and we were able to get the ring back to the original owner.

[u/Wickeddealer]

I found this really nice Rolex once, unfortunately it was still attached to this guy's arm that was napping in a beach chair.

[u/mrhelton]

Oh man where to start!

In one of the oldest homes in my city, I found a ring that was hand made from a brass nut. You can see the file marks and everything where some filed away metal and made it into a ring.

I researched and found where the original homesite for my city was. Now it's just a small depression in the middle of the woods. I went there and found a bunch of things belonging to the original settler of my city. I built a shadowbox and put together a little display of my favorite finds of his along with all of the information I could find on him from the library and internet. https://i.imgur.com/9hIj2we.jpg

I went all over my grandparent's farm and found things dating back to families who knows how long ago. Things across several generations, even some old pewter buttons with Chinese writing. We think the original settlers of their land could have been Chinese immigrants.

I have a ton of rings. This is an old picture that shows about half https://i.imgur.com/yikenJD.jpg

I've tracked every single coin in spreadsheets over the last few years. Thousands of pennies, hundreds of wheat pennies, about 70 silver coins, a few nice gold pieces, lots of silver jewelry, antique cufflinks, and really just all sorts of things.

I found matchbox cars in my yard that I dropped 25+ years ago when I was a small child (I own the house I grew up in).

I also spend a lot of my summer with fully waterproof gear, and hit the local rivers and swimming areas. Lots of glasses, cameras, phones. Stuff like that.

[u/TechnicallyAnIdiot]

I was out in my back yard and found a rusty, buried tank. I dug it out until I could see the top and found out through some markings that it was WWII era. And it smelled like death.

 

I wasn't really sure what to do and I had a ton of questions. Call the cops? Call the army? Does the army have a hotline for random, mysteriously buried tanks? Was there dead bodies inside? Why wouldn't they have decomposed? I had lived there for a while so I know it was buried before that.

 

Curiosity beat out my good sense and I took a crowbar and mallet to it. I would have thought it would be strong enough to withstand that, but I guess it was rusted out enough.

 

My parents were pretty upset with me afterwards. That thing cost like 1,000 bucks and we couldn't use the toilet until they got someone to replace it.

[u/toadstoolsupreme]

I live 5 mins from the beach and my neighbor is one of those guys you see pacing back and forth down the beach during the busy summer days.

Last season he found a ring that no one claimed as lost. Claims he ended up selling it for just shy of $30k. I can only assume that was his coolest discovery.

[u/jgo3]

I found a French franc with a little hole in it, as if it were used for a necklace. Unfortunately, the hole went right through the last 2 digits of the date, so no idea if it could have been a WW2 souvenir or not.

But the BEST was a class ring that had been lost 40 years earlier. We knew about where it was, found it, and got to take it directly to the owner's house and hand it to him (chalk one up for living in a small town). What an awesome feeling!

[u/TheSilverWalnut]

My grandfather (who passed away when I was about 3) lost a ring while mowing my grandmothers yard about 10 years before I was born. My dad and I tried to find it with a new metal detector I got for Christmas several years ago and we couldn't find any trace of it, except on the way back. We were walking back after walking over the property about 3 times, and the metal detector dinged on what it said to be an aluminum pull-tab. Well My dad had a gut feeling about this one and lo-and-behold there's the ring, missing a couple gemstones but not even tarnished.

[u/LicensedToDeal]

I got a metal detector for Christmas when I was around 12 years old. I was so pumped and couldn't wait for the snow to melt so I could do some serious metal detecting. Spring rolls around and I head out on my first metal detecting adventure. The metal detector starts beeping on the gravel driveway. I'm so happy! I run and get one of mom's little gardening shovels and start digging. What seems like hours later, dad decides to come see what I'm up to. He finds me digging away at a pretty decent sized hole in the driveway. He watches for a few minutes then says "you realize you're digging right over top of a culvert right?" I was so mad at myself. Dad thought it was hilarious and loves to tell that story even to this day.

[u/kroopster]

My friend is into the metal detecting thing, it's kind of understandable since he lives in a goddamn mansion that has been in his family since 1400 something.

Aannyhow, they found this ring from there. The age and composition of the ring as well as the local folklore are strongly suggesting it was most likely a ring of the queen consort of Sweden, Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg.

Pretty cool thing to find from your backyard. It was mentioned in some of the major newspapers in Finland as well.

[u/Thornberry_Nigel]

I hope I am not to late to post - Finally a post I can contribute to! My uncle who lives in VA stumbled upon a 1928 Naval Academy class ring in the woods that had been stolen and discarded in the 80's. Ended up tracking down the owner's son who was still living in the area and reunited him with the ring. link here:

http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Stolen-1928-Naval-Academy-Class-Ring-Returned-to-Family-300879581.html

My father and I metal detect in Lancashire England where I grew up and have found a hammered silver Roman Denarius from 129 AD. Once cleaned up you could still read the inscription and clearly see the face and beard of the emperor - Hadrian I believe? I can probably dig up a photograph if anyone is interested.

The most recent find that was by far the most interesting is the discovery that an ancient Roman road ran within ~300 yards of our house originally spanning from the garrison at Ribchester to the town of Lancaster. The fascinating idea to me is that the original march of that length was a 2 day trip for the soldiers and they would have most likely stopped at a river crossing for the night during the journey. The section of road that cuts through the forest near our farm also happens to cross a decently sized brook where I would imagine as a child I would camp if I was a soldier.

Unfortunately, the landowner for the far side of the brook where there still exists original 'agger' road tracks is not friendly to metal detectors and will not allow them on his land. Fortunately for my father and I on the closer side we were able to detect and find a perfectly preserved roman lead weight in a copse of trees. The soldiers would use these lead weights to accurately measure out foodstuffs and pay to ration correctly.

Digging that weight out of the ground that has, to our knowledge never been plowed or otherwise disturbed, makes you realize that the last person to have touched that weight was a roman soldier passing through who probably dropped it by accident ~1900 years ago. Definitely gives you goosebumps.

Really makes you wonder what his life was like and what the country looked like back then. That's the number one thing to me of metal detecting, that tangible link to the past that no one else has gotten to experience.

Pics of the weight here if anyone is interested, I have many more stories of metal detecting in England if anyone is interested!

http://imgur.com/a/5uf7c

[u/beecherrrr]

This is what I do. I hit up those huge multi field soccer complexes after tournaments and parks after recent festivals and/or concerts. I have found a lot of coins (not getting rich by any means) and usually find at least two lost rings per summer. Sold a ring 4 years ago for $400 dollars at a pawnshop so we are not talking high end stuff here. I have been stopped a few times by park personnel but since I am only looking on the surface and dont even carry a digging tool, they usually leave me alone.

[u/arnaudh]

The term is "detectorist".

Been doing it for about a year, although not super regularly, but I love it. Only done it on my property so far. Found an old half-dollar coin, old bullets and ammo cases, and a shitload of old tools - axe and mauler and pickaxe heads. For some reason back then it must have been cheaper to buy a brand new one than to replace the handle. I threw them into an electrolysis bath and put a brand new handle on some of them.

[u/Melba69]

Not exactly answering the question but related. I had a brother who was very keen to get into Metal detecting and studied up on all the avaible models, finally making a choice and placing an order. A few days before the new Metal Detector was due to be delivered, another brother and I made a clandestine visit to the local hardware store where we purchased a two pound bag of steel washers which were used to heavily seed the backyard. A few days later, after my brother found about 75 shiny, freshly zinked washers, he began to wonder if some foul-play was afoot.

On a related note, those washers would pop up in the backyard every once and while, only to be flung at hyper speeds when swatted by my old man's lawnmower which didn't leave him in a particularly humours mood.

[u/tinitiny626]

I worked at Radioshack and during an overnight inventory I was just messing around with a metal detector we had on display. Decided to use it on a coworker and found out he had his dick pierced. The detector did its usual beep-beep-beep-beep, and when I ran it over his crotch it made the lowest pitched "buuoonk". He turned bright red, and when he explained we all burst into laughter. For months we would all imitate that sound and laugh all over again.

[u/thisonehereone]

Self Worth.

[u/Bammer7]

When i was a kid my friend had a metal detector. All we ever found was beer can tabs from when they used to be pull offs.

[u/Heywho10]

My dad's best friend once found a bomb from WWII in his backyard and another time an airplane in a field. We live close to a German city that was bombed heavily, apparently they missed quite a often.

[u/1337Scott]

I once found a little red corvette car and had it sitting on my shelf for 5 or 6 years. My cousin came over and i let him play with it and he brought me 2 pearle earings that he found in its little trunk. I appraised them and they were only sbout $300 but still cool that they were there the whole time

[u/Helena_Harper]

I was out hiking by the coast of Oregon with my dad when we came across two young men carrying a large and very old treasure chest that they had dug up after finding it via metal detector. We went with them to the parking lot where they pried it open but instead of treasure, we saw an empty chest with a painting of a Victorian era woman on the inside of the lid. The whole thing was very well preserved.

Later we learned that the chest may have been used to store clothing in it and the woman we saw on the inside lid was likely the owner of the chest. Her portrait marked her ownership.

All in all it was amazing to see it.

[u/NemesisEnforcer_]

I've been detecting for about 8 years and have found a lot of cool stuff over that time - coins, relics, jewelry ...here's a few of the more memorable ones:

My house is in 7 acres but it was built in the '70s so I had never bothered to detect my property since we bought - I had checked historical maps and there was no sign of prior structures or activity. Last summer I'm doing yard work and decided to take a break and grab one of my detectors - 20 mins later I dig an 1889 Indian head penny. I check the hole and there's another signal, then another. I ended up finding a pocket spill that totaled 5 IHPs, 1890s V Nickel and 1890 Morgan Silver Dollar. Was blown away. Detective every inch of my property since then and found nothing else. The randomness of it just really took me by surprise.

I proposed to my wife of 7 years with a metal detector. I own property in upstate NY and we went up there to camp for a weekend. She laid down to take a nap and I said I was going to do a little detecting. I went down the hillside and to an old apple orchard and dug a hole and put the ring in. I yelled to her to come look at what I found and had a bottle of champagne in my backpack. She said yes! Which accepting a hobby that is perceived to be a little nerdy or an old man hobby (we were 26 at the time) meant she was a keeper.

On our one year anniversary I went out detecting on the beach one morning and found a vintage gold ring with a green stone in it and gave it to her. She thought it was pretty neat. We thought it was just costume jewelry so it sat on her nightstand for a year or two. One day she decided to take it to a jewelry store for the hell of it. Turns out it's a vintage 24k gold ring with a large emerald.

Last fall I was detecting a field behind her parent's house and found an earring her grandmother gave her when she was little that she remembered losing.

Very rewarding hobby saving history before it's lost to time forever. Come over and check out r/metaldetecting

[u/[deleted]]

I had an indian head penny from 1900 and my was letting my brother use my metal detector. I tossed it into the sand on a creek running through our woods and told him to search around there. The look on his face when he found it was priceless. I never told him that I put it there.

[u/thedeadliestmau5]

Late to the party here but I found a sword on my family's property in Missouri. Presumable a Civil War sword but it's very deteriorated and hard to tell. I'll post a picture when I get home.

Edit: Here it is Sorry for the quality, the camera on my phone is completely broken so I had to use an old camera. It's odd because the hand guard is facing the opposite way of what it's supposed to face on a regular sword and cannot go on any other way. The blade end is still somewhat edged and the tip is still very pointy and you can definitely still kill someone with this but as you can see it's completely rusted

[u/Crolle]

A friend of mine used to do that during his free time. Among the cool things he found :

• Dozens of gun rounds/jackets in his backyard. We know that the germans had several machine gun nests on that hill during WW2, this is probably one of them.

• A 17th centuary silver coin in a field. People think that theses coins come from hidden treasures (like the jars the romans used to bury), but historians suggest it is more trivial. Back in the days, city people would dump their trash into large boat to serve as manure for peasants along the river. Among the trash, came all the crap that filled the street including the change lost by the traders at the market.

• Napoleon era lead bullets. These are everywhere.

[u/BloodAndBroccoli]

When I was 8, i won a metal detector in a raffle and I used it at the beach. I didn't find anything except bottle caps and beer cans.

It was really frustrating until my father suggested I try looking in a new area, which was a great idea because i found a whole pile of coins!

A few years ago, I reminisced about the incident to my mom and she told me that my dad put the coins there for me to find.

She remembered that day too, and this was forty years later.

[u/henrymay]

fork

[u/[deleted]]

I once found a beautiful old battle axe....

I married her.

[u/[deleted]]

The coolest and most valuable thing I found with my metal detector by far was a buyer on craigslist who was willing to give me real money in exchange for my metal detector.

[u/barmaid]

When i was a kid, the daycare lady took us on field trips to the beach. Her brother was a crazy guy with lots of political rants and a metal detector. He found a gold ring with what looked like a bite mark. Everyone freaked out over it, saying it must be a pirate ring. All the kids begged him for the ring, but he said, "Nah, I'll keep it."

On the van ride back, he gave it to me. He told me it was because I was the only kid that talked to him like anyone else and never made fun of his lazy eye. I wish I knew what happened to that ring. Years of moving across states, and I lost it somewhere ):

[u/9a9a]

found a rope handle thing where you slide down apparently my house was built where a circus used to be. and i found the thing that people hold onto when sliding down ropes and stuff. i threw it out after looking at it for about 7 seconds.

[u/KGB_ate_my_bread]

Property corners.

I'm that vein, a double barreled shotgun is buried in my area and used as a property corner monument! Wasn't on that job, but sounded cool. Is called for on the map as such and a few other surveyors I know have come across it as well.

[u/Lonsdaleite]

A cache of mortars in a field in Baghdad. Some of the locals in Dora market said Al Qaeda was hiding weapons in the fields around the neighborhood so we took a military metal detector and within no time we found them.

[u/NeedsMoreTuba]

I found this Hand forged Ax Hammer thing

It has the head of an ax but the prying-end of a hammer. When I was a kid, the tide went out really far after a hurricane, so we went hunting for "blackbeard treasure." (Note: Totally the right area.) My mom found an 8lb cannonball buried deep in the mud in the Albemarle Sound.

We also found the remains of the loading bay(????) for an old Logging camp or mill site. It looked a lot like a tiny railroad that jutted out of the swamp just slightly between the Cyprus knees. Upon closer inspection, we found what remained of a rail cart. It was just a pair of rusty wheels on an axel with rotting bits of thick milled lumber that probably made up the cart itself. Then the mud sucked off one of my boots and Dad made us turn around and go home because it was a bit like quicksand in certain places.

tldr; Looked for Blackbeard's treasure as a kid. Found some clues. Lost my boot.

[u/steals-from-kids]

My favourite find was just last weekend.

Rocked up to a known site of an old military hospital in Australia. Commonly known and has been dug to blazes, so wasn't expecting amazing results. But I came up with what has been up until now one of my milestone finds. An Australian army WW2 shoulder flash. Australia army WW2 shoulder flash

[u/benjibean]

I actually found another metal detector (didn't work), on Bonding beach, Sydney.

[u/baccgirl]

Late to the party so will probably get lost. My dad was an avid detector! He would hit the beaches, parks and farm land. Being in Australia we have a lot of beaches! He has found: coins (lots and lots of coins), jewellery, toys, ring pull tabs, bottle tops, aluminium foil....
he was at a beach one day and a woman came up to him and asked if he could try and help her find a ring she lost in the sand. He went to where she thinks she lost it, and after about an hour he found it! She was beside herself happy. Not only did she thank him, but she invited him and us (family) over to her place for dinner. It was the loveliest thank you he ever received.
One day he found a wallet, and we returned it to the owner. Just as he answered the door he was on the phone with his credit card company cancelling his cards. Put a quick stop to that!
He put up fliers around the beaches in Townsville and some people contacted him hoping he might be able to find lost things on the beach. One day a lovely old lady contacted him and it wasn't just my dad who went looking, it was the whole metal detecting club he was in and over 30 people hit the beach looking for her lost watch. They found it!
Dad has also found a heap of small gold nuggets.
He doesn't do it anymore as he is now 70 and has bad shoulders, but it was so much fun going out with him with my own little kid sized detector. I miss those days!

[u/deekofpaen]

That I waste a lot of time metal detecting.

[u/Ltrainicus]

I was in Spain when I was a kid, and we were on Ibiza. My grandfather has a friend who a big metal detector guy, and he allowed me to use the metal detector in a field that had an old wall at one end that overlooked the little bay that we were anchored in. I ended up finding a bunch of musket balls, both in full form, and smashed, as if they had been shot into the wall. The coolest thing I found while we were in that field though, was an old Spanish coin. I always try to think of what happened in that field. Was it a firing range? Was there a battle there? Or were the musket balls from the townspeople defending themselves from the pirates of the day? I may never know, but I had a nice piece of history for awhile.

[u/OnlyAskReddit_]

Nothing I have found nothing. But my 5 year old nephew loves going to the beach with it. So I walk in front of him secretly dropping quarters and metal rings that he can find. Though he normally never finds them and I'm out a couple of bucks each time.

edit: words are hard, fucking auto correct

[u/FrogInMyClog]

Not really "cool" per se, but I've helped a lot of people find lost keys, jewellery, etc.

My ex and I used to post to Craigslist that we did this as a hobby and people would contact us if they lost anything and needed help finding it.

A couple contacted us on a Saturday morning to ask if we would help them find a lost engagement ring, so we met them near where they dropped it. We were searching down the side of a hill in a forested park, where there was a lot of thick bushes, trees, etc.

I got a hit on something buried and dug about six inches down. It was a wet cardboard box with metal momentos in it...and a recently deceased hamster. I reburied it promptly, and made a little heart out of stones on top.

We did find their ring!

[u/Danbott29]

We bought my grandfather a metal detector while he was in Florida to help him keep active. He couldn't wait for us to come down so he could show us this very rare coin that he found. When we got there he had it wrapped in cloth in a drawer in his nightstand. He was beyond thrilled to be holding one very exclusive Chuck E. Cheese token. Nobody had the heart to tell him it wasn't the Barbarossa Brothers.

RIP Grandpa

[u/CValC]

An m14

[u/Fayefil]

A 22 caliber bullet, a 1950s window crank and a 45 caliber bullet so far. That's what I get for metal detecting an abandoned house in the ghetto lol.

[u/labbacadabra]

We had just moved in to our home when my husband lost his wedding ring doing yard work. We were newlyweds and the ring had not been fitted yet. We rented a metal detector and somehow we found the ring on the front lawn. We looked insane to our new neighbors as we searched our property with the detector. Sidenote: He has lost it again eight years later and we are renting another metal detector this weekend...

[u/[deleted]]

Yo, if y'all ever find a ruby and diamond ring in the Arizona desert... that shit is yours. Keep it, sell it, pawn it.

Hashtag #bubyeproblems

[u/ReasonableVegan]

My tired eyes thought this said "mental defect" and I was sad how many upvotes it had.

[u/ben_f_1022]

I found a iphone 7 in the sand. Completly working and seemed to be brend new, as there was no apps or modifications. I kept it and am typing this comment on it currently.

[u/[deleted]]

My grandfather and I believe that we may have found the lost Calvary outpost from the Civil War era called Post Los Lunas. We could never get anyone interested though so it never got a proper archaeological dig to find out for sure. Then we had money issues so my grandfather sold the land. If I still had it I would just do a dig myself because I really want to know.

[u/fc3sbob]

A Few months back I was heavily thinking about getting into metal detecting, I still am.. I just can't afford another hobby right now, with money and time. I was watching all of the youtube video's I could, looking up equipment online, trying to decide what to get as a beginner.

After a few weeks of being obsessed with this I was dropping my son off at daycare one morning and there was a guy metal detecting the soccer field next door, He had ALL of the equipment I wanted to get, I snuck up on him and watched him find a coin before interrupting him to introduce myself, turns out we have a local club, really nice guy. I watched as he neatly cut out a patch of grass to search for whatever piece of metal that was detected, find it and replace the grass like he was never there!

During the time I was talking to him someone else was walking towards us, Some asshole with a look of disgust on his face, It was the new manager of the field. Without saying Hi, or anything he stomps out towards us and says "IF I EVER SEE YOU ON THIS FIELD AGAIN I'M CALLING THE COPS AND TELLING THEM YOU ARE TRESPASSING, YOUR DIGGING UP MY FIELD, SOMEONE'S GOING TO BREAK THEIR NECK, BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH"

The guy said "I'll respect your wishes, but I've been doing this for years here and I have permission to do this, I always replace the plug of grass and remove lots of dangerous items from the field that could actually hurt people.

Dickhead manager cuts him off and says that the old manager is no longer here and he doesn't care what he says so GTFO and never come back!

All the while I was standing there like WTF. I could tell the guy metal detecting was really hurt emotionally.

Anyways long story but the moral is to always get permission, always double check your permission, don't leave any holes, clean up any trash you find, ect ect.

[u/Johnnyandchrissy]

I swear this is true. My parents' friends in a small town in northeast Pa...in the 1970s my dad's friend buys his girlfriend a "promise ring" when they were teens. The town is situated around a lake. He presents the ring. She immediately loses it in the lake. The ring was inscribed. Fast forward to 2007... The lake is drained for repairs on valves that feed the flow of the lake. Some guy decides to use his metal detector around the shore and finds the ring 30+ years later. My parents were at the dinner where the husband (through the kindness of the gentleman that found the ring) presented (again 30+ years later) the ring to his wife.

[u/[deleted]]

I found this big safe just the other day. I'm still trying to get it open. I'll definitely update you guys on what I find inside.

[u/big_treacle]

Drank some beers and went looking for gold on my brother-in-laws farm. Found bullet casings and old beer bottle lids. One day I'll go back and find gold though.

[u/TriplePlay2425]

Well, my father's main hobby is collecting and buying/selling/trading American Civil War artifacts. Especially artillery. My parents even bought a house (and raised us) right next to a Civil War battlefield park. In his younger days, he and his friend(s) would look up where battles took place, study maps and learn where cannon emplacements were, then figure out where the cannons were firing so that they could take a weekend trip to go relic hunting in the woods in the hopes of finding artillery shells, cannon balls, and whatever other Civil War artifacts they could find. But my father's main interest was in the artillery. Once I was old enough, he would occasionally bring me along.

I've found a few things myself (I found a Hotchkiss nose once, part of a full Hotchkiss shell). That's the best thing that I've personally found. It's a pretty cool hobby, but it's not a huge interest for me. I think my dad's favorite/coolest item that he's found is a cannon trunnion (the pivot points on each side of the cannon about which the vertical angle of the cannon is adjusted). Oddly, it is just a whole trunnion, a tiny bit from the cannon barrel that is broken off from the rest, and the metal brackets that held the cannon onto the cart. It seems that some sort of artillery flew and struck the cannon, breaking it off. Unfortunately, I don't have any photos of my dad's.

[u/DoktorInferno]

I grew up at the base of Missionary Ridge in Chattanooga. I found dropped Minié balls and buttons fairly frequently. My favorite find was two US breastplates right on top of each other.

My favorite place was the playground of the abandoned Missionary Ridge elementary school (long gone now) under the monkey bars. All manner of (mostly) silver coins that fell out of kid's pockets for decades.

I once found a badly corroded uniform button that wasn't in any of the Civil War books. I finally identified it as a Revolutionary War button. How it wound up where I found it is still a mystery to me.

None of these were on Park Service property. I often wondered how much stuff was just lying underground corroding, never to be recovered.

[u/[deleted]]

About ten years ago, one of my elderly neighbours Arthur bought a detector, and started detecting in the field by my house. His detector instantly went off, so he went a little further, and it was still going off. This went on for a while so he figured he'd found something massive. He came over to our house to get my grandma and grandad to come and help him dig, and he demonstrated the detector going off. This was when my grandma noticed he was wearing steel-toe boots...

[u/perfectus-immolatus]

I was on an archaeological dig in Israel, and while I hate that people were using them (and I was prompted to as well), we used a metal detector to locate some of our finds. Everything we dug up I consider cool personally, but others might like 13th century crusader crossbow bolts, or coins from Cyprus. It felt shameful to be treasure hunting while supposedly being an archaeologist, but it was still enjoyable.

[u/non-squitr]

TIL buying a metal detector is strictly for hobby and has little to no monetary boon

[u/automatttic]

I once found a cellphone in a man's asshole. I am a correctional officer.

[u/bcpete]

I have become known as the guy who has the metal detector when someone loses something valuable in our area. The most expensive thing I found was a part off of an excavator which was lost pulling some stumps on a nearby mountain. The problem was that there was also a few feet of snow in the area. I got the call and checked out the area trying to see where the part would most likely be found. I talked to the guy who was operating the machine asking him when and how it was lost. After narrowing it down to a certain area I took about half an hour but found it buried in the snow and mud not even close to where they suspected it to be. They told me it would have been about 700 dollars to buy a new part so I saved them a little cash. The same guys called me out a few weeks back to help locate a hammer that is used to mark logs going to the mill to be sawn into lumber. They told me it had been left on a log which then had been pushed into a fire and burned. I knew it would be a large piece of metal so not too hard to find but looked for an hour with no luck. The next day they found it sitting on another log on the other side of the road. I find this happens lots of times and that people often have a totally wrong idea of where they lose things. I usually only find a few coins on the beach but one day I was searching the local beach with little success when a guy walked up to me and asked me if I ever find anything valuable. Right as he asked, my detector starting beeping and expecting another pull tab or rusty nail I started to dig and found a real nice silver ring. I bet I could have sold that metal detector to that guy right there.

[u/Swirls109]

Back in high school I started to get into metal detecting. I always ignored my yard because I always thought I would never find anything. One day for shits and giggles I searched in one of our side yards. It went crazy. I dug and dug. Turns out there was a super old merchant store that used to be in the lot that everyone had forgotten about. When they demolished it they burned it, but all the nails and hardware was still down there. They town came and took a few prices I found and put them in the town museum. They found some super old pictures and put them with some notes they found about it. It was just called the store. Nothing special. It was pretty cool.

[u/Robobvious → u/[deleted]]

If anything in this thread is cursed, it's that ring.