Thinking about my first blog is detecting a passion or an obsession; well for me I must admit it’s more likely to be an obsession. Funny thing is since the vast majority of my friends and colleagues are detectorists I rarely encounter the “What in all weathers traipsing across fields?” type of question.
Well for me and I suppose the vast majority of like-minded detectorists it’s a mixture of what’s that next signal going to be... the anticipation, the feeling and knowing in some cases that you are on a superb site and the potential to make good finds is good.
Hammered gold and silver coins
I also love meeting new detectorists and especially just appreciating the wildlife and landscape around me when I’m out metal detecting. Now the landscape there's a thing… trying to interpret it and go back 2,000 or so years can be hard, but experience and taking time can unlock sometimes very obvious clues. I enjoy being an amateur detective and looking for clues that may yield fascinating finds. The days of finding little may seem tedious but I’m sure they fuel the thrill additionally when you make that fantastic find, that find which indeed certainly compensates for all those “thin days”.
Roman brooches, medi seal matrix and brooch along with Anglo Scandinavian scabbard chape
Many of us are fishermen too, or ex-fishermen and I guess this thrill of always wanting to catch or find a big interesting fish or find simply goes hand in hand. Many of the qualities to metal detecting are akin to fishing, the connections between a quest to catch that 60 year old 40lb Pike under the bridge, or to find a Denarius of a certain Roman Emperor are easy to link.
A selection of Roman Denarii
Another prime factor to detecting is simply the honour and privilege of personally finding coins and artefacts, being the first person to handle them since loss. Detecting is a brilliant hobby, just stand back and think, when that Roman cast that 4.5mm Minimissimi onto the land around a temple what on earth are the statistical odds that someone will find that coin 1,700 years later. It seems fantastic, almost too great to imagine, but we detectorists accompanied by our chosen machines achieve such statistical impossibilities almost every day.
Bronze Silver and Gold coins - A Celtic "Hat-Trick"
The other essential ingredient is always to have passion and belief in the machine that you are using... it’s essential to believe the detectors abilities and magnify them with positive thinking. For me and many colleagues such belief and positive outlook can only be achieved by using Minelab products… and this belief and positive outlook has certainly produced some fascinating and stunning finds for us over the years. The photographs show artefacts and coins all found by myself in the last six years using Minelab products… just a tiny representation of many finds all over the World for which Minelab deserve the highest accolades possible for being involved with their rescue and conservation.
Julian Evan-Hart
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