Taste the metal

About a month and a bit ago I started watching videos of people metal detecting on Youtube. It looked so fun that in a fit of wild optimism I burned up some of my savings and bought a Garrett Ace 250 and a Garrett Pin pointer. After shopping around it was clear that ordering one domestically was bad idea as the local distributor seems to be a con man. Screw him. I got mine from the States. Detector, Pin pointer and shipping from the US was less than what the detector alone would have cost from the local.

After some shenanigans with USPS, they sent my package all the way to Canada, I finally got my hands on my new toy. I had to wait a few days till I had a day off to play with it properly. That day was today, so I woke at the crack of dawn, went back to sleep and got up at the more reasonable hour of 0800. My plan had been to head down really early before the sun was up to avoid the awkward stares that you get when wandering the beach digging small holes.

I spent a couple of hours searching Bathers Beach in Perth and found plenty of crappy aluminium junk and a couple of coins.

Sweet sweet treasure

An aussie 5c piece and a Malaysian 20 sen piece. The sen is hard to see as it's fairly corroded. They are made of Cupronickel which is supposed to be highly resistant to erosion in sea water. I guess that myth is busted.

This is what they are supposed to look like

While the whole adventure was definitely not profitable, it was a lot of fun. I think next time I will actually drag myself out of bed early and head up to some of the wealthier beaches and see what I can find. I'm hoping for tonnes of gold but will be happy with a few coins. The only thing I have to sort out now is all the district council red tape and hoop jumping to figure out whether I am a horrible criminal for wanting to do a bit of detecting on the beach. As with all government and corporate bodies a straight answer is definitely not on the cards. As the old saying goes "None of us is a dumb as all of us".