Littered with Roman coins in a field near York changed my mind on metal detecting

I always thought metal detecting was just a hobby for people looking for old junk, but after walking through a farmer's field near York and seeing a group pull up 47 Roman coins in two hours, I totally flipped my view. The way they mapped each find with GPS and pointed out pottery fragments in the soil made me realize how much data gets lost without their help. Has anyone else had a similar experience watching detectors work on a site?

2 comments

2 Comments

palmer.zara15d ago

Mapping each find with GPS" is close, but it's actually more accurate to say they log the GPS coordinates on a handheld device, not manually map them. It's a small thing, but it makes a big difference in how fast they can work. Still, you're right that it's a lot more serious than just digging up junk.

pat_park14d ago

Ha, "just digging up junk" - that's basically my entire metal detecting career right there. I found a rusted bottle cap last weekend and marked it with a little flag like I was Indiana Jones or something. But yeah, the GPS logging thing is way better than my system of "I think I found it somewhere near that big tree." I mean, it's just another way for the pros to make me look like a total amateur, which, to be fair, isn't that hard.