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From scuba diving to treasure hunting, the need for adventure could be part of Discovery Daisy’s DNA. When a friend introduced Daisy to metal detecting, a new passion was born. She spoke with Tyler Kern about her love of metal detecting.
While Daisy's involvement with metal detecting only began in 2020, her love of scuba diving started in 2016. Now, she combines the two activities. "I use a smaller, compact detector when I'm underwater, whereas I use the Garrett AT Pro when detecting on land most of the time," Daisy said.
There is a strong metal detecting community, and Daisy said the group she has met does many things together. She looks forward to meeting other female metal detectors, and she hopes her YouTube page will encourage people of all ages to catch the bug for detecting and treasure hunting. She even conducted a course for kindergarteners to spark interest.
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Host Tyler Kern welcomed Gary Penta to the podcast “Discover the Truth,” where the pair discussed Penta’s history with metal detecting. Penta started his pastime as a metal detector after retiring from the Air Force.
“When I came back, I wanted a hobby,” said Penta. He caught a television program highlighting the activity and thought, “Who are these guys?” Not long afterwards he bought his own equipment and started hunting in Texas, where he was living at the time. Penta and his wife, also a veteran, now reside in Florida.
Penta is a member of the Ring Finders Club. “Ring Finders is a pretty interesting organization,” explained Penta. After signing up, members are given locations and sent out to look out for items, almost always rings. Penta is Scooba diver, and he has discovered his fair share of rings, as well as items like iPhones.
For his day job, his diving skills take center stage. As a treasure salvage diver, Penta works for a search and salvage business. “It has to do with the 1750 fleet, where the Spanish ships washed ashore on the east coast of Florida. 11 or 12 ships broke up, give or take, and millions upon millions of gold coins, silver coins… basically emptied into the shore… so here it is, hundreds of years later and we’re still looking for this stuff.”
Penta also treasure hunts on Florida’s west coast, where he looks for fossils. “We go on these boats, and we dive, and it sounds crazy, but we can actually find 10,000-year-old megalodon teeth just sitting on the ocean floor.”
In his spare time, he makes miniature models and complete dioramas, which he started several years ago as a form of therapy after losing his son in Afghanistan. “I started with miniature metal detectors,” of course. His work can be found at mydetecting.com, as well as his Facebook page: Gary Penta. He showcased several examples on the podcast.
Penta also had tips for aspiring metal detectors. “The best advice I can give for someone is find a hunting buddy or better yet find a club, join a club. Get yourself a machine, learn your machine, you gotta know what this machine sounds like, you gotta do testing.”
“When you swing your detector, keep your coil to the ground.” When you use an upswing, he explained. the coil should be level to the ground. “Low and slow.”
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As kids we dream about combing a beach and finding buried treasure with a metal detector, but married couple Heather and Dustin Allensworth are proving that that metal detection isn’t just kid stuff on this week’s Discover the Truth with Tyler Kern.
Dustin started in 2018 at a hunt in Oklahoma. He says he only did “okay,” but he was able to win the gold coin at the event. “I got super excited about that,” said Dustin, “and we went to check it again the next day… and I haven’t really slowed down a lot since.”
Heather thought it seemed like a “cool” and “fun” hobby for Dustin at first. “When he started bringing home the things that I couldn’t have because they were like his little trophies,” she explains, “I said ‘no, no, no, I need in this right now.’”
Through water hunting metal detection they have been able to find a treasure trove of interesting items, including all kinds of jewelry. On the episode, Dustin shows off 14k rings, embedded with sapphires, rubies and diamonds. He also has found things like a pair of false teeth, which had the added bonus of a gold cap. Heather’s favorite find is a 21k plain gold ring band, which is the highest k the couple has yet to find.
Heather explains that being in Oklahoma, which she says is a “fairly young state,” there are only so many places they are allowed to go hunting for land detections, so they prefer to spend days in the water.
Their children are also getting in on the act. Heather says their kids are beginning to enjoy treasure hunting with their parents. “It gets a lot of people together,” she explains, “They make friends, and it gives them a little bit of a quick challenge.”
They have both recovered items during their adventures that people had lost, and they say the real joy in the process has been returning those items to people who thought they were gone forever. “It gives you that… warm fuzzy feeling that you’re doing something good,” says Heather.
Dustin even found a woman’s class ring in a swimming hole. Her first question when he returned it, “How did you get it so clean?”
Heather and Dustin also explain the items you need to properly hunt, including gloves, solid shoes and fishing hooks, along with making sure you have snacks and sustenance and pay attention and listen to the devices you use to hunt.
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Kurt Franz of the Hoover Boys joined Discover the Truth to talk about the formation of the group and how he found his way into metal detecting.
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On this episode of Discover the Truth from Garrett Metal Detectors, D.J. Dowling, better known as the “Red Beard Relic Hunter,” joined host Tyler Kern to explore his nearly two-decade career in metal detecting.
“The way it started is, when I was young, I was always obsessed with pirates,” Dowling said. “The treasure that they might have buried … I was at a park one day, and I saw a guy with something that looked like a UFO. It was like a spaceship. I’d never seen anything like it. It was actually an old Garrett metal detector.”
The man told Dowling it found treasure, then promptly found a diamond ring buried in the sand. Needless to say, Dowling was hooked.
Kern and Dowling dove into the “Red Beard Relic Hunter’s” passion for connecting people with their own past and family through finding objects thought to be lost, his process for researching spots and hunting them when he heads out, and his most valuable find – a one-of-a-kind silver token appraised at anywhere from $1,700 over $2,000.
“Everything I find, to me, is priceless,” he said. “I could never put a price on putting something back in someone’s hands.”
You can check out Dowling’s YouTube channel here. -
It all started during a simple game of hide and seek. Digger Dawn, metal detector expert and YouTuber, was tasked with waiting for her friends to hide so she could seek. While waiting, she discovered something that would ignite a lifelong passion. “As I was counting, I was sticking my foot into the mud and was on a building site at the time. So the ground has been dug up. And as I was digging the foot in the ground, I saw a little bit of glint of gold come out of the ground and I pulled it out,” Dawn said. It was a coin from 1780. And it was a George the Third gold spade guinea.
She didn’t know what she’d uncovered at the time, but according to Dawn, “It just set me off, it set my imagination off...I always used to look at things and wonder what was that? I didn't know anybody to, you know, go ask about metal detecting or I didn't even know where there was any metal detecting shops or anything in those days,” Dawn said.
Today, Dawn hosts a YouTube channel that provides the resources she didn’t have access to as a child. She originally started her channel as a way to record and save her memories of her time spent metal detecting, “I didn't really think anybody looked at YouTube, I thought you have to have some sort of special knowledge,” Dawn explained. Fast forward and the YouTube channel she started for her only her own enjoyment, began to pick up steam. “I was absolutely shocked that people started watching it. You know I really can't believe it,” Dawn noted.
Dawn loves sharing her experiences with other passionate metal detectors, “It fills me with a lot of joy actually, because I get such lovely comments off people and emails telling me you know, how they've been down and have cheered them up, or how I’ve helped them learn. Or all the tips that I've tried to share and things in the language that they can understand, because I try to keep things simple and yeah, I just I love my YouTube channel to be honest with you,” Dawn said.
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On this episode of Discover the Truth by Garrett Metal Detectors, Warren McGrath of NQ Explorers joined host Tyler Kern to explore his own history with the hobby and professional that has enraptured so many over the decades.
McGrath’s particular interest in metal detecting was spurred on by a desire to understand the history of Australia from the late 18th century all the way to our modern society.
“Just like in the U.S., the Australian inland is scattered with old ghost towns and silver and gold mines and copper mines and various ‘failed ventures,’ if you like,” he said. “You can unearth the history and find those very personal items that our very hardy pioneers left behind.”
There is also a plethora of World War II relics in the country, which have special meaning to McGrath and his family, which has a long military history.
Overall, though, McGrath shares the passion of many fellow detectors – it’s just one big treasure hunt.
“It’s like a small child who’s finding treasure in a sand pit,” he said. “It’s just the thrill of discovery, whether it’s gold or historic relics. You can be spending hours in the bush, and you’re hot and tired and thirsty, and, all of the sudden, your day turns around because, out of the ground, comes this incredible find.” -
You know the old saying, the couple that metal detects together, stays together. Alright, maybe no one has ever said that, but it’s no secret that many happy couples enjoy sharing hobbies. 10 years ago when Adventure Archaeology and his wife got married, she became enamored with a television program about metal detecting. She was thrilled when her husband informed her they could start metal detecting together. “I said, well, you know, we could do that, we could go out and hunt for old coins and rings and jewelry, all that kind of fun stuff,” he said.
As it turns out, metal detecting runs in the family, “Truthfully, I'm a second generation treasure hunter. So my dad's been metal detecting and model digging since the early 1980s. And he actually still has his original 1982 Garrett machine that he swears by,” he said. The newlyweds borrowed one of his dad's machines and took it out, “She found her first set of coins. And from there she was hooked,” he explained.
When asked what he loves to share with others about metal detecting, Adventure Archaeology said, the thrill of the hunt is one of the best parts. “Every time you go out, whether you're hunting for cloud coins in a park or you're out in an old abandoned colonial site or a civil war battlefield, you never know what you're gonna find. But every time one thing is guaranteed. You're gonna have a blast while you're doing it,” he said. -
On this episode of Discover the Truth from Garrett Metal Detectors, D.J. Dowling, better known as the “Red Beard Relic Hunter,” joined host Tyler Kern to explore his nearly two-decade career in metal detecting.
“The way it started is, when I was young, I was always obsessed with pirates,” Dowling said. “The treasure that they might have buried … I was at a park one day, and I saw a guy with something that looked like a UFO. It was like a spaceship. I’d never seen anything like it. It was actually an old Garrett metal detector.”
The man told Dowling it found treasure, then promptly found a diamond ring buried in the sand. Needless to say, Dowling was hooked.
Kern and Dowling dove into the “Red Beard Relic Hunter’s” passion for connecting people with their own past and family through finding objects thought to be lost, his process for researching spots and hunting them when he heads out, and his most valuable find – a one-of-a-kind silver token appraised at anywhere from $1,700 over $2,000.
“Everything I find, to me, is priceless,” he said. “I could never put a price on putting something back in someone’s hands.”
You can check out Dowling’s YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbHAPn_MEbVUai_brILp8YQ -
Before working for Garrett Metal Detectors, Miguel Ardito did not realize that people metal detected as a hobby. Miguel is a jack of all trades at Garrett Metal Detectors - he’s a graphic designer, photographer and videographer for the company. However, he now understands why metal detecting is such a tight-knit community.
Miguel said that working in the marketing department, he learned that, for some, it is a way of life.
Miguel joined host Tyler Kern to talk about his experiences working in the position and how it introduced him to the hobby that's now formed into a passion. He said that the first time he took home a Garrett metal detector, he went to a park and found two silver rings.
After this experience, he was instantly hooked.
Talking about his experience in the position, Miguel said that he was fortunate enough to travel to Australia for two weeks with NatGeo’s “Diggers” while they were filming a new TV series.
He said that the job and the hobby have created connections and friends for him around the world. The two briefly talked about the other metal detectors that Garrett makes and the purpose they serve for security in venues, schools and other public spaces. Miguel also gave some tips for beginners in the metal detecting hobby.
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Stories about hidden caches of money and valuables from the western settlers and easterners riding the rails float around Montana for young men and women like George Wyant.
These stories motivated Wyant to start poking around old cabins and structures in his home state looking for treasures. He said it’s always been in his blood to look for treasure.
Now, "King George," as they call him, is a reality TV star and expert treasure hunter.
“I was always the best at finding silver dollars,” Wyant told Daniel Litwin on an episode of Discover the Truth. “My buddies started saying I was the king of silver – that’s how the nickname started.”
Wyant is a star of the National Geographic reality television show, "Diggers." He and his partner, Tim Saylor, have been looking for treasure together for more than 10 years.
“When we first started, we decided to finally get a metal detector,” Wyant said. “He told me he was getting a $1,000 Garrett Metal Detector. Well, I couldn’t let him get a better machine than me, so I got one, too.”
The show ran from January 1, 2013 to October 19, 2019. Wyant said being on the show was hard, and he was adamant that neither he nor Tim would ever fake a find by planting something in the ground ahead of time.
Despite being arguably one of the best treasure hunters on the planet, Wyant did have some advice for beginners.
“I would try to find an old house or playground, some place that doesn’t have a lot of other stuff like trash and debris,” he said. “That, and trust your machine. You’re going to have to dig a lot of holes, but after a while, you’re going to be able to pick out the treasure among all the trash.”
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It's tempting to say Emily Copeland is not like other 8-year-olds, but the truth is she's a curious, inquisitive little girl like any other.
She just has the right tools to indulge her curiosity.
On this episode of Discover the Truth by Garrett Metal Detectors, host Shelby Skrhak sat down with young metal detectorist Emily Copeland to discuss how she got into detecting and how she's encouraging others to try out the sport.
Emily began metal detecting with her dad, Shannon Copeland, when she was 4 years old.
"My dad said, 'Here try this,'" Copeland said. While her dad held the top of the metal detector and she held the bottom, she made her first discovery.
"I swung it and found my first pull tab. I didn't really care if it was trash or not. I was so excited, I felt my face was going to blow up," she said.
She began documenting her finds on social media and her own YouTube channel, Little Dirt Diggers, where she's posted 150 videos that have more than 25,000 views, and she's garnered more than 600 subscribers, young and old.
Copeland takes her Garrett AT Pro everywhere, from her parents' and grandparents' rural properties to historic Civil War sites and the beach in Florida. She was hunting a Civil War encampment in the woods near Adairsville, Georgia when she found a U.S. box plate, or soldier belt buckle.
Another time, she found something more personal than she could have imagined -- a brass, hammered bracelet belonging to her great great great grandmother and engraved with her initials.
The beach was less fruitful for her, but she takes disappointment in stride.
"It's not that frustrating to me, just a little tiny bit," Copeland said. She encourages newcomers to the sport to stick with it and have fun, whether you find anything or not.
"You have to find the trash to find the good stuff," Copeland said. "That's what I always say."
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The name Michele Maher probably doesn't ring a bell, but metal detector enthusiasts would know her better by the nickname "Gypsy" she uses on her YouTube channel Zero Discrimination and the podcast All Metal Mode. The clever plays on words are a nod to her love for metal detecting, which led her to open a metal detector store and record videos and podcasts to help other detectorists get better results with their equipment.
On this episode of Discover the Truth, a Garrett Metal Detectors podcast, host Shelby Skrhak sits down with Gypsy, a Texas metal detectorist who'll share her adventures and recommendations for shallow-water detecting and other terrains.
Before Gypsy began metal detecting about 20 years ago, she co-owned a resale shop called Eclectic Gypsies, which stocked her finds from estate sales, thrift stores and auctions.
"Things that I considered treasures," Gypsy said.
Nowadays, she treasure-hunts in forests, beaches, creeks, mountains and rivers, discovering relics from our past and history along with modern coins and jewelry. With the new technology in metal detectors, it's possible to submerge detectors up to 10 feet deep in water for shallow-water detecting, but different detectors work better for different terrains.
"When I started, I bought the first one I'd ever seen at Radio Shack, but I bought a metal detector that doesn't work very well on the beach, and I'd just moved to a beach town," Gypsy said. "There are certain things you need to know about detectors, whether it'll work with the salt mineralization, if it's waterproof, or if it's submersible. All these questions."
By trial and error, Gypsy learned which metal detectors work best for the various types of terrain she's found in Texas.
"There are different machines that work for different climates and different areas," Gypsy said.
For example, she recommends the Garrett Sea Hunter Mark II, a pulse induction detector that works differently than other low-frequency land machines.
Listen as Gypsy offers suggestions for specific Garrett detectors for different terrains.
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Maybe Carlotta Brandenburg is a lucky charm for fellow treasure hunters who seem to find one particular kind of relic when she's around.
On this episode of Discover the Truth, a Garrett Metal Detectors podcast, host Shelby Skrhak sits down with the Arizona detectorist to discuss the treasures she's found and what others, including her husband, have a knack for finding.
Brandenburg began metal detecting about 20 years ago when she was gold panning in the rivers near her California home. In her gold panning club, a small number of prospectors used metal detectors to find small deposits of gold. One particular detectorist was scanning the grassy lawn at a convention center meetup when he found something remarkable.
"People who brought their metal detectors were finding pennies here or a coin there, and he pops up a diamond ring about six inches down," Brandenburg said. "That was it, and I thought 'Oh, I have to do this.'"
Brandenburg is married to Tim “The Ringmaster” Saylor, co-host of National Geographic’s Diggers. His nickname comes from his knack for finding rings, especially his grand prize - a 22k, solid gold mourning ring dated 1744 with an amethyst stone.
Of course, Brandenburg and fellow metal detectorists know that not every hunt ends up with treasure.
"It can be frustrating when everyone's seemingly popping stuff out of the ground and you feel like you can't find anything," she said. "I know I didn't find much to start off, but it's more about just getting out in the outdoors trying to find something."
In addition to gold prospecting, Brandenburg goes dump hunting, where she detects and sifts through historic trash dump sites for old relics and coins.
"It's like being an archaeologist," she said. "You're going through these layers of the dump and see these colors of glass that help you date the area."
On one trip, a young lady came to the dump with a bucket to find marbles.
"She didn't have any digging tools but was just moving the dirt around with her hands when, sure enough, she found a diamond ring," Brandenburg said.
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You can usually spot Jocelyn Elizabeth a mile away. On a field of dozens of hobbyists using Garrett metal detectors, she's typically the only young woman on the field with some radical shade of color in her hair. Elizabeth, the founder of Relic Recoverist, a popular YouTube channel about her relic-hunting adventures with her metal detector, is our guest today on Discover the Truth by Garrett Metal Detectors.
After Elizabeth bought her first metal detector, she learned like many do, just trying out the features by trial and error. But the true catalyst to buying her first Garrett is a story she doesn't share very often.
"The reason I bought my first metal detector is actually kind of embarrassing," Elizabeth said. "I was out hunting for old bottles in the woods and I let my daughter play with my car keys, which is never a good idea. Of course, it was fall and all the leaves were on the ground, so when I looked down and saw my keys were gone."
She put out a plea to her friends and family on social media looking for someone with a metal detector to help.
"A woman came out to help and as I was watching her use it, it got my wheels turning," she said.
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On each episode of National Geographic's Diggers, metal detector hobbyists Tim “The Ringmaster” Saylor and his friend “King George” Wyant traverse the United States in search of buried treasure. But treasure means different things to different people, says Saylor, who sat down with host Sean Heath for this episode of Discover the Truth by Garrett Metal Detectors.
"I'm one of the very few lucky ones that make a living off this, but I don't make a living off the things I find," he said. "I would be doing this whether or not I was on television because I do it for the love of it. This is about the thrill of the hunt and the sport of hunting."
But learning a sport takes time, Saylor advised.
"Don't be intimidated. Do what you want and you'll get alot out of the sport," he said.
While Garrett has a range of products that vary from nearly "plug and play" models that make it easy for novices to get started in the sport, veteran detectors find more as they become more acquainted with the features and technology.
"We know our machines forwards and backwards. We can sense what's going on just by what we're hearing," Saylor said. "But there's so much garbage in the ground that you have to learn how to interpret each little tweak to know what's bad, what's good, and what's iffy."
Among Saylor's favorite finds are an 22k solid gold mourning ring dated 1744 with an amethyst stone (the "greatest ring I've ever found in my life", according to him).
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Imagine the world is one giant treasure hunt. That's how our guest today Garrett Marketing Director Steve Moore on the new Discover the Truth podcast with Garrett Metal Detectors feels when he goes out into the field. On this episode host Chris Reeves asked Steve how he uses the product, what his most significant finds were, and what's on the horizon for security detection by Garrett metal detectors.
When Moore joined the company more than 13 years ago, he'd only used a Garrett metal detector a few times. But like any good marketer, he immersed himself in the product and then found himself hooked.
"The founder Charles Garrett encouraged us to get out in the field and work with people that use the products," Moore said. "I took to it immediately. I love the sense of chasing history."
He has 'chased history' around the world, most recently in the red dirt in far west Australia, Germany, and England. "I really enjoyed England because they have some really good treasure hunting laws that benefit both the searcher and the landowner. So much old and interesting history to find there."
Moore was on the hunt for hammered silver coins dating back to 1200s, something the local hunters have nicknamed "Hammies" in the UK.
While he was in the UK, Moore competed in a metal detecting competition called a rally against hundreds of others, where hunters searched for planted tokens or items they can find within an allotted period of time. "As a manufacturer, we're there for the fun of it and to support our brand," he said.
Whether it's casual, competition, or security detection, Garrett's range of products -- from the popular Ace to walkthrough detection for sporting events and airports -- have long been a trusted name in the industry.
