Perspective 'Why I Value Everything I find'

Those out there who have been metal detecting for many many years understand that purchasing a metal detector doesn't suddenly give you a birthright to dig a hammered silver coin or an ancient gold ring. There are many reasons why some peoples luck appears to be better than others and 99.9% of this is due to the land they're hunting, most machines out there will find a vast majority of the targets in the ground. BUT ! if you're on land that doesn't contain many targets you aren't going to find anything, sounds simple doesn't it?, however I still believe this point can perplex a lot of people. Due to the reach that social media now has, when you see some people continually posting great finds, if you're not careful, you can start to think you're doing something very wrong. That's just not the case, some people have fantastic permissions, others don't. For instance, I have one huge farm permission that is very hit and miss. In the fields that have been left for centuries a large percentage of non-ferrous signals are keepers and on other areas you're digging endless amounts of trash for hours on end. I have no problem with digging trash, firstly I'm cleaning the ground and secondly with each trash item dug I'm getting closer to a treasure. Because these are longterm permissions clearing the ground out makes complete sense to me. This is explained in my blog My Longterm Approach To Working On Pasture

To put this into perspective, I've found an area that has produced a few Roman coins, when I post them up on my Instagram, you don't see the 60 pieces of junk I had to dig to find that one coin. Most of the land on that permission is the same story, I have to work really hard to find something good. Hunting land like this actually makes me appreciate the good targets that I eventually dig. If I was digging good targets all the time I could easily become complacent and non-appreciative, this is just part and parcel of what metal detecting is. On the flip side I have some other permissions that give up some mega finds with pretty minimal effort involved. But, different again, I have land that is super quiet and you're literally scratching for anything, it can be hours in-between targets. I can tell you now that on land like that, if I find something cool I really really appreciate it. 

Treasure Isn't Always Buried

Buying a high-end machine doesn't equate to success and going online after purchasing 'said machine' and asking for expert settings also doesn't equate to success. Plain and simple, all ground is different and it has to be in the ground and you have to walk over it to find it. There are no secrets or magical settings that will suddenly find you a hammered coin, due to the instant validation that so many people now crave, 'usually wanting as little effort involved as possible', the value of what's being dug up can often be incredibly devalued, I've watched many videos on Youtube where some people are almost slitting their wrists because they're only finding buttons or old Georgian coins. The hunger for that hammered silver to be found and posted up to hundreds of strangers online to get 'praised' has taken precedent over the very simple process of getting out in the fields and trying your luck. Everything I find is appreciated, however, finding nothing doesn't matter either, some of my land is stunning, it's in the middle of nowhere to the point where you could easily think the world has simply ended. You have the sound of the trees, the gentle breeze, the sky overhead and the 'ever changing now' functioning perfectly around you. For all I care, the clocks can evaporate, the hours are simply a continuation of the last, and with the 'quiet' comes the reflection. 

Who roamed this land? what did they do to survive? were they in love? where did their life take them?

It's a somewhat profound experience to think I might unearth a small fragment of someones life, a life that could have been long or painfully short, filled with the similar stresses and strains that we have to deal with in the modern age just on a slightly different scale. How amazing is it that we can connect to 'what was and to what might've been', I personally believe every item lost holds a frequency to the people that possessed it. They might just look like inanimate objects but I believe they hold a memory, this is why I value buttons so much. Actually I could dig buttons all day and be utterly content, how far have these buttons travelled and to what item of clothing were they attached? who wore the clothing? One of my fields is where the soldiers trained for the D Day landings, so far I've dug 86 buttons of all different kinds, I think it's safe to assume a lot of these fell off the clothes of those that went to war with many never coming home. I've actually found some really interesting buttons on the Thames Foreshore, I can only imagine the journey they'd taken for me to eventually locate them with my detector. Whilst everyday life was racing around on the land above, these tiny fragments of past lives were making their way below the surface of the Thames, coursing through the currents and smacking on the rocks below. Only to wash up and sink within the muddy banks to be preserved in time, waiting for me to come along years later and dig them up, I suppose me digging them up completes the journey.

One item I've always been somewhat obsessed with finding are coins, nothing beats that feeling when you cut 'a tidy plug' dig down a little way to find a coin sitting there. There's nothing quite like it, I don't care if its gold, silver, hammered or modern, 'a coin is a coin'. Let us not forget in centuries to come, the humanoids out there detecting will be digging up 1p and 2p coins getting equally as excited as when we dig what we look upon as old money. I do understand how the heart sinks when you see a coin only to clean it up and find out it's from 2019 but .. hey ! it all adds up. It's clear, in the not too distant future, that cash will be phased out, for the control grid to function perfectly the population can't have complete control over their own money. Digital currency will take over and everything we spend and save will be tracked and logged in some new tech. If this happens then all coins will eventually cease to exist, this would be a real shame because, 'forgetting their value'  each coin is a tiny little work of art. Can you imagine how boring it would be detecting the beaches only to find they're all completely void of coins? I fear one day this could very well be the case.

A single coin could've been in a thousands hands, past from one person to another, lived in peoples homes whilst being saved up to purchase an item of some kind, traded for services, or used to bribe. Or simply kept as a keepsake on the body hanging from a chain. I think it's safe to say that many fell from peoples pockets by mistake, how many of the coins we dig up we're desperately needed by someone that became incredibly upset or stressed to reach their hand into their pocket only to find out their hard earned cash had fallen out. How hard did someone have to work to earn those coins that we are digging up? I find when you start to think about all your finds in this way, it really starts to change your perspective on what you're digging. I think the most haunting things are musket balls, it often crosses my mind if the musket ball I'm so happy to find injured or killed someone, or something. The questions continue to get asked with each item dug, shoe buckles are another interesting conundrum, how many miles had someone walked before the buckle became loose and fell off? Where were they going and what were they doing? Was their journey long? maybe it was the last journey they ever made, the answers to these questions are endless.

I could go on but I think I've made my point, in the modern world there's a tendency to not fully engage in the moment, we're always looking for the next buzz, be it a new metal detector, a phone, car, computer, television. Living in a world like this can stop you from truly being in the moment and really thinking about what you have in your hands right now. It's important to take a moment to reflect on what you have, not just in your finds pouch. When I dig an item out of the ground I don't chuck it in my pocket and race off like a nutter desperately trying to find the next "FIX", I spend a little time with it and give it a good going over before I slowly start to swing again. Finding a specific item could change how and where I might hunt for the rest of the day, there could be other targets nearby that stitch a story together. Be it a button, a coin or a mystery object that doesn't connect to anything straightaway. I believe it's really important to appreciate everything that you dig, it all has a story of some kind - minus the trash, the bloody trash is soul destroying 😁