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| Chart Showing Frequency of Various Value Targets. |
There are always decisions to make. Where to metal detect? What to hunt, or in other words, what do you want to find? How to hunt? How much discrimination to use. And more.
The question of where to hunt often comes down to what is close, what you know, what is easy, or where you found the most in the past. But if you want to maximize finds, you might consider other things.
There is always the question of how you count the value of finds. You can estimate value of what you think it will bring on the market, or you might be interested in something other than economic value. You might be interested in other things old things, or maybe you just like certain types of things, such as maybe shipwreck artifacts. It might have little to do with the economic value of your finds.
If you are interested in maximizing value, no matter how you evaluate that, above is a useful chart. It is general in nature, but still useful.
Let's make it simple and go by economic value and act like that is a simple matter. It can be either coins or jewelry or something else.
On the left and on the vertical scale is represented the frequency of targets. On the horizontal axis is the value of targets, increasing in value as you go from left to right.
The first thing you should notice is rather obvious. Low value targets are very common and high value targets are rare. When it gets to a certain high value, the curve becomes pretty flat.
Some people like to find things and quickly give up when they aren't finding anything. No targets can be tiring and make it easy to conclude there is nothing there. People give up quickly when it seems like there are few or no targets, but there might be something there and it might be valuable. You don't know for certain unless you perfectly cover all the ground, and of course that is never possible on the beach.
Valuable targets aren't easy to get. It can seem like they are all gong long before one shows up. Of course, there is a natural relationship between rarity and value.
Getting valuable targets can require a lot. It often requires going beyond what most people are willing or able to do.
But some of high value targets will remain out there hiding. Remember, they aren't easy to get. Real treasures always have a dragon that guards them. It is a challenge and should be. Killing the dragon and the resultant personal growth is said by some authorities on mythology to be the real treasure.
Since there is a dragon or guardian, of whatever nature it may take, that means you have to figure out how to overcome the dragon and go beyond what most others have already done.
You will occasionally get some valuable targets hiding among the less valuable targets. If you keep at it enough and pick up enough stuff, there is a chance something good will eventually pop up. It just takes some patience.
Years ago, I calculated how many coins I found for each gold ring find. I forget what that number is now, and it varies depending upon the place and other factors, but I once knew the numbers for the places where I frequently hunted. I kept good enough records to have some good numbers.
Of course, that number was different for different situations. For example, I do remember that the number of rings found in the water per coin was generally considerably higher than on land. And of course, the numbers varied on different beaches as I think I mentioned the other day. Some beaches simply produce more rings than others, and some beaches produce more higher quality rings than others. And some beaches produce a lot of coins and very few rings. I've mentioned some of the important factors related to that in the past.
People often behave and detect in a way that would suggest that what they most want to find is clad coins. They are shaped by the reward of the adrenalin and activity of digging targets even if those targets aren't really great. It keeps them going. Again that is OK, but not always the most economically productive strategy.
One thing that should be considered is how valuable a great find can be. A great ring can run thousands of dollars, for example. Or a royal escudo can be so valuable that it is worth putting up with a lot of no-target days. The hard thing is to persevere while not finding much of anything until you find that high value target that will drastically out weight all the small value targets you might otherwise get.
If you intentionally target high-value finds, you will not necessarily find much else. Some places have a good mix of coins and gold. Sometimes there is some gold where there are a lot of coins but some places there are good high-value targets such as gold but almost no coins.
If you do your research and analysis and have reason to believe there is a good chance of high value finds in the area, it can be worth putting in a lot of time just to find one high value targets that can be of much more value than tons of low value targets.
One Rolex or one nice escudo can be worth thousands of smaller value targets. If you have reason to believe there might be a high value target in the area, you might want to put in a lot of time on the site even realizing you might not hit it. I would put up with a lot more time with no signals if I was in a high-value target area. It is worth it. And very often the highest value target areas do not produce a lot of junk or low value targets.
Let's for a minute limit the discussion to rings A small value ring is not worth nearly as much as a great ring with great gemstones. You can find a hundred small value rings that together will not be worth one great ring.
At some beaches you might expect mostly 10k bands, whereas at another beach you might expect some great and valuable rings, but probably a smaller number. Do the math. Figure out the expected average value of the type of target you are most interested in finding. What is the probability, or the expected number, and what is the average expected value. If you do the math, you can compare a beach that produces more low value rings with a beach that tends to produce on average more high value rings. That will help with your analysis. Of course, your expectations need to be informed, so the more experience and data you that at those beaches, the better your calculations or expectations will become. Once again, lower quality and higher value targets require more data collecting to get a good estimate or expectation. And when you are hunting a particular or one-of-a-kind item you must generalize from other data.
Here are a few concluding points. Be clear about what you are targeting and why. Adjust your decisions and strategies according to your target and the situation. Make adjustments as you collect data. Be aware of the trade-offs. Select sites based upon your best data and estimates and don't underestimate the value of high value targets.Not everybody will have the desire to conduct such a systematic analysis, but if you have the inclination, it can help inform your strategies and decisions.
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| Fort Pierce Area Surf Chart From Surfguru.com. |
Notice the one little bump. Something like that isn't very significant, but it might cause a slight change of plans for the day.
Nothing on the National Hurricane Center map for us to be concerned about right now.
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Did you ever wonder why when there is someone towards the beginning of a waiting line and a bunch of other people show up and join them, why it is the late comers join the group at the front of the line rather than the front group joining their late friends at the end of the line. That is how I think it should work. Why should arriving late give you the privilege of jumping line? I can accept when a person or two might have been in the group and had to leave momentarily before returning, but that is not always the case.
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Good hunting,
Treasuregudie@comcast.net