Been Metal detecting for about 30 years..My first find I was in a school yard sand box with an old Whites detector "Rigged Up" to work, within 10 minutes I had pulled up a ladies ring with a HUGE diamond  And with that the horrible addiction of wanting to dig and find "STUFF" hit me. I was introduced to panning and slucing, been doing that for some time. My newest craze is Geocaching kind of a modern day treasure hunt, except you put the treasure box back after you find it. I was out in the water in Antioch once bottle digging, I had dug up a small pile of CA license plates out of the 30's well they didn't look very good and where full of holes SOOO I desided to skim this across the water..HA I didn't think it was funny anymore when I was told by a collector that he would have given me about $20 a pop for them:( So I have learned that treasure is where you find it! Dig and Dig more and just Dig until you're rich. I'm an electronic's nerd by nature I love to let my GPS take me into the unknown and back out again.