<p><strong>This whole mess of metal detecting started when my friend got his first Bounty Hunter and showed me how it worked in the front yard of my house.</strong> I was instantly intrigued and thought it was very interesting and really neat. Soon after getting the idea and learning how to do it, what to expect and precautions of detecting, I purchased my first detector. It was a Garrett Ace 250 and I had a lot of fun with it for 2 years from 2009 to early 2011 netting my first silver dime and first silver ring. After a while of detecting, I took it upon myself to watch some metal detecting videos on youtube. One thing I noticed during some of the videos was that people were having a very high success rate with the Minelab E-TRAC.</p> <p>Just watching people pull silver out of the ground left and right just surprised me and I told myself, I wish I could find stuff like that around our city. I was looking at some other detectors because the E-TRAC was a bit pricey and I didn't know if it was going to be worth the investment or not, but my friend talked to me into it. I took out a loan to purchase this detector as an investment into this hobby. Might as well get the best, right?</p> [split] <p>First day was a good learning experience with the machine finding a few dollars in clad at a local empty lot up from my street. Day 2 I went back up to the same lot looking for anymore hidden goodies that are in hiding. The day started to wind down and I decided to give that open lot a break beings I wasn't having much luck other than clad. I decided to move over a 100 feet into an old open yard where an old house and canon shop used to be. With it being late at night I decided to dig a last few targets for the night. The last solid silver signal I had gotten on the detector ended up in producing a nice Sterling Silver Ring with a Cameo Silhouette, my 2nd ring ever. </p> <p>Now, starting out on Day 3 of detecting with the E-TRAC and less than 30 hours of use on the detector. My friend and I decided to take our E-TRAC's to one of the oldest parks in the heart of our town. We figured we wouldn't have found much for silver beings it's an obvious place to hunt. But the E-TRAC shined through producing plenty of nickles for both of us. I found my first two Buffalo Nickles, a 1919, and a non date. And produced one Silver 1935 Mercury Dime. He found his first Buffalo Nickle as well, a 1935. These were nice finds but it didn't compare to what I had found within the first hour.</p> <p>I had hit a solid silver signal of a 11:49 / 12:50. I stuck my small plug cutter into the ground and pushed up and out popped a small gold/possible silver abacus. I gently pulled on the abacus to find it was attached to a gold chain. I hollered excitedly over to my friend, "Hey, I think I found gold!" After getting it out of the hole in one piece, I quickly inspected it and found the 9999 marking on it. I was very skeptical because the abacus was ringing under silver tones and the necklace was ringing under gold tones despite the entire necklace having a gold appearance. We finished up our hunt after 6 hours and had a fun successful day.</p> <p>The next day I was very giddy to take the necklace to a jeweler to get it checked out. During my work lunch break, I took it to a local jeweler in the mall I was at to have it tested. The Jeweler lady there did the magnetic, scratch, and acid testing on the abacus/chain and sure enough, it was a 18k Solid Gold Necklace at roughly 1.69 Troy Ounces of weight. Which at looking at today's exchange rates for gold, well lets just say its enough to pay for my E-TRAC plus some of my friend's. I was very very surprised at the necklace I had found. Needless to say, I am very happy with the E-TRAC's performance even though I've had little use on it so far. The entire city is our new playground beings the local metal detector group has "cleaned out" all the local parks, but none of them have an E-TRAC ;-). </p> <p>It's been one of the best investments into a hobby I've ever participated in and love it.</p>