Copyright by Lynn Mills.
All rights reservered.

Some where, some time in the late 1960's I was looking through a Heathkit catalog. Heathkit was a company that produced electronic projects in the form of kits that could be assembled at home, in the garage, shop or in my case the kitchen table. This made electronic instruments affordable to even lower income people like me. An item in the catalog caught my eye. I looked at it for a long time. I read and re-read the description several times. $60 was barely affordable at the time and had it not been for Heathkit a metal detector would have been out of reach completely. The order was sent off and from then until it arrived I would lay in bed at night and daydream about treasure and old coins. Assembling the Heathkit GD-348 Metal detector seemed to take forever but was actually only a couple of days. The green machine worked perfectly and soon I was scanning the lawns around a church that was about 40 years old at that time. Before long I was finding all kinds of wheat backs. That was natural of course since wheat backs were still being minted then. What I did notice is that many of the wheat backs were older, 1920's and 30's, darkened from being buried but still in good condition with very little wear. This gave me the assurance that many of the coins had been lost while still fairly new. The number of coins I was finding told me that this was a virgin lawn. What a joy and how sweet it was when I popped my fist silver coin out of the ground. It was still as bright and shiny as the day the quarter was lost. I took a face value of twenty plus dollars from the church lawn. Dimes, quarters, half dollars, buffalo nickels and even a WW ll silver nickel, (35% Silver). I found other things of course. Pocket knifes, bottle caps, house keys, boy scout badges, paddle locks, jewelry, Browne pins, pull tabs and tin foil.

Heathkits GD-348 metal Detector Still working

One day I was searching a very large grassy area that was the playground by the old, brick, three story grade school I had attended as a boy. I wasn't finding much. A group of young boys were following me and one of the said, "you won't find anything here. Too many people have already searched here." Just at that moment I got a very strong signal from my detector. My first thought was that it was a garbage can lid. I knelt down and immediately popped a silver dollar out of the ground. You should have seen the  looks on their faces. My groupies left me and busied themselves digging holes in the grass with sticks looking for silver dollars. My second silver dollar was found at a similar three story grade school in another town. We always found coins under the swing sets and I used to say to my wife that the coins were some poor kids milk and cookie money. She never failed to smack me hard on the shoulder when I said that. While searching around the swings by the school I found my second silver dollar.     The most enjoyable find though was the gold high school graduation ring I found in a church lawn. We identified the high school and called. The principle talked with us and we told him we had found a ring and wondered if anyone had lost one. He said there had been a note about a lost ring on the bulletin board last year and he would check to see if it was still there. After a long wait he came  back on the phone and gave us the phone number of a girl who had lost her ring. A quick phone call and soon the young lady was standing in our living room. She explained that her and some friends were attending a church function last year. and that she had lost her ring while throwing snow balls. Her initials on the ring left little doubt that it was hers. The look on her face when we gave her the ring was all the reward we needed. That was an incredible experience.

Minelab Exploer