Wasted $80 on a metal detector for Civil War relics found out the hard way

I bought a cheap Bounty Hunter Tracker IV off Amazon thinking I'd find bullets and buttons in the fields near Fredericksburg. After three weekends of digging up nothing but pull tabs and rusty nails, I finally asked a local detectorist club what they used. Turns out the ground mineralization here is too high for budget machines and I basically threw $80 down the drain. Anyone else waste money on a detector that just couldn't handle your local soil?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_william12d ago

$80 for a machine that can't even handle some dirt? That's rough.

milacraig12d ago

Is that the one with the plastic gears inside? I watched a review where the auger just stopped turning after a few pebbles.

casey68212d ago

Wait, did you say $80 for the Tracker IV? I think that was actually $70 last week on sale at Kellyco unless I'm mixing up the prices. I remember @milacraig got the same one and was complaining about the same ground issues near Richmond too. The mineralization in that whole region is brutal, I've heard the cheap VLF machines just flat out give up. Did you try tweaking the sensitivity down really low or switching to all metal mode? Sometimes that helps a little even if it's not a fix for the ground itself.