Strategies for Making Money With Your Metal Detector

I’ve enjoyed many hobbies over the years and one of the things that separates metal detecting from all the others I have been involved with is most other hobbies all you do is spend money. With metal detecting there are a lot of opportunities to make money and there is always the chance of finding something really valuable.

A lot of years have passed since I got into metal detecting so my memory is a little foggy but my first year of metal detecting I believe I found around 300 dollars in clad coins. Not bad for my first year. I bought a cheap tumbler, cleaned up the coins and cashed them in. What other hobbies do you know of where you can get some good exercise and make a little money?

I enjoy finding older coins and relics, I am not after new coins and jewelry but I do find it. If you are specifically looking for newer coins and jewelry, I know of people who have found over a thousand dollars in newer coins in a years’ time. Throw in some gold jewelry and it can easily sore to over a few thousand dollars.

Some other metals that we often find is copper and brass and a lot of it is just scrap.  Brass is currently over a dollar a pound and copper is sitting around two dollars a pound. Depending on the kind of sites you are detecting, it can really add up to a decent amount of money. Many people keep buckets around and fill them with these valuable metals and once full cash them in. Every major city has a scrap yard that will pay you for your scrap metals.

Depending on where you live, I’ve talked to detectorists in states with concentrations of gold. I know of one gentleman who is retired and to help supplement his income he goes out weekly in the desert in search of gold. Some days he comes home empty handed while other days he does really good.

If you live near a good beach, I’ve heard of detectorists who cash in big time finding gold. Someone I know was vacationing down in Florida and every morning he would drink his coffee out on the deck and watch a guy walk down the beach metal detecting. One day he stopped him to talk about metal detecting. The guy told him he walks a mile down the beach every morning, The previous year he cashed in almost sixty thousand dollars’ worth of gold that came off of that beach!

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Until the last few years I’ve never given it much thought on using my metal detector to make serious money. About two years ago I was metal detecting at a school when a truck pulled into the parking lot and a gentleman started walking towards me. He said he had been looking for months trying to find someone to locate the property stakes at his mother’s house.

He was extremely excited and happy when I told him I had some free time right then. I packed up and followed him a few blocks to his mothers’ house. In a little under an hour I had located all six property stakes that were on the property.

When I was finished, he pulled out his wallet and almost begged me to take money. I would not accept his money so he told me to follow him to his restaurant for a free lunch. It was easy to turn down money but this fat guy is never going to turn down food so I took him up on the offer.

Soon after I started talking with other detectorists, asking if they had ever made money and I was quite surprised. One of the people I talked to was Dorian Cook, a good friend and a host on our All Metal Mode Podcast. He told me of different people he’s known throughout the years who have made some decent money working with Insurance companies.

Just last week I was talking to a gentleman who has gotten in good with a local social media group and gets calls weekly to locate rings. I asked him how much he charges and he told me he just tells them to give him whatever they think it’s worth and he’s been surprised at how much money most give him and happy too!

With a little bit of thinking outside the box and letting the right people know that you have a metal detector, you can start making some money. If you’re not interested in the money, I can tell you over the years looking for peoples property markers and lost jewelry has opened doors to some great metal detecting sites for me!