Is Metal Detecting Boring? My Wife Says Yes!

Intro: 

Hey Everybody. Welcome! To Episode 62 of the metal detecting show podcast. My Name is Ciaran and I have been Metal Detecting for nearly 30 Years. This week I want to ask the question is metal detecting a boring hobby.

Music

Hey everyone before we start I want to thank you for listening to the podcast and I hope you enjoy the episode this week  If you want to support the show there are many options available from the links in the episode notes below and if you want to interact with me and the show that information is there too.  

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Content:

Hey Everyone I hope you had a great week detecting and are enjoying some better  weather  than we are in Ireland another wash out for me this week making it the third week in a row where I didn’t get out. 

I can feel my stress levels rising a little with the agitation of not getting out recently.

 however this week the weather is supposed to change with record sunshine predicted however  I  predict another weekend of rain. 

In other news I will be taking a vacation from the week starting on the 7th of June so the episode that week will probably be a roundup of the highlights of the last 6 months just so your warned. 

my google alerts alerted me to this but there is a new game coming out on June 3rd on Steam but on the  Switch in the future called the The Magnificent Trufflepigs firstly I love the Name but What has this to do with Metal detecting well is a game about metal detecting from AMC this is the first I heard of it but AMC released a live-action vignette on youtube ill include it in this weeks show notes for you to check out but it looks interesting to me and im looking forward to checking it out. 

So this week When I told my wife that I was planning on discussing whether Metal detecting was boring or not she laughed and offered to write it for me, If let her do it  I’m sure it would have been a very short episode.  This week I want to ask the question is metal detecting boring Yes that’s it for this week blah blah blah buy me a coffee blah blah subscribe……

Haha well to start why am I asking this question well I have to admit in preparation for the podcast every week I trawl through countless videos and articles on the subject and with the amount of content I process I find it is very few pieces of content that I read or view that I come away thinking ohh that’s cool. 

On social media it is a constant feed of the same finds presented in the same way over and over again now don’t get me wrong I do it myself but I cant help but see the pattern occur again and again making it look boring to an outsider and if its starting to bore me then I can only imagine what it must be like for someone outside the hobby. 

Now don’t get me wrong there are some content creators out there that are great and there are some magazine articles that I have read time and time again so its not all boring but I can see how it can be portrayed as boring. I have to admit I subscribe to the two metal detector magazines in Europe and I do it more out of support it is very rare that I will read them cover to cover the first thing I do is look at the ads then the field tests and probably then the finds of the month and by that time im gone to sleep never to return again to finish the magazine later. 

Im reminded of a video that Graham of unearthed did where he stated that metal detectorist used to be pigeon holed in the same bracket as those weird train spotters or amateur astronomers I have to say both hobbies I have tried in the past I lasted one day train spotting till I realised all the trains in Ireland were essentially the same model of GM locomotive and I completed the Irish locomotion collection in 5 mins simply by watching the Cork Dublin Train pass through Newbridge one Sunday afternoon. Now that is Boring……on messin im sure there is more to it than that. 

Metal Detecting was always considered boring by the general populous but now its becoming a little cooler and more popular but I suspect that for every 100 people who try the hobby it is a very small percentage that continue on after a few hunts because it is boring to spend hour after hour day after day finding nothing of importance. 

It is a mentally challenging hobby that requires will power to keep going till you find one more pull tab. 

For years I used to focus on modern targets of monetary value like rings and coins on beach’s and because the history side of things didn’t really relate to my type of hunting I thought that was the boring side of the hobby but since I have started focusing on the history it has revived and blossomed the inner geek in me. 

By The Way do people know that you can be both a nerd and a geek. 

A nerd is an intelligent but single-minded person obsessed with a nonsocial hobby or pursuit while a Geek is a person who has excessive enthusiasm for and some expertise about a specialized subject or activity. 

So in metal detecting parlance a nerd is the person who is your go to for every bit of information on pulltabs and can date every variant, essentially someone who had knowledge beyond university level on a certain topic of history while a geek is the person who can tell you all about discrimination I think I fall into the geek bucket but put both of these traits together and you have an uber detectorist one who is an expert on some aspect of history and knows the ins and outs of a detector intimately and is a total hit with the ladies or ladies. Switch swahoo not boring at all. 

Everything about the hobby is weird and boring we wear army surplus like sad old soldier rejects. We wave about a stick with a plate on the end listening to the sounds the earth make. We get excited about spending 5 minutes digging a hole and pulling out an old penny that you could buy in better condition from a dealer for a minute fraction of the cost it took to dig it. 

To someone on the periphery metal detecting is as boring and weird as hell however if your in it is one of the only hobbys that actually sounds like a Hollywood movie when you describe it. So what are you into well? My name is Martin Ciaran Martin and I like to treasure hunt. Sound much better than my name is Ciaran Martin I am a proficient user of a metal detector would you like to see my collection of pull tabs. 

And maybe that’s it just like train spotting and Astronomy, geology or bottle hunting maybe we are all collectors at heart collecting information and things and to the outside that may be boring weird or difficult to understand. 

It is also a lonely hobby reserved for loners You may go hunting with a buddy or buddies but ultimately once you start and put on your headphones you are alone with your thoughts and alone really alone one in your safe bubble with the sound of your detector in the zone for hours on end but that only comes after you get over the boring bit of not finding anything.

So is metal detecting boring weird and only for loners well it is a weird hobby it’s a weird premise that we try to detecting bits of rubbish in the hope of finding something better. We dress weird we talk weird and  talk about weird things but I always say that weird is good who wants to be the same as everyone else be weird enjoy your pull tabs if that’s what you enjoy then weird it up my friends. 

Is it for loners I don’t thinks so it is a hobby that you do on your own but that doesn’t make you a loner it’s the same as any other hobby that you can do on your own like fishing or brewing beer you can do it on your own but we are only dying to talk about it.

And finally is Metal detecting Boring no to me it isn’t it’s the hobby that keeps on giving and its all about context it’s a hobby that you can’t understand by looking at someone do it on social media and from the outside it looks very simple but from the inside it has gold, silver, pirates, cool, gadgets and adventure it gets you out to the outside its great for your mental health and can change your life as long as you keep going for one more pull tab.

Wrap Up 

That’s it for this week’s I hope you liked this episode of the metal detecting show podcast.

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If you like this content and would like more please don’t hesitate to tell your friends and don’t forget to hit that subscribe button.

Once again, I hope you have enjoyed this episode and we will chat to you all again next week. 

Get out there eyes down and Happy Hunting.