The discriminating metal detector prevents false positives of pirate booty
Somewhere along the line, the image of a grizzled old man walking the beach with a metal detector entered the collective consciousness. I have never once seen anyone do this at the beach: the chances of digging up anything of fiduciary import is practically nill, as that imagined pile of doubloons, upon unearthing, immediately transmutes into a porcupine of bubble gum and old syringes.
The Disciminating Metal Detector aims to revivify the pursuit of buried booty on the wind-sweap beaches of America by differentiating between nine different types of metals, from tin can pull tabs to silver. It'll also prevent false signals in mineral rich earth.
You're still not going to find buried treasure, but you might find someone's lost Rolex. And for $199.95, it seems like a decent deal, if only because I always assumed metal detectors just had to be more expensive.
The Discriminating Metal Detector [Hammacher Schlemmer via Oh Gizmo]
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Nor would you, Brownlee, see any grizzled old man surveying sandy beaches. They are rare, chimaeric beings, Metal Detector Enthusiasts, who limit their treasure hunting to the very early hours of the morning. My grandfather was an inveterate enthusiast, walking the same few miles of Florida beaches every morning, large, squawking headphones wrapped around a feathery tuft of white hair. In the right hand, his custom-tuned metal detector, in the left, a fold-up spade.
The mainstay of his basement collection was, as you suspected, an assortment of watches, but also featured matchbox cars and old coins. Even twenty years ago, metal detectors could differentiate between different metals, though they did so aurally. A very acutely trained ear was necessary to distinguish the bloops indicating "Coin" from the bleeps signalling "Bigger-than-coin."
I'd bet you can get a detector with equally good discrimination but inferior styling for under half that price...
I once heard a story about a man who made a small fortune with a metal detector. It was simply a matter of looking in the right place. He located the oldest playgrounds in the country and swept his detector near trees and playground equipment. he had reasoned that children of the past, like those of today, would hang upside down and lose all sorts of things out of their pockets. As you might expect, the most valuable thing he found was spare change. However, some of this spare change was made with silver.
And you'll still look like a dork:
http://blog.tubgull.com/?p=50
seems these grizzled old men find a lot of interesting metallic objects
http://forum.treasurenet.com/
Looks like something drawn by Paul Pope!