New Boom on Metal Detectors

When I learned that Rolling Stone Bill Wyman has a passion for metal detecting, I smiled at the thought of the bass player for the quintessential bad-boy rock band pacing back and forth across the English countryside with his sweeper, like any other senior citizen hoping to hit pay dirt.

Wyman is such a big fan of the hobby that he sells a “Bill Wyman signature metal detector.” You can see it on his website, BillWymanDetector.com. He has also written a book about his treasure hunting adventures, called Bill Wyman’s Treasure Islands.

I stopped laughing, however, when I read that Wyman has found “hundreds of coins going back to Roman Britain, as well as blades from 3,000 years ago,” along with “gold coins from the 1300s which are worth £1,000 each.”

Maybe he’s onto something. And in light of a 55-year-old metal detector enthusiast’s discovery of Anglo-Saxon treasures earlier this month — estimated to be worth $10 million — in a farmer’s field in Birmingham, England, other people are looking at the hobby with a golden gleam in their eyes, too.

American Public Media’s Marketplace has a report on the recent boom in metal detectors. In addition to increased sales of detectors, the article says the much-publicized discovery has also resulted in an increase in “nighthawkers” — people trespass onto farms at night and sell whatever artifacts they find on the black market. I have no desire to nighthawk, but I am thinking about the 30-year-old metal detector I owned as a kid, which is still in the attic of my parent’s house. I plan on bringing it back home with me the next time I visit. I might not find Anglo-Saxon battle plunder in Los Angeles, but who knows how many iPods and digital cameras I might find under the sand at Zuma Beach?

Mark Frauenfelder – Editor-in-chief of MAKE magazine and the founder of the popular Boing Boing weblog, Mark was an editor at Wired from 1993-1998 and is the founding editor of Wired Online.

Mark Frauenfelder Credit.com contributor, editor-in-chief of MAKE magazine and the founder of the popular site Boing Boing, Mark was an editor at Wired from 1993-1998 and is the founding editor of Wired Online. He covers creative DIY projects and how-tos that will help you make the most of your money.