Gold

• It's easy to imagine how different life would have been for prospectors during the gold rush if they had been able to just pack up their metal detectors on their mules to answer the call of gold in the West. In March of 2010, an 8-pound gold nugget was found with a metal detector in Washington in Nevada County, California. It is the largest nugget found in California to date, but not the largest found with a metal detector. A man using a metal detector found a 26.6-pound gold nugget in the Sonora desert in 1989.
  
  

Common Finds

• Metal detecting hobbyists frequently scan beaches, parks, under ski lifts and other areas that receive high amounts of human traffic. Coins and jewelry people have recently lost are common finds in these highly populated areas. While most of the finds at these types of grounds are rather insignificant, expensive items such as diamond rings are sometimes uncovered. Occasionally discoveries of more significant relics are discovered in populated areas; however, where there are a lot of people, there is usually a lot of metal detector traffic as well. Odds of spectacular findings in well-traveled areas are slim.
  
  

Artifacts And Treasure

• Artifacts are exciting finds for metal detector enthusiasts. Metal detector enthusiasts frequently find treasures and artifacts from small jars of money or war relics to even larger discoveries like metal boxes and trunks. For example, in England in 2009 a metal detector user found a startling collection of over 1,300 items -- dating to 1,700 years ago -- in a recently plowed field. Archaeologists in England expect the find to be relevant in changing their view of history in that region.
  
  

Meteorites

• Meteorite hunters frequently use metal detectors to find these metal-rich rocks from space. In 2005, a man using a metal detector in Kansas found the largest whole meteorite ever discovered; the rock weighs over three quarters of a ton. Meteorite finding is not an easy task, even with a metal detector, but the machines make the process much easier.
  
  

Other Valuables

• New high-tech locators -- such as the Tricorder from H3 Tech and Fitzgerald's Vector locators -- make it possible to find valuables that earlier metal detectors were not able to detect. Caves and tunnels, rare earth minerals, petroleum deposits and some gemstones are detectable with these commercial-strength locators. These locators can cost up to $25,000 and require training for use, making them impractical for anyone other than serious-minded explorers to purchase; however, cheaper models are becoming popular in the treasure-hunting fields.