Good health and good mood to you, dear readers of our blog. Why don’t you and I touch on this topic for discussion??? Indeed, there are a huge number of notes about how many diggers there are. What to do about it? There are no unoccupied places left!! The finds are not mushrooms; they do not grow again. And so on, on, on. However, against the background of the growth of lovers of instrument search, there is also an indicator of people leaving the hobby or, what happens more often, a strong reduction in the time that formerly avid diggers are now willing to spend on field trips. But I will try to tell you why this happens.
No time.
The most common reason. If you look at Avito or other sites selling used personal items, then in the “metal detectors” section, under almost every second ad, you can see the inscription “I am selling due to lack of time to travel.” And this can and should be believed. The times when it was possible to find unbroken tracts in the Moscow region using only the Mende map are long gone, and now, just to find a convenient, interesting field that counts for finds, you need to walk tens of kilometers over rough terrain with your own legs. A modern cop, the one that produces results, requires a lot of time, so if you don’t have that time, it’s better to switch your attention to something else.
Loss of motivation.
The reason is very vague in terms of concepts and definitions. Let's look at the desire to make money. As we understand, many diggers purchased a metal detector for various reasons. For some, it was a dream to find their great-grandfather’s treasure in their grandmother’s garden. Some people’s motivation is to make money as a miner by collecting scrap metal, or to become a top YouTuber. In general, people bought a metal detector for the specific purpose of improving their material well-being.
But something went wrong. The treasure in the garden was never found, scrap metal is a fickle business, you can make money, but you can fly away. And YouTube doesn’t want to put a video with three poops in the top for views in the Russian Federation. So over time, a new advertisement for the sale of used MD appears on Avito, signed “I am selling due to lack of time to travel.”
Reduced prices for finds.
Now, this is a very interesting reason. I myself did not communicate with such people, but a couple of times from friends whom I can trust, I heard stories about people who used to make quite good money selling all kinds of dug antiquities and appanage scales. According to one such story, a good friend of mine had a lawyer at work. A good, competent and intelligent lawyer. When a person came to his next job, he honestly said that he would work only until April, after which he would quit. But, during this time, he will sort out all the “tails” and other problems of the company in legal proceedings. And, they say, he really understood it. After which the person quit and went into the forests to dig for the whole season.
How much could he earn like that? Here, I think, another example would be appropriate. About three years ago, I saw a topic on Review. A certain collector wanted to sell his collection of crosses from the 12th to 16th centuries. He exhibited these same crosses at the purchase price. According to the seller, he collected his collection from 2010 to 2016. Not much was put up for sale, but at prices ranging from 40 to 120 thousand per lot. The people on the forum laughed. These prices have not been around for a long time. In general, one cross, once bought for 45 thousand, was sold for 2 thousand rubles. I think the example is indicative, and it is clear why a significant part of the pros left this once profitable business.
Boss, everything is gone or ridiculous excuses.
This is my favorite category of disenfranchised. I even recently devoted an entire article to this phenomenon. “How tired of these lazy, clueless losers are diggers” if you are interested, follow the link and read. Briefly and to the point of this note, among diggers, especially on forums, you can often and in large numbers come across lamentations about the fact that there is nowhere else to dig, the finds are not mushrooms and do not grow again. The fields all around are empty and there is no point in raising dust over them. However, when you start to deal with such diggers in detail, it turns out that they came to the dig “for the company.” There was a certain group where this person was taken. It is always more profitable to chip in for gasoline. And, so, after some kind of mistake, this digger was expelled from the general company. But he himself, he doesn’t know new places, doesn’t know how to identify them, doesn’t have his own system, so he decides that he opened the “This Place” website before the others. And therefore, wherever such a digger does not come, his gaze opens to broken tracts, trampled fields and forest roads dotted with unfilled holes.
I'm just tired of it.
Yes, this happens too. A very common reason why expensive metal detectors gather dust idle in a storage room, garage or country house. A good example of this is the company of metropolitan comrades whom I met on the field 4 years ago. All of them were passionate about being a cop. They allocated at least two trips a month to their favorite hobby. The corresponding winter withdrawal, the joy of a rare find and the desire to search for new places.
Years have passed. The accumulated copper coins count in the thousands. Crosses and other metal plastic are lying around in buckets. And besides, the group’s interests regarding the cop diverged. Someone still wants to dig in the fields, someone has become interested in the pit, but I am always drawn to the forest. So, this year the company got together once, and then more by inertia, like a meeting of classmates, just to eat barbecue and cognac. There is no excitement in the cops, but that’s why they will come home and put away the metal detectors until next year, we’ll see.
Conclusion.
There is nothing surprising or unique to Russia in the examples described. Exactly the same rapid growth of lovers of instrument search was in Britain 15-20 years ago. And, yes, then instrumental search there, just like in our country today, was not legalized. So, in Britain, after the rapid growth of lovers of instrument searching associated with the advent of inexpensive metal detectors, stabilization occurred within 10 years. But, the most important thing is that since that time, the statistics of treasures found in Great Britain only increases every year.
