My 2026 metal detecting diary
Göttinger
Posts: 181 ✭✭✭
In this thread I would like to document all my finds of 2026, the good ones and also the bad ones.
Currently we are inbetween two cold and frosty winter storms, so I took advantage of the one day the ground was only slightly frozen and not rock-hard and impenetrable.
The local sports field yielded just a few better finds and plenty of trash - about 45 pieces of bottle caps, nails, screws and canslaw went straight to the garbage bin.
So here are my 5 keepers - a mid-1800's bullet, a flat button, a spendable 2 Cent coin and a 50 Pfennig coin from the 1970's. The best find for the day was a pretty damaged brass jeton from the mid-1500's.
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The weather became quite nice, recently. So over the past few days I did three park hunts, chasing the pocket change lost over the winter. I hunted some grassy areas aswell, they yielded the only old(-ish) finds so far:
Over 27€ in change (= 32 Dollars), some German Mark coins (including a 1967 2 Mark coin, wich was demonetized in 1971) and two old 1 Pfennig coins, 1934-D and 1912-A.
Today I went to a few local parks again.
A little over 8€ in change, 1.06 German Mark, a token from a adventure park in Spain and a Saudi-Arabian 50 Halalas from 2016.
The most interesting find was a brass token worth 100 Pfennig (= 1 Mark) from the early 1900's. It's countermarked with H R. Unfortunately I have no idea who issued it - probably it was used in a nearby sugar factory.
Last but not least I found two bullet casings. Usually I don't pay attention to them, but today I took some picturesof them. Both are German bullets for the K98, one is from 1917 and the other one from 1932.
Nice, the big casings there are big, that's cool
A short trip to a nearby sports field yielded a nice amount of change and a even bigger amout of bottle caps.
All spendable coins, except for the 1990 2 Mark coin.
Around 21.50€ = 24.80 Dollars.
I am late to this forum so please forgive me....
Are you in Germany? I had a colleague there who had a metal detector and he used to say that it was legal to metal detect but illegal to dig. Is there any truth to that?
Also, if any cartridge cases were found at an historical site (camp, battle, etc.) I'll bet if you created a little certificate with the details then they would sell on eBay for a few $/€.
in that case watch out for things that go "BOOM"
There's lots of that in Europe, going all the way back to WWI.
My German colleague told me that as a kid he was walking through the woods and he discovered a WWII bunker that had a couple rifles and some handgrenades in it. (This would have been around 25-30 years after the war). He told the police and they took it from there. 😃
It's a little difficult here, that's true.
There are differen rules in all of our 16 states. In general you need both a special certification and the approval from the local archaeological authorities if you want to dig on historic sites or places where historic finds may turn up. This practically means that you always need a good reason if you want to dig anywhere, for example recovering a recently lost item or looking for lost change.
Also most historic places, all wooded areas and all places connected to military activity during the war are generally off limits.
If you find any relics "relevant" (defined by the local authorities) historic relics, weapons, ammo or lost items worth more than 20€, you need to turn them in.
Relics will be kept by the local authorities without compensation, weapons and ammo have to get reported in situe (never take them home) and lost items worth 20€ or more will become yours if nobody claims them within 6 months of handing them over to the local authorities.