Metal detecting in Australia has it’s limits for finding historic artifacts like you can find in other countries. So when I arrived in the Netherlands, I was excited to have the odds in my favour. But, I got the shock of my life when I found one of my oldest coins during my first time treasure hunting over here…on the beach! (Scroll to the bottom to watch the video).
When I arrived, I jumped on some Dutch metal detecting forums and asked who was keen to go treasure hunting. This is how I met Rob, a local who lives on the beach and spends a lot of metal detecting his local area. We set a time to meet at his local beach Zandvoort, I took the train to meet him and go for the first time metal detecting in the Netherlands.
If you’ve never been to the Netherlands, there is one beach that is so gigantic that it stretches the entire length of the country. It’s a very daunting site considering I only had an 11 inch search coil to cover it all. I noticed that a lot of the locals here take off down the beach in the hope of covering as much beach as possible. Totally different method to how I detect.
So while Rob took off down the beachI just stuck with my slow and low method. I must admit I felt like a dog off a leash just wanting to detect off into the distance, but I stuck with my guns and covered a small area thoroughly. At the same time I felt bad for meeting up with Rob but not hanging out so I would speed up to catch up with him to make it a bit more social.
After about an hour I got a high tone on my CTX 3030 metal detector which is what I brought over with me. A high tone on the CTX 3030 means a copper or silver target. It was only a light tone so it wasn’t going to be anything big.
After digging it out, I could see it was a coin but wasn’t sure what kind. I called Rob over to take a look. Rob cleaned it up and could tell that the coin was a 1893 silver 10 cents or a ‘Dubbeltje’ as it’s called in dutch. I couldn’t believe I found one of my oldest coins ever on the beach. I kept thinking that the coin has been down in the sand and waves for potentially over a hundred years just waiting to be rescued.
Here is the video I made of this fun session I had with Rob on my first time metal detecting in the Netherlands. I hope you enjoy watching 🙂 BTH