Meet the Detectorist - Vonncrit and Pondguru

Now then, this is an interview that I did with a fella called David from South Africa. He's a sound fella. Check his channel out. The link is in the video description. Enjoy. Good evening everybody and thank you very much for joining me once again on Getting to Know the Detectorist. And as you can see, the legend, the glowing aura that surrounds this gentleman is none other than Richard from the YouTube channel Pond Guru. Richard, thank you very much for joining me, man. No problem at all, man. No problem. Anytime. I see you've got a beautiful backdrop there. That pond that I've seen on a couple of videos of yours, is that perhaps at the back? Oh, it's him! It's actually elevated from the house. We live in a bungalow, so when we look out of any of our windows, we can't see the pond. All we see is the dam wall. We have to go up into the attic and look out of one of the attic windows to see into the pond. Oh, man, that's sad. But that, I must add, that's a beautiful pond. Now, let's get back to what I want to talk to you about, and that's metal detecting. Now, you're obviously involved in a lot of outdoor activities like hunting and fishing, and you've got plenty of videos that focuses on... Um, aquarium, fish care, tanks, filters, all that type of stuff, but I want to focus on metal detecting, if you don't mind, since, uh, you've had a gent interview you recently about your fishy-fishy habits. Now, where did this all start for you, Richard? Where did you decide you want to get a metal detector and dig in the ground? Well, years ago, my father actually bought a metal detector because he owned a sawmill. And he was getting timber from Latvia and Russia, where there was a lot of shrapnel and bullets in the wood, so he bought a metal detector to be able to scan the wood before they put it through the saws, because if they hit a big lump of shrapnel, it could just destroy the saw. Yeah, that makes sense. So he would use that during the day, then I would take it out on the night into the fields around my place and see what I could find. And so, based on what you've found, you've decided that this little... The hobby is going to be the one that you want to get. Actually, what was your first find? First find? Let's put it this way, Richard. What was the first thing that you found that caused you to want to go out and go detect again? Well, it was with the old metal detector, which I think was a Seascope something or other. This was 25, 30 years ago, maybe. And I thought it was a Roman sword, but I doubt it was. It seemed more iron than bronze. My mother ended up throwing it away, so that was the thing that really fired my imagination. I don't think I ever found any coins or anything with it. I just found this big rusty lump of metal that I was convinced was a sword. So that's where it started and then I used that for a few years and then the speaker went on it so I couldn't hear what it was telling us. Okay. And after that I just kind of got more into the outdoor side of things. I got more into fishing. I was fishing every every hour and I kind of drifted away from that over time. Right. But then came back to it a few years ago. I thought I thought, I'll give it a go again, you know, there's got to be stuff still in these fields around my place. So I just got a, what was it, a Garrett Ace 150. Okay, I've got one, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and it was alright, you know, the first few times I was out I found a few coins around the place, I think the most notable one was probably the George II. Wow, that's a big jump, that's a big jump, exactly. Exactly. But that's money well spent, actually, in my opinion. It is. As soon as I got that, I got it with the 11-inch coil. I went into the same fields, and I found stuff all the time. They've been done to death over the years by people with machines that were maybe only getting down five, six inches. And granted, it took me six months to learn how to use this thing. But when I did learn how to use it, based on what I was finding out about the machine and the ground, When I did get those set and sorted out, I was finding stuff way down in places that had been hammered and forgotten about by other people. Right, right. And it really justified the outlay, the financial outlay, you know? Yeah. Actually, what do you do with your finds? Do you have a collection or...? I've got a box which I keep all the nice coins and the silver coins in. If I get any scrap silver, I tend to just put it in a bag and sell it for scrap. Yeah. Mm-hmm. There's not much of scrap really, Put this... it generally comes up in pretty good condition. Yeah, I've seen your videos. Actually, on this site, that's exactly what I would do with jewelry and things like that. I'll just go pawn it, because I'm not going to wear it, and it's not collectible. So, unless it's like the ring that I found on an Anglo war site. It was a battle between the British and the South African tribe called the Zulus in 1879 and I found a bronze or copper, it's actually, I think it's bronze, a ring. That had the Freemason emblem on it, on that field, so that's definitely from Europe, that's definitely from that continent, put it that way. So yeah, even though I detect mostly battlefields, and I never expect to find anything civilized there in terms of coins or jewelry, you still get them, you still find them. So yeah, I agree. Coins and things like that I won't get rid of, but jewellery, apart from the one that I found, jewellery I'll just... Well, I don't actually have that problem with jewellery, because I hardly find any at all. It's actually good that way, in my opinion. Thank you very much. I hunt here up in the hills, and really the only thing that you find is artifacts or coins. Very little jewellery. The only gold ring that I found was for somebody. I was doing work at somebody's house and the fella said My wife lost a ring about 10 years ago. Was there any chance of trying to find it? I said, oh, yeah, no problem. So I went out, and it took us ages to find it. It was nowhere near where I thought she'd lost it. But I found this huge gold ring with a great big stone in it, and that's the only gold ring I've ever found. Well, tell me more about that. Was it deep underground, or was it not too deep? It was only four inches, maybe. But it was actually down on the banks of the river. And they lived on a river that really flowed hard in the winter, and it was covered by sand, so the river had obviously been over the top of it, and just buried it. It hadn't washed away, but it just buried it. She's actually really fortunate that it wasn't washed away. No, and she was over the moon to get it back, because she just assumed that she would never see it again, you know. That's awesome, man. That's really, I would love to do that. Just to give you a quick story, there's a friend of mine that invited me to come and detect near his house, or in the area that he lived in, and he told me that it's such a close-knit community. The people found out that he's got a metal detector. He's probably the only one in town that's got one. And they said, listen, would you mind coming over to our place? Our father passed away recently, but he always told us that he buried a box full of old ammunition somewhere on the property. So they've actually asked him to come and check if he can find it. And that's the type of thing that I would really like to do when it comes to helping out others. Now, Rich, if you look at everything that you've found so far, Which is a lot. It's been a couple of years, or quite a few years. What would you identify as the find that made you the most excited? It's a difficult question to answer, I must say. Because once you've found your, in my opinion, and the people that I've interviewed, once you've found your favorite thing, that's not your favorite anymore. The next thing becomes your favorite. Richard, now, you've been detecting for quite a while. Is there something that stands out that you would classify as your favorite find? Definitely. When I first got the e-track, my goal was to find a hammered coin, because around here where I live, it's all pasture. To find a hammered coin is like finding the Loch Ness Monster, you know? There's just none of them about. And I set myself the target of finding one within a year, which seems like a long time, but considering how few of them there are around here, I thought that was a realistic target. Okay. And. Two days after the year had passed, I found one in the field just behind my house. Wow. Oh. So actually... I was on a real, like, a total coin hunt, you know, I've got to find it, got to find it. And I was out. As soon as the kids went to bed, I was going out for a couple of hours and just thinking, there's got to be one somewhere, there's got to be one somewhere. Then all of a sudden, one pops up. The first thing I did, I phoned my wife and I said, I've just found a hammered coin. You know, she was actually pleased for me as well. Have you got a video up about that? It was in the dark, I didn't video it. Okay. So, it was only about this deep as well. I couldn't believe it. The field's never been ploughed and it was no more than two inches deep. Wow. It was a little, who was it, King Edward I hammered coin. So it was, ooh, I don't know, 900 years old or so. Wow. But it was a pretty good condition and it was quite a rare mint as well. It was a Canterbury mint. So, no it wasn't, it was an exit I meant, so it wasn't a very common one, so I was very pleased with that. I can understand why that's a special find. Now that's something that you're probably displaying somewhere in the house. No, it's just in my case. And the strange thing is, it took me a year and two days to find that, and I was out all the time. Two or three days later, I found another one. So the moment you stopped looking for it, it popped out by itself. Yep, just came. Well, that's how life works, actually. I can relate to that. Oh. Speaking about that, what is the next thing that you really want to find when going out? I really want to find a gold coin. It's something that... I've got sites where I know there'll be gold coins there. I've got a big mansion house where I hunt. And there was extreme wealth there in Georgian times, you know, late 1700s, right through to the 1900s, the family were extremely rich, and I found loads of pre-decimal pennies, half pennies, sixpences, the odd bigger silver coin, no gold, no rings, no gold, a big silver spoon, and that's as near as I've got to a gold coin, but the minute I stop looking for one, as you see it, it'll turn up. I was just going to say. I'm in no hurry. Thank you. Thank you. Now Richard, give us a little bit of an idea. Now we've talked about it lightly, you use the e-track and the special spade. Give us an idea what equipment you use. I use a Garrett Pro pointer. I have tried the Minelab one. I actually bought that when it first came out and I was pretty disappointed with it. Right. It didn't detect deep enough in the soil. And the vibration just wasn't there, the sound wasn't there, it just didn't work in real situations. Although, apparently it does work very well in America and Australia where they've got highly mineralized soils. So, given that it was actually developed in Europe, I'm not sure why they didn't develop it for the Europe market instead of 10,000 miles away, you know. Right, so you're on the Garrett Pro pointer. What else? Up until recently, that was about it. I used to just go out in manky old wellies, so I've got myself a nice pair of boots, a nice pair of waterproof, kind of like army style boots. I think they were from Jack Pike. They're nice, breathable, comfortable boots, because when you're climbing up and down the hills and, you know, passing through woodland and so on, little streams, you want to be comfortable. And I also actually, I've got some cracking trousers as well. What are they called? They're called Balraven trousers, they're from either Sweden or Norway or something like that, one of the Scandinavian countries, but they are really comfortable, they're not waterproof, but they dry out really quickly, you get a little breeze and they just totally dry out. Yes, I don't know if you're familiar with the material Drymax, it's the same, it's like a light nylon type material, it's not waterproof, but it gets dry, as quick as it gets wet so it's really comfortable it's really light yeah yeah these are really comfortable i've just i've just got a couple of uh nice jackets as well i've got a Norona waterproof jacket which again i think it's a norwegian thing or something um i bought that one second hand i've got to admit just because of the cost of the new is just ridiculous Yeah, I can understand. that one looks in reasonable nick i'll buy that you know no problem and that that's what i use I mean, even just the likes of this. Just a nice, windproof smock. That's as good as anything. I just, I don't really care what I wear. If I get wet, I just go to the van and I just change the top and just get wet again, and again, and again. It doesn't bother us, you know. That was actually the next question. How do you move about? Have you got, so you've got a van? Of course, yeah. Yeah. The areas that you detect is mostly pastures and woodland. Bam, not so much poodlin'. Although... There is woodland there. It's often very hilly, so there's not much happened in the woodland. Sometimes I get a woodland that's maybe on the top of a hill, and quite often you've got pasture around it, and often when you've got woodland on the top of a hill, It's woodland instead of pasture because they haven't been able to plow it at any point. Possibly a settlement there, so I sometimes have a look in there, but I'm not very good at finding things in woodland. It's generally pasture. That's where everything happens. So do you actually have a specific method about finding places to detect, or do you just point your van into a direction and you stop where you've got permission or whatever? How do you go about that? I do just go wherever I've got permission, but when I'm at those sites, I do kind of pick where to go based on what would have been available at the time it was most likely colonized with people, if indeed it was colonized by people. Okay, Rich, I call that virgin ground. Now, you were saying you found the guy's gold ring, and then you found a bunch of coins as well. I did. After I found the ring, I said, do you mind if I go in your paddock? And of course, after giving his wife the ring back, he could hardly say no, could he? Yeah, of course. But he was glad for me to go there. He said, as far as I know, nothing's ever happened there, but knock yourself out, you know, have a go. so i had a couple of hours left and i just just wandered around in circles in the field and within a couple of hours i found 26 or 27 coins like a right handful of coins including six silver coins i think it was two two sixpences two shillings and two florins all in really good condition and i showed him I kind of believe there's that much stuff there. I said, aye, I've found badges and all sorts of things as well from the Navy, Army, Boys Brigade, Scouts. I said, it looks like it's been a campsite. So he said, well, why don't you just hammer it until you're sick of this site? I said, yeah, fair enough. I'll be back tomorrow. I went back for a longer session, found 50 or 60 coins. I was getting mixed signals in some places, so I thought, I'll dig there. So I dug down, and I was finding rusty tin cans and burnt bits of wood from a fire. I started spiraling out from that point, and then you would hit a coin, maybe hit a coin or two, you'd keep on that radius, no not on that radius, but it caught up on that circumference, circumference, radius, diameter, I don't know, you'd basically work around in that circle anyway, and you'd hit a coin, and then two or three coins, two or three coins, and some of them, some of the pocket spills were like seven and eight coins all in the same hole. It was just incredible. You could tell where the fire was, and you could tell exactly where the people had been sitting, and that site has produced two to three hundred coins. It's just unbelievable. Oh my word, that's a lot. It is, and even when I've thought it's been absolutely hammered to death, because I've been up there with the Deus and the ATRAX, I've considered it to be pretty much dead, and I went up a few weeks ago with a lad, we walked through it to get to another field which I'd hardly done, I said, you know, this is the field where I've had all the coins that used to be great, but there's nothing left in it now, we'll just, might as well detect whilst we walk through it, we might pick something up, and by the time we got from one end, See, the other would have found, oh, how many, would have found seven silver coins and three copper coins. Oh, my word. Everything must have just been right. It didn't matter where we were. We were just hitting the coin. We were literally just trying to walk in a straight line. Couldn't believe it. Oh, man, that's awesome. Next time I went up, I was there two hours, never had a signal. You see, we're going back to the beginning again. If you want something, you won't find it. You need to let the item find you. Yeah. Richard, when you look at yourself going out detecting, what type of detectorist are you? Do you focus on a specific target or do you just go out to a site and find whatever you get? Pretty much just go out and find whatever's there. I tend to go out with an e-track, big coil. Or, if I've got an area that's got a lot of signals, I'll go out with the dais and the small coil. I'm always hunting relatively deep. I don't know why, because most of the stuff you dig is between four and six inches. But I just don't. I'm really frightened that I've missed anything, you know? And generally, if the ground's never been turned over, the lower down it is, the older it is. Of course, yeah, yeah. So I'm generally hunting quite slowly. And I'm just happy finding whatever I find. I was out a couple of days ago and I found an old iron. You get a fully intact old iron that you would put on top of a range. Oh, okay. And then you'd use that to iron your shirts. And it was rusty as hell but it was a really great find. That is fantastic because my mother actually owns one that's made out of copper. So I know exactly what you're talking about. That's an awesome find. You know, one of the things that I would really love to find, and it's a simple thing, is a hatchet head, axe head. As simple as that. I just want to find one, because I don't have an axe at home. I need one. Ha, ha, ha. Well, actually on that subject, one thing I would dearly love to find is a Bronze Age axe head. And I have been found in my area, and they're beautiful little things made of bronze and just a lovely little design, but I've never found one. Keep at it. You know, if you don't look for it, you will find it. It's just the way it works. Richard, if you look at your channel, you've been at this YouTube thing for quite a few years, and it's safe to say that you've got loads of experience. You've learned a lot from how to engage. Viewers, what advice would you give guys starting out or who is relatively new to YouTube? What would you suggest they focus on or try to avoid in terms of video editing, footage, material, presentation? What can you tell them? It would be either to be very informative about your machine, where you're hunting or what happened in that place that you're hunting, give people information. Information that is interesting to you but also may be interesting to them. People clamor for information and if there's just shaky footage of people digging up coins on the beach, video after video after video, it's going to get boring after a while. It's always nice, especially it's nice to have a static shot as well. It's nice to have a tripod and actually talk into the camera That makes such a difference. There's a fella in Germany who has started making videos quite recently called Hans from Terra Germania, and he's really well made. He's a steady, and he explains about the area, he explains about the finds, and he's doing it exactly right. Right, so I think I'm going to put up, if you don't mind, a little link to Hans, because I'm subscribed to him, I know exactly what you're talking about, so that people can go and check out his videos to get an idea of what you're talking about. And the next thing, metal detecting as a hobby. I want to start out. What advice would you give a new detectorist or somebody considering starting the hobby? If they know somebody with a detector, ask if they can come out with them. Even if they're not actually detecting themselves, just to see what's found, just to see how to go on, see that people meet the landowner, so they know how to communicate with landowners. If they actually do already own a detector, I would advise them to join a club. This is in the UK, there's a hell of a lot. The clubs in the UK, as I suppose there is in every country, you know, I know in America, they're banging their clubs. They're so passionate about it. You know, you get rallies where there's like two or three hundred people on a little hill and you just, do those machines not interfere with each other? Yeah. It's incredible the way them fellas go on. They're just so passionate about it, you know? Yeah. And even little rusted lumps of, I don't know, like even like half an ammunition box or something, it's like that's a crack and find or a buckle from the Civil War. That's like the equivalent of me finding a Georgian gold coin. It's all about... Someone once told us history is where you find it. And in Europe, we've got thousands of years of history. In some places, you can find things from Victorian times all the way back to Celtic and Roman without any problem. You go to the so-called newer countries, Australia, even South Africa. You know where it was colonized by us terrible English people, sent our criminals down to Australia. And they're rediscovering that colonization in America, they're discovering where the pioneers went and all that. It's totally interesting. It's really the discovery of their history. Only hunt on land where you've got permission. Because if you get known as being a night hawker or a day hawker, people are just not going to want to know. If you are in a club, they're going to kick you out of the club. Landowners get to know, you're going to lose that land. And then you're going to lose your next land. And before you know it, you've got nowhere to hunt. So just do everything by the book. I agree. I agree. As a pretty successful YouTuber, do you feel pressure to put out decent content? I do. I always like to mention, even just as a bare minimum, how deep I find something. And also, I'll sometimes say what the settings are. I'll say which detector I'm using and why I'm using that particular detector. I'll explain about the sights. And lately, I've been trying to put in a little bit about the gear that I've been buying and using, and whether it's any good or not, just for people who are starting out or people who are interested, to give them more information. I also, like Dave, I feel pressure to reply to every comment as well, which is very difficult because I've got a thousand and something videos of all sorts of types on the channel and I do feel pressure to reply to every one because I see videos that other people have uploaded and there's people asking relevant, Important questions, and they're just being ignored. I feel sorry for those people, you know? Yeah, no, I understand. I understand exactly what you're talking about. And that's why I want to use this opportunity to thank you as being one of the guys that's got plenty on your plate and finding time to support small guys like me and doing this interview. The same with Dave. I need to thank him as well. Well, he... Like you said, he replies to every comment. Big or small. And even though he's trying to stick to only questions, he still replies to people saying, good video, Dave. And he would say, thank you. So yeah, there is a big level of pressure to, I think it's self-inflicted, something that pressure that you put on yourself to satisfy the people that actually support you. And I feel the same way. Um, yeah. Now, um, In a few videos back, I actually saw you promoting somebody's YouTube channel. You actually gave them a little bit airtime on your channel. It was actually the one where you showed off your new digger. There was a lady called... oh man, I have to... Sammy Hemi. Sammy. Hemi Sammy. Yes, that's right, that's right, Hemi. Sammy Sammy, sorry about me forgetting your name. I'll put a link to your channel up here in the screen. Could you tell us about this little promotional thing? That was something that was really born out of the Worldwide Metal Detect and Find series that I did. A few years ago, maybe a year or two ago, I put an appeal out for anybody who had detecting channels who wanted to show something that they'd found. So people were sending me 30-40 seconds. Clips of what they've found, explaining what they've found it with, where they've found it, how deep it was, and then just doing a little promotion on their channel. And I was banging all those into a video. I did ten parts of that. Some of them were quite long, they were like 20, 30 minutes or something, but it was just an amalgamation of what everybody had been finding from around the world in one video. Just to see if people search in video after video after video for the great stuff. It was all in one video. So I did ten parts of that. And then it kind of slowed down a little bit after part ten. I thought I'll just do a compilation of parts one to ten, which ended up being about two hours long. So that's in the detecting playlist somewhere. I don't know where, but it's in there somewhere. Oh, well, we'll get a link up to that. Yeah. And I thought I still really want to promote other people's channels. So then I asked them just to do a basic advert for their channel, and I started using those at the beginning of my videos. And I find it's just a really good way to give them more exposure, because I've already got exposure. I'm, you know, already quite well up there, and it's just a good way to help them, because I didn't have that sort of help. It was a long slog, you know? Yeah. So it's just a good way to help people. I say there should be awards for people like you. One of the superstars in the community. Richard, I want to thank you for your time, taking time out of your personal life and private time to do this interview with me. I know it's late. We all can see it's dark outside. Richard, thank you very much. Guys, if you haven't seen any of Richard's or Pond Guru's videos, then I don't know where you've been hiding or what you've been doing. Click on the link below in the description. Otherwise, I'm going to put a link up on the screen to his channel. Just check him out. He won't waste your time. I can assure you that. Richard, thanks a lot once again. Thank you very much.