Vintage Meteorite Hunting Machine (Humor)

Here's a humorous short about a beloved metal detector.

My father bought me my first detector back in 1971. I was 10 years old and it was a low-tech thing made of plastic tubing with a simple on-off switch. Basic? Sure, but I loved that thing and together we went into the hazardous, mudslipping River Thames at low tide, and forests surrounding Royal Air Force bases that had been bombed relentlessly by the Luftwaffe only 25 years before. The concept that I could find buried history underground by — essentially — waving a magic wand over it had me hooked hard and permanently.

Most detectorists search for precious metals, not rusty bomb fragments, so when I got serious about meteorite hunting in the 1990s, I encountered a major technical obstacle. Detectors were being built specifically to ignore iron. A “modern” detector would cold-shoulder barbed wire, nails, horseshoes, bolts, old batteries, and a billon other ferrous human discards, while a gold nugget or a hoard of Roman silver coins would sing out, “Here I am!” Since meteorites are rich in iron, I needed a detector that was the exact opposite of standard — a bit like me, really. I discovered my redeemer on a Civil War relic hunter’s forum. “That blasted Fisher 1266!” the frustrated relic hunters would gripe. “I dug down 13 inches for a rusty piece of iron.”

This was what I needed, but finding a 1266 was no cakewalk. They were no longer manufactured and as soon as a used model appeared on the market it was whisked off to Cambodia to hunt for unexploded mines — something else the 1266 is very good at! When I finally did get one, it hummed like an angel.

On its first real outing I found multiple buried stony-iron meteorites at Glorieta Mountain, New Mexico while filming Travel Channel’s "The Best Places to Find Cash & Treasures," which many see as the first real meteorite hunting show. I used it on the PBS "Wired Science" pilot and again on my Meteorite Men pilot. Fisher Labs was so delighted and surprised to see a 1266 on Science Channel that they reached out to me and did a complete refurb on what was then a legacy unit. The very issue that made the 1266 anathema for relic hunters made it a dream for this meteorite hunter.

This 1266-X has found many beautiful space rocks and is a TV star too! It is one of more than 140 lots in the Geoff Notkin Collection of Metoerites Signature Auction at Heritage Auctions Nature & Science and Heritage Auctions on July 22.

Auction info / bid / register: ha.com/notkin

Video courtesy of Heritage Auctions

Видео Vintage Meteorite Hunting Machine (Humor) канала Geoff Notkin