Anything metallic and reasonably conductive within roughly a foot of the surface: coins, rings, buttons, buckles, lead, keys, and a lot of pull tabs and bottle caps. It does not find stone, bone, gemstones or a loose diamond, and natural gold nuggets are a specialist job - the gold question has its own guide.
A beginner machine is not fussy about what kind of metal it reports - it reacts to anything that conducts electricity. The skill is not in making it beep; it beeps constantly. The skill is reading which beeps are worth a hole. So the honest list of what a detector finds is really two lists: the things you hoped for, and the things you will dig ten of for every good one.
The things you will actually dig
On typical ground with permission - a park, a school field, an old sports ground, a footpath verge - the overwhelming majority of good finds fall into four groups. None of them requires an expensive machine; every detector in our ranking handles all four.
| Target | How easy to find | Where it turns up |
|---|---|---|
| Coins (modern and old) | Easy - the classic beginner find | Parks, fields, paths, anywhere people gathered |
| Rings and jewellery | Easy when solid; a thin gold ring reads low | Beaches, swimming spots, parks, sports grounds |
| Relics: buttons, buckles, musket balls | Moderate - iron nearby confuses the signal | Old settlements, farmland, historic ground |
| Lead and small solid metal | Easy - lead gives a clear, friendly signal | Everywhere; often mistaken for something better |
| Modern trash: pull tabs, foil, caps | Too easy - this is 90 percent of signals | Everywhere people have been in the last century |
Coins: the bread and butter
Coins are what most people find first and most often. They are solid, round and a convenient size, so they return a clean, repeatable signal and a stable target-ID number. A detector with good coin depth and honest ID will pull clad coins from the top few inches all day, and the occasional older coin from deeper down where the ground has swallowed it over decades. This is exactly the ability we grade hardest - a machine that separates a coin from a bottle cap saves you a hundred pointless holes a season.
Rings and jewellery, and the pull-tab problem
A gold or silver ring is one of the most rewarding finds, and beaches and old picnic spots are full of them. The catch is that a small gold ring conducts almost exactly like an aluminium pull tab, so both read in the same low-to-mid range on the display. Beginners who reject that range to avoid trash also reject the gold. The answer is not a cleverer setting - it is patience: dig the ambiguous signals in a promising spot and accept that most will be tabs. That trade-off is the whole reason discrimination is a blunt instrument rather than a magic filter, a point we go into in how to use a metal detector.
Relics: buttons, buckles and lead
On older ground - a former farmstead, a field that has been worked for centuries, a site with real history and permission - the finds shift from coins to relics: buttons, buckles, thimbles, musket balls, harness fittings. These are harder, because relic ground is usually full of iron rubbish and rusted nails that mask the good targets. Depth matters more here too, since the interesting layer sits below the modern trash; how far down a machine can reach is its own subject, covered in how deep a metal detector can detect.
What it will not find
A detector only sees metal. It walks straight past stone, bone, pottery, glass, wood and amber, and it cannot find a loose gemstone or a diamond, because those do not conduct at all - a diamond ring is only detectable through its metal band. Very small, very deep or heavily corroded metal can also fall below what the machine can hear. And the big one that disappoints beginners: natural gold flakes and small nuggets are not a beginner target at all. Any detector finds a gold ring; almost none of them finds raw gold in the ground, which needs a high-frequency specialist machine and, more importantly, ground that actually contains gold. We spell out that gap in can a metal detector detect gold.
The coil changes what you find
Two people over the same field can come home with very different bags, and the search coil is part of why. A smaller coil separates targets better in trashy, iron-littered ground and is lighter to swing, so it is the better tool on a rubbish-strewn park or a tight relic site - it finds the good target sitting beside a nail. A larger coil covers more ground per sweep and reaches a little deeper, which suits open pasture and beaches where you are hunting depth and distance rather than picking a coin out of a scrapyard. Most beginner machines ship with a mid-sized coil that is a sensible all-rounder, and there is no need to buy another until the ground you actually detect tells you which way to go.
A realistic first month
Set expectations honestly and the hobby is a pleasure; set them from the box art and it is a let-down. A realistic first month, on ordinary ground with permission, is clad coins, a lot of trash, some lead, a stray key or two and - if you are lucky and persistent - a ring. Bench-test the machine at home first by waving a coin, a pull tab and an iron nail under the coil so you learn its language before you leave. Swing slowly, dig the repeatable signals, take your trash home, and the good finds accumulate. The step-by-step version of all of that lives in how to use a metal detector, and if you have not settled on a machine yet, our metal detector reviews score each one on exactly the coin-and-ring separation described here.
If you are choosing between two of the most common entry-level machines, our Garrett ACE 300 vs Fisher F22 comparison looks at which one separates these everyday targets more cleanly.
The ACE 300 isn't the only machine built for exactly this kind of ground - our Garrett ACE 300 vs Nokta Simplex Ultra comparison lines up the same everyday-target question against a submersible alternative.