The Most Impressive Find, Missed

by: Walter Shivel

I was the lead of the video crew that filmed Thomas Dankowski for the Inland Coin and Relic hunting video. I edited and produced the video and was present for most of the video shooting. We captured a lot of really great finds on video, but we missed what I consider the most impressive find.

We started shooting on-site for the "Inland Coin and Relic" field segment of the video at about nine o'clock in the morning. We had to wait for sufficient daylight. Thomas just couldn't wait to get going. I don't think he was so excited about shooting the video, I think he was excited about hitting a new area that had never been metal detected before. After about 5 hours of shooting, the crew decided to break for lunch. There wasn't anywhere to eat nearby and we had only planned to take a 30 minute break from shooting, so we had some food brought in and ate picnic style under a tree on site. As the crew ate, Thomas kept on metal detecting. He was about 20 feet from where we were eating when he hit a 'target'. While he was working the metal detector on his find, he was narrating his discovery as he had been for the past five hours. We heard him say that the target sounded like a penny, but also sounded to be the size of a dime. We continued eating, probably just another penny like the dozen or so he had found earlier. The cameras were off, nobody was capturing the audio. Thomas started digging and when he recovered the target, he started laughing while saying "I was right, it is a penny that is the size of a dime". Upon recovering the target, it could be seen that somebody had shaved a penny down to the size of a dime, evidently to fool a vending machine into thinking it was a dime. The crew got up and went over to look at his discovery. They were impressed, but not surprised. They had been watching and recording Thomas's finds all morning, so they knew that he was good at identifying objects even before digging them up. I was impressed also, but the first thing that went through my mind was "We didn't get that on video". I told Thomas that he had to stop metal detecting until we got the cameras and sound back on. I could tell it was killing him to have to stop, knowing that there were still many treasures hidden at this site. He didn't rush us through the rest of our lunch, but you could tell he wanted to get back to metal detecting just as soon as he could. We shot another four hours that day. Thomas wanted to continue on, but the light was fading. I believe that Thomas would have detected all night, I don't think he would need a flashlight, he "sees" with the metal detector!

While working the video shoot, I didn't really have time to absorb the content of the video as it was being shot. I had to look at the lighting, contrast, shot angles, background and backlighting and all the technical aspects of recording the scenes. It was Thomas's job to provide the content, it was my job to get the content captured. After shooting, I had over eleven hours of video to edit into a final product. I had to watch each minute of the captured video numerous times, to determine what segments would be candidates for the final cut and what definitely would stay out. During the editing process, I had the opportunity to analyze and absorb the content. Before working on the Metal Detecting Real World Techniques Inland Coin and Relic Hunting, I had never swung a metal detector in my life. I now have a CZ-3D and get out and detect whenever I can. Thomas has taught me everything I know about metal detecting. Unfortunately, he hasn't taught me everything he knows about metal detecting, but I'm still learning! I haven't found anything really neat yet, but I have a few spots in mind...

Happy Hunting
     Walter Shivel

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