Aldi's metal detector: €50 and finds since 2017

Aldi's metal detector: 50 euros, four years and a heritage looting fine

Is a 50-euro metal detector worth it? The question comes up every summer in the supermarket's bazaar aisle, ever since 2017, when the Maginon MD-1120 appeared in the flyer and someone decided to put it to the test with a mix of curiosity and thrift. Four years later, in June 2021, the same device was back on the shelves and the answer was still far from unanimous: some people pull up a gold ring, others only horseshoe nails. Price ranges in the sector run from 30 euros for a clone on Asian platforms to 150 for a Bounty Hunter Tracker IV, and the jump in quality isn't always proportional.

What you actually find with a 50-euro detector

The first documented find after the purchase was a 15-centimetre iron rod bent into a U, a decomposing soda can and a greenish cylindrical stone the buyer attributed to mineralized rubble. Eight holes, four false positives before hitting on the sensitivity and discrimination settings. The device has three wheels —coil sensitivity, volume and discrimination— and cheap plastic finishes, with a shaft that measures 112 centimetres fully extended.

Another user's tally after several outings is more telling: 73.20 euros on beaches, a gold ring valued at 150 euros at the gold buyer's, a 10-cent coin from the Provisional Government of 1870, seven donkey horseshoes, two Mauser Kar 98 casings, a shirt button and, in their own words, "a couple of tons of junk". The discriminator works, they insist, but you have to test it in the air at home until you understand it. Sensitivity at medium or one notch above, with no interference under high-voltage power lines.

Junk is 90% of the haul, and that's not the machine's fault

Time to lower expectations here. In livestock areas with centuries of history, a detector without discrimination can beep ten times per square metre: square-section nails used to shoe horses, fragmented wire, old rod-opening tin cans, bottle caps. The proportion of junk is extremely high at any price range, and telling it apart from so much scrap is hard. Sometimes something good hides under a bad sound, so you have to dig.

Ground mineralization is the other enemy. In highly mineralized soils or on the beach, salt ions generate false positives if you don't adjust the ground balance. It's on bad terrain that a machine's quality shows, and a 50-euro model falls short sooner than a mid-range one. The Aldi buyer himself was already saving up for a Garrett after admitting the gadget wasn't cutting it.

The problem isn't the detector, it's the law

Here comes the twist nobody expects when buying a bazaar toy. An acquaintance of one participant went near a 12th-century hermitage and got a fine for looting cultural heritage. Spain's Historical Heritage Law requires reporting any object that may be over 200 years old, and selling it can miccionan the difference between an administrative offence and a crime that goes to trial. The contrast with the UK is inevitable: there, treasure hunting is popular and Roman and Celtic finds hit the press almost every month, while in Spain a good part of accidental discoveries never see the light of day.

Gold fever and dowsing as a way of life

The thread drifted towards gold prospecting. An economist working at an advisory firm quit his job, his vvife and his daughter to go north looking for gold. Those around him think he lost his mind. Those who have tried it show, in 30 minutes of sluice and panning, a result that, in their own words, turns the activity into a rewarding sport in the great outdoors. Spain's known gold-bearing areas have been exploited since Roman times, and Asturias concentrates the most serious operations, with projects that have sparked neighbourhood protests.

And the Aldi detector? It returns to the flyer every so often, there are still four or five units in the drawer, and nobody has confirmed substantial improvements over the original model. For tinkering around for a while, fine. For getting rich, no.