THE NEXT BIG THING?

Image via WikipediaMetal Detectors Hit the Jackpot
Sales are way up as gold prices soar; hauling a pound of jewelry off the beaches of Lake Michigan


In 1985, Ron Shore began selling metal detectors from his Chicago basement. The shop limped along for two decades, and five years ago, with the price of an ounce of gold at about $650, he nearly closed it. (click below to read more)


This year, gold has soared to more than $1,600 an ounce, and Mr. Shore, 66, is on track to rake in $1.2 million in sales. "It's been gangbusters," he said, noting that his retail business—which sells detectors priced from $150 to $25,000—has doubled every year for three years running. In December, he quit his day job with a graphic-arts firm. "I couldn't keep up with it anymore," he said.
With the price of precious metals on the rise and the economy stuck in a weak recovery, the metal-detector business is booming.
"It's the get-rich-quick mentality, or find some extra change to put in the gas tank," said Mike Scott, sales director for First Texas Products of El Paso, which last year sold $15 million worth of its gold-prospecting metal detectors, marking the third consecutive year that sales of the product have tripled.

With the economy in a slump and gold at record highs, more people are supplementing their income by hunting for treasure - with metal detectors. WSJ's Jack Nicas reports from Chicago.
The top U.S. retailer, Kellyco Metal Detectors in Winter Springs, Fla., saw annual sales climb 63% from 2005 to 2010, to $24.8 million. The store projects sales of $26 million this year.
The phenomenon isn't limited to the United States. Minelab, an Australian company that sells high-end metal detectors for as much as $5,600, sold $118 million worth last year, more than double its sales of $46 million in 2009. Minelab partly attributes the jump in sales of the premium detectors to a gold rush in Sudan, where droves of modern-day prospectors with gold fever have traveled in search of fortune. The company projects continued growth this year.
Metal detectors began largely as military devices, said Stu Auerbach, who opened Kellyco in the early 1970s, when simpler, cheaper versions of the devices hit the commercial market. Sales remained steady for decades, he said, until they started to spike five years ago.
The hobby's rising fortunes have made a virtual celebrity of "Chicago Ron" Guinazzo, a Chicago firefighter whose weekly YouTube videos of detecting tips and treasures have drawn nearly 850 subscribers and 278,000 views.
Mr. Guinazzo got his start with metal detectors in 1983 when he used one to look for his missing high-school class ring. He never found the ring, but since then has unearthed countless others, along with gold coins and dentures. For a dying woman, he once found an urn containing her late husband's ashes.
Mr. Guinazzo, 50, said that he and his partner Mark Slinkman, 40, hauled a pound of gold jewelry off Chicago beaches last year. They attribute their success to a mastery of the nuances of their detectors' beeps. (Different metals and depths elicit different tones and pitches from the machine.) The two use a Minelab Excalibur, a $1,300 device made for underwater detecting.
"We've built a rapport with our machines," Mr. Guinazzo said on a recent morning, smoking thin cigars with Mr. Slinkman as they leaned on their Excaliburs along the Lake Michigan shoreline.
Nearby, Lamont O'Laughlin, a 51-year-old electrician, swept his detector listlessly over the sand. "Just coins," he said of the day's haul. "Those guys find all the good stuff."
Concerned that national archaeological treasures will be looted, many countries, including France and Italy, ban or restrict metal-detecting. But some have made peace with the amateur treasure hunters. More than a decade ago, the British Museum began recording artifacts found by the public, creating a registry of the finds for archaeologists, said Michael Lewis, deputy head of the program. Detectorists, as they call themselves, have contributed most of the registry's 700,000 finds, he said, and archaeologists have since largely dropped their complaints.
Historians and detectorists have also teamed up in the Hamptons on New York's Long Island. Since November, detectorists have paid the Southampton Historical Society $100 apiece for a weekend of searching on the society's private land. Detectorists have brought home Colonial-era coins and musket balls, and the program has brought in nearly $10,000 to help the society restore old barns.
For most hunters, real treasure is elusive. Mr. O'Laughlin and his brother, Casey, 50, have been detecting for decades but usually find garbage or lost change. "You barely find enough to pay for the batteries," Casey O'Laughlin said.
Javier Castrejon said that he bought a $250 detector last year, thinking it would pay for itself, but quickly realized otherwise. "Mostly I find nails or buttons," he said. But the 33-year-old said that he enjoys the new hobby and, "being laid off, any extra change helps."
Mike Bach, an 80-year-old actor, bought his first detector last month and, after two days, bought another for his 72-year-old wife, Darlene. The Bachs say they fell for the hobby's adventure, not its returns. "I've racked up about $1.85 in quarters and pennies," Mr. Bach said after a recent day of detecting. "But it's addictive...like prospecting."