Meet The Diggers

[Music] I'm Katie and I'm the ringmaster and we find treasure with this [Music] the boys from Garrett metal detectors are in town we're gonna do a little interview with them they want to know what we're all about I don't know why they want to know but they do so we're gonna tell them we don't even know what we're all about so we're gonna try it so we're gonna wing it and hopefully we don't look too stupid or worse yet make them look bad [Music] all right we are out today in the beautiful country of anaconda Montana and we're here with George lion and Tim Saylor stars of the hit TV show diggers on National Geographic Channel we thought we'd spend a little time with them and ask them a few questions how they get into all this and just give you some insight into these guys and why they are the guys that they are that's going to take a long time how long you been digging how long you been doing this kind of stuff man I got my first detector back in the 80s but you know until I moved out here about ten years ago I never really started in on it and when would he when George and I first met that's when it took off that's when we decided you know what I need something better than this old detector we started doing research came across the GTI 2,500 of all things you know and I mean I just sit there and stare at pictures of it you know and it's like I think this is the one I need it's talking to him about it he wasn't too excited about spinning actually read and I were you know with all the old cabins in Montana that's kind of where we got started I live here my whole life I knew a lot of places we could hunt I heard a lot of stories about treasure being found so when I first met Tim we decided we're gonna get detectors together and we started researching I'm in like you say came across the GTI 2500 he researched it I was researching it and then he told me the price I said there's no way so you know you get it or not whatever it does first meet each other though you aren't living in the same town back then were you yeah yeah we were I moved here about a little over 10 years ago and it's just weirdly you know as I was organizing the house moving stuff in I came across this antique detector I had and I thought you know I live in an old mining town I'm gonna go out in the backyard just see what happens right you know I barely even remembered how to use it you know I went out there and immediately found three silver dime Wow and I was like why haven't I been doing this my whole life you know I immediately you know I'm I immediately got rehook and so you know we got on the phone together and you know after he found out I was interested in in the market you know maybe buying a new one and he's like you know you know we could go here we could go there and we just started talking about it and it's snowballed into the fact that we just we've bought two GT I start going around and eventually it just ended up being this it's a long long story but it's just it's just weird that it happened that way what y'all obviously kind of gelled you kind of clicked I mean tell us about you get these nicknames for each other that you know we kind of hear on TV me and kg how that kind of got started is we would go out and hit old cabins and old yards and swimming holes and then I just started pulling out silver dollar after silver dollar I mean I had like four or five silver dollars before any of the other team had one you know and then I pull one out and then like a month later I pull another silver dollar out in him and my brother and Travis were they used to say you're the king I mean you're the king of silver dollars so they started to call me cagey and that's how King George came about you know they they named me I didn't name myself and then everywhere we would go he would find rings like we go to a yard he'd pull out one or two rings we go to a swimming hole he'd find a ring he got like cases of ring so obviously I just nicknamed him the ringmaster and that's just how the names came about you know kind of been shortened to kg and ringing yeah nicknames for nicknames the jibber fun you know silver dollars he's just kind of you know I clawed my way back over the years it took me like eight or nine years but I finally caught him and I think now we each have five yeah but I mean it hurt me so bad the one of his silver dollars that the first one from the 1800s he found like in 1882 or three I can't remember what it was a huge tree we're out in a ghost town and I walked around one side of the tree and then about an hour late he came down that path and went around the other side of the tree and that's where the dollar was and when he showed it to me and then he goes I go where'd you find that and he took me back there and showed me and I I it took me like a week to sleep again and then another time he found two like about this close to each other yeah to Morgan Dollars under this big tree and he found him and I still hadn't found any silver dollars and we were going home drive and you know and he's just got him like this just clinking him in his hand rolling him back and forth and I was just like nauseous you guys give each other a fair amount of grief out there from what I can see no we're always very polite to each other right it's a it's a friendly competition you know I mean you like when each other find something awesome but you always are envious too yeah it is true though you know a lot of people can't get over that or whatever but if he finds something great I mean that to me that's it would be no fun if you were the only one that found something every time cuz everybody else would not be having any fun you want to share in it the great days are the ones when you know all four of us used to go out and bam-bam-bam-bam every one of us would come home with a silver coin at least or something and everybody was happy you know so you teammate II see that's that's kind of the four of you guys and the ATC University what's behind all that what does that stand for aniconic aniconic treasure company that's the the the company we founded ourselves you know before the TV and and all the excitement of diggers and all that came about it was our own company we just got a couple metal detectors decided to make some DVDs to sell on eBay or Amazon or wherever just to make a few bucks so that we can afford maybe a new machine or a trip somewhere once a year and then when outta control so that's where the extreme detecting videos came about extreme metal detecting yeah it was that that it was just a you know it was like a thing where we were watching other videos to get you know just to learn new tips we were learning you know and you know right away the learning curve is steep you know you start picking stuff up and he'd order a DVD off the internet and everything was a planet fake find and and a lot of it wasn't disguised it's just that they were training how to find stuff so you know they'd always pull out a $20 gold piece you know like it happened every day and we were looking at them thinking you know we could make real videos ones that were you know more interesting and shows the excitement of the moment and everything and so just out of the blue we just made the decision and bought all the software the computers the cameras and just start carrying them for two years and we knew it would take forever because obviously you're filming a bunch of stuff that's never going to be used you know every time you dig a memorial penny nobody cares but man when stuff did happen we got the real reactions and people really liked it they reacted to that when they saw come into style and there's kind of crazy and you know off-the-wall it's not your average detecting guys out there the way you like no it's I mean it's intense as it can be for metal detecting and we kind of you know we'd go nuts run around freaked out do flips we didn't care and it's just the way we are in real life I mean we don't fake anything I mean we're not gonna fake a dig we're gonna dig it up it's gonna be real yeah and I mean you know for TV production stuff everybody knows that you know a lot of times we'll find something and you know if it starts to rain or the light changes or whatever they'll say okay put it back in the hole pull it back out you know we do that all the time that's just normal all the fines are real but the vines are real there is there has never been an item that we dug up that was not you know I mean we went out and found it and then you know if we have to change the angle or something whatever well--that's thing you're there for a period of time working it because at the end of the show you might see the table with all the bags of stuff that's been tagged and bagged but we only saw you find five or six you know key things on the show yeah I mean what people have to understand about the show is we film you know five to seven days straight you know 80 90 hours a week or a 22 minute segment I mean we're not gonna show filling in every hole we're not gonna show the flip tops I mean we're there for you know to entertain and to show people what you really do find out there if you put enough time in but your reactions are genuine I mean you're really excited when you find a half-dollar or some old colonial coin or something yeah yeah they tried they actually try to found real time everything you know but after a lot of times after you find a tin you freak out and there's you can see a cameraman in the background or a house or a car or whatever you know that's part of it you know and then we got to go back and then we got to put it in and then they get the little camera so they can get the good details and stuff out of it you know but the reactions are usually a hundred percent genuine yeah you've got you know family and all you've got kids and all that are they proud were they embarrassed when they see my kids loved it I mean they love it you know we do talks at the school the teachers are always having us in and everywhere we go we're being noticed and all that you know and my wife you know it's a little harder on her because basically when I leave she's a single parent she has a lot to deal with you know it's hard in that aspect you know but they're there basically they're behind me and my son it's funny because he you know he's a teenager and teenagers don't want anything to do with their parents like you know he'll he'll make his mother drop him off a couple blocks away from the school you know because he doesn't want to be seen with the parent but you know he'll he's interested in the show and it's just kind of funny because I always threaten it's like you know I I'll come to your school and give a little talking he's like no dad it's because don't do it but he does he loves history he loves like guns from the 1800s and he's definitely into the kind of stuff so he loves to hear what we're finding now we brought a couple finds with you you get a few things we can look at oh yeah generally what we can do is look at a couple things here and if there's time later maybe we can go back and check out you know I know you've got a lot of silver coins and stuff Yeah right I was just hoping to bring a couple things today just to give people an idea the kind of things you found in the past oh just fun stuff stuff like this I mean when this came out of the ground remember that yep that was fun we were out on a detecting trip you know for a weekend or something and I pulled this out just it's just one of those unexpected things and it's just massive old piece of jewelry and I mean you know Joss is nice I like that yep and I did manage to catch kg but I mean it doesn't happen very often I mean if you think about it my first detector was in the 80s yeah and it's 2013 and still I've only found five dollars you know those are good five dollars okay so you have to work hard for them oh yeah so these mean more to me than any you know even though they're worth you know twenty thirty dollars apiece all right they mean more than a rare one it's like a piece of history I mean and you'll never see again like that yeah I mean we have boxes and boxes of stuff but I mean I got you know no that's awesome look at the u.s. perfect it is got the puppy paw in the yeah I mean it's just perfect how many do you see that are smashed and beat-up here's bang very beautiful out of plates and I had to pull out a plate because that was my very first one recognisable 1874 no I mean this is just a scratch of the surface stuff but yeah yep but that's just it if you go out and you dig enough hole eventually something like this will come out well I met along the way and I don't know how far back it goes but you guys kind of have your own terminology that you know you got sieve you've got juice and nectar and is that go back to the first days you're detecting or is that just something for the show that's come about no that's that if you look at our DVDs way back this is something we did and it's the weird thing is is it we it wasn't conscious we never really even expected it to catch on or be an issue or anything I mean we just people think it's you know whatever we just shorten it up and I mean and that's the way we are and that's the way we talk and and that's the way it just carried on to the show the thing about the show is they've always said don't ever change who you are you know do exactly what you did when you started your own business and you made your own DVDs because that's that's kind of the allure of who we are I mean it's not you know I mean kids love it you know and adults like it some people don't like it but you know there's always somebody that's just a hundred percent serious and I always tell people you know an appreciation for history and a good sense of humor are not mutually exclusive so I mean they it doesn't mean we appreciate history less because we like to laugh you know Doug with you guys before and I know you know you're responsible you you're not digging holes and tearing up the landscape I mean what do you say to people that are getting out there getting in the metal detecting you know how should they conduct themselves or I mean they have to know the laws where they're going I mean you can't just see an old house or an old homestead and just think you can wander out there and just start meditating because you're gonna end up in trouble it's no different than fishing you have to know the rules when you're fishing if you're a hunter you have to know the rules when you're hunter there's gonna be bad people that do it there's gonna be people that go where they're not supposed to go right the good people shouldn't have to suffer because of them exactly now on the show we see you using looks like 80 Pro and 80 gold quite a bit you know you said you started off in GTI so you know getting back into Garrety I mean that was your choice you said so tell me about you know why you used some of the Garrett gear that you use and what you liked about it we a lot of research and you know I I can't I think the reason we originally went with the GTI 2500 was the fact that it had that size imaging and the fact that you could tell exactly how big it was that really kind of know what the day before right it was a really cool feature but later on I mean when the 80 Pro and the 80 gold eventually came out the thing that really hooked us is the fact that it's just so versatile I mean you can just take one machinist but we're on the road a lot you know so it's just it's super lightweight it's waterproof there so you don't have to worry about it alright you know and it's just one of those things it was just easy to use machine the thing about it is is it's I mean a lot of people don't have a lot of money I mean they can't afford a four thousand dollar machine I mean they're extremely affordable and you could beat the crap out of them too I mean I mean if you're in a creek and you stumble and you fall on you drop your machine in the creek it's gonna be okay I mean a lot of machines if they get the water they're done right you know and when we first started out with the GTI 2500 I mean we wanted it because we were not you know we were not good at the sport by no means but so we wanted the easiest machine you know for us we didn't want to have to tweak and move dials and then worry about ever getting it back to the normal setting you know twenty five hundred even the 80 pros I mean you can mess them up just hold the power button down resets itself I guess we got a problem you know we're here in America you can find us you know exactly yeah it's right there in Texas you know and you guys are super easy to get ahold of so I mean it's just one ofone 50 years now we've been doing this I think mr. Garrett there's a few things about you know what he started this company yes yeah and I remember reading treasure books by him after that to you know we start detecting and then you just read all these stories about what's found and I remember looking at the magazines and you know all those different treasure magazines and these big piles of treasure and coins and jewelry spilling out and it's like nobody can find that stuff that is just not possible and now after just eight or nine years I mean we can't we don't even have enough room to put everything we found you know it's crazy it can come true you know you don't behind it all loves all that stuff there's big bags everywhere from season one but I remember like looking at Charles Garrett's books you know and then I mean you'd see him and he'd be in all these cool exotic places and you always have treasure our cannonballs are are an awesome gold coin or something they're you know you're just be thinking dad I want that to be me you know and now it is I know you're doing a little traveling on your own so it's working out pretty well for you yes we get to travel quite a bit and you know we are super lucky I mean we find a lot of stuff on the show that most people will never find in a lifetime because they don't have access to those kind of spots and it's just you know we believe me we know how lucky we are now you know a lot of that stuff you bring that up you know I think you get to go to some great places but you bring it all back with you keep all that or you donate it or what are you doing with all this stuff probably 99% of everything we find because of where we are because of where we're at is so historical you know say Gettysburg or Hatfield and McCoys I mean that stuff it almost has to stay where it was found because you know it belongs in the community it was found because it's important to them I mean you could find a Indian Head Penny at the OK Corral and it don't mean anything to anybody but if you're at the eventually it's gonna return to nerdist I don't price little retrieve these things yeah I mean that's a priceless artifact and plus you know most of stuff we give away every once while rarely we get a table full of stuff and somebody will say you know if you guys want to keep something go ahead and keep it you know it's not up to the landowner another word exactly and there's a there I mean and there are places we go where there's just like I don't care anything about this stuff take it and we'll come home with all of it you know and that's very rare but there those are usually the situations where it's a non historical place you know where it's obviously everything's historical but you know a significant spot like he said Hatfield McCoy's some of these old forts that we've hunted and they already have established Museum so you know they're not just gonna be shoved in the back room in a shoebox somewhere you feel good about giving it up because everybody gets to see it you know yeah we did a big forward off the coast of Maine that's gonna be in a season two episode and that stuff is so cool because it's specific to that fort and they've got a great museum and we know what's going in there so just it's inflect there's a lot more of these you know treasure shows coming out you know you guys had your you know season or set or season and a half that's been out I know now that diggers are starting to show in Europe we've heard from some of our dealers and distributors over there Spain and Belgium in places like hey we're seeing this stuff and they're kind of getting excited there's some other shows coming out and what do you see in the future you know that is this opening new doors for metal detecting or is it good is it bad what are you thoughts on where it's going it's to me it's all good I mean it ain't gonna hurt I mean by the time we get done with this interview I mean there's boxes and boxes of coins being lost and jewelry being lost you're never gonna get it all constantly replenishing itself you know I mean a lot of people are intimidated by other people going out because basically I think they want it all for themselves that's my opinion you know but like you said it's constantly replenishing itself there's always new stuff to find it 20 years from now you know exactly and it's just I I think it's great there's a lot of interest is in the hobby now I mean it's a fun thing you can go out do it with family members you can go out with friends I mean for us you know it's all about just going out and having fun it's no different than camping or fishing or hunting or whatever it's just another activity you can go out and have fun at it's good for you because you're not just sitting around yeah like we are right now what do you see you guys you know doing 20 years 30 years from now where do you want to be 20 or 30 years from now you'll probably be dead yeah I would say I got maybe ten years left in me after a couple knee replacement surgeries from getting up and down so much you know ya know I don't know I mean I'd like to keep my you know head into the sport of metal detecting I think you still be digging coins when you're 70 nice you know I see myself doing more beach stuff when I get older you know yeah something like that because it's a it's less work it's like really relaxing and I don't obviously we don't have a beach right so you know you always hear about all the people to find all the rings and jewelry on the beach and stuff and we don't have access to that if everyone is nursing a little exactly that's where I want my nursing home to be on the coast so that I can just be let out on that edge of the beach and then they'll come retrieve me and bring me back and let you know just let you keep going you know and the tidal come in you know and then I'll just be trapped there and I'll be trying to gasp for air Georgia just they're laughing somewhere in the distance what maybe kind of wrap things up maybe we look at some of the coins and jewelry later that you mentioned you know it's a house or something but yeah we got four kids watching the show you know what do you think about people seeing detectors for the first time and any advice for people every every little kid is a hunter and a treasure hunter and they're fascinated by you know discovering a treasure you know and if you can like get a kid into that I mean they'll get lost and I have kids coming to my house random kids all the time beating on my door with you know a twenty dollar metal detector and a handful of like screws and nuts just to show me what they found you know I mean it's awesome I mean kids love it they do and it's you even as adults I mean if you go out and you don't have that same enthusiasm and and thrill when you dig up just say a Mercury dime or something I mean you really shouldn't even be out doing it if you don't really care about it it's it's about you know the thrill of the hunt and having fun it's kinda like a sports you're either into it or you're not if you're hooked on it you can go all day and have a good day or a bad day kind of like fishing of things use that analogy and it kind of feel that same way about it yeah and time goes like that when you're doing it too it's just like you'll wake up you'll go out there it could be 8:00 in the morning and before you know what the sun's going down I think a lot of the alert the show is is that anybody can do what we do I mean realistically I mean you could take like a serious event like say Gettysburg and some of these battles you know custards campsites and stuff like that if I have my choice a lot of them I would rather take an old house in the middle of an old town that's been there 150 years you've had 150 years where the activity in a little tiny area to me you're gonna find more there than you're ever gonna find on an old battle site or something yeah yeah a lot of those have been you know punted over the years you know before regulations and stuff and you know it's fascinating to find that stuff but you know as I mean there are people that are just that is their hobby and they don't detect for any other reason other than you know military historical sites and stuff and that's that's just another little niche and that's fantastic but like he says if you go to an old yard I can have just as much fun or more go into a really really old yard and pulling up silver coins and rings and stuff I mean that's a that's a blast sounds like you guys will be doing this for a while I'm not quitting anytime yep that's right thought to drag me out you know straightjacket you know all right well thanks for spending a few minutes with us today great talking to ya best of luck with everything coming up on the seasons to follow Thanks great I'm sure we'll be in touch all right [Music] [Music] [Applause]

Channel: GarrettDetectors

Views: 54,264

Rating: 4.9055119 out of 5

Keywords: AT Pro, AT Gold, Garrett, Garrett Metal Detectors, Metal Detector, Diggers, Montana, Treasure, Treasure Hunting, Coins, Jewelry, Relics, History

Id: j45HpZfS2Rs

Length: 27min 50sec (1670 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 11 2013