When The Meter Says Iron, Look For Platinum

Throughout 1998, members of the E.A.R.T.H. metal detecting club of Utica, New York, made a concerted effort to collect aluminum pull-tabs. They gathered a large chest of such tabs and donated them to a local charity that magically turns them into cash to help seriously ill children.

In the process of digging for these, four detectorists also unearthed gold rings. Had the members not been searching for the tabs, the rings would still be in the ground, because the discrimination settings used to hunt for the aluminum tabs were not the settings club members normally employ for regular coinshooting. Discrimination is largely a function of target conductivity, and the conductivity of a gold ring is pretty close to that of aluminum. So, there were four happy THers.