Treasure Hunting Through the Internet
by Donna A. Trefry
Article reprinted with permission from
Western & Eastern Treasures Magazine
July, 1996
In the beginning it wasn't the "Internet" but it certainly was a treasure waiting to be detected. The first for me was GEnie. My detecting buddy, Peter O'Brien called me one evening to relay a blurb he had read in a metal detecting magazine. Laura Downey wrote that a TH'ing forum was digging in on GEnie network - a computer-based message system. Peter gave me the needed computer information to find my "path" to the forum and I "met" him and many other detectorists "on line" that next week. Once there, I found a treasure trove of friendships.
At that time I was preparing for a vacation in Florida and had hopes of detecting many of the Gulf Coast beaches while there. Several of the forum participants offered helpful hints, no-nos, and even phone numbers of local club members who could assist me when I arrived. - and that was just my first week of surfing the "nets".
Later, I signed up for the Prodigy network. There were two hundred more TH'ers over there, chatting, swapping stories, passing on helpful hints about searching, about machines and also asking questions. I even got a chance to offer advice a few times!
A message about Jimmy Sierra's England tours caught my eye. I had read in Western & Eastern Treasures about his England experiences and had dreamed of joining him at some time in the future. The future was sooner than I would have imagined. Another Prodigy member, Allan Leippe, was preparing to join the tour to the Bridlington Rally in Yorkshire - a shorter version of Jimmy's English adventures. Soon after, I was signed up for the 1993 South of England trip.
When I announced my England vacation plans to the Prodigy group, I was inundated with help, advise and encouragement. Dan Mangold, kindly offered to send me a stack of back issues of British detecting magazines so I could read about English rallies and detecting, see what kind of recoveries to expect, and otherwise whet my enthusiasm thus filling the months of waiting. When Allan returned from his trip, his messages to the forum added to my excitement. He even sent me photos of some of his recoveries.
At the same time, there were messages and excitement over on the GEnie network. Everyone knew I was going to England and made my waiting pleasant by giving me a chance to "talk about it". Laura had friends in England and, in turn, told them that I was on my way.
You can't imagine my surprise when I finally got to England and was stepping out of the coach for my first day at the South of England Detector Rally. A very British gentlemen stepped up to me and asked "could you please take me to Donna Trefry?" "I'm Donna", I replied.
The Englishman was Frank Garrett, Laura's friend! Frank introduced me to his detecting partner, Colin, and they showed me their recently recovered gold coins. During the rally they checked in on me twice a day and before I left we exchanged addresses. Now, Frank's letters are as much anticipated as any of my treasure magazines. His fifty and sixty-page missives are full of tales of his detecting activities complete with hand-drawn and colored illustrations of his recent recoveries. Frank (pictured below) is yet another "treasure" found via the Internet.
Currently, there are over a thousand TH'ers from all over the world who read and write messages to an online BBS. On America On Line (aka AOL) we get together each Sunday evening (8:30 Eastern) for an hour-long real-time chat. The chat sessions are open for discussion of anything on the subject. There are often over 20 detectorists on-line at the same time, each able to type whatever comes to mind and have it read by the other attendees. We "talk" about our recent recoveries, how our detectors perform, what our "wish list of finds" may be, and even where to get the best buy and service in a detector.
Through the efforts of Tom Purzycki, every Sunday at 7pm eastern time, Internet TH'ers get together in a global chat session called an IRC (Internet Relay Chat). This chat session works very much like those on the commercial networks, but can include anyone with Internet access. Tom has also assembled a database of hundreds of fellow detectorists.
Thanks to Joseph Kocian, we now have a Th'ing "list" that will reach completely around the globe! If you subscribe to this list you can write messages that will reach all other members of the list, and messages written by everyone else will end up in your personal "mailbox". Anyone who belongs to GEnie, AOL, Prodigy and other Internet connections has an Internet "address" and can be reached privately via computer.
TH'ing the World Wide Web (WWW) is the most recent "on-line" treasure. It is possible to contact many folks via their "home Page". Mine, for example is a set of pages containing photos of my England tours along with its people, finds and fields. There are "links" from my page to TH'ing pages around the world - even to Western & Eastern Treasure's!
Everyone is welcome to join in on the Internet fun. If any of you readers have a computer, all you need is a modem to meet the world of computer TH'ers. Let's hope we meet "on-line" soon! Why don't you cache in on the treasure?
Addendum: Curiously, as I write this, I have just made contact (via the internet) with the owner of the first gold ring I ever recovered! I'll save that story for another article since he now lives in California and I am here in Maine. I found his ring on a local beach. We will make plans to meet this summer at that very beach and, after thirty-seven years, he will be reunited with his ring!*
*See the results of this reunion at two sites:
Western & Eastern Treasures Magazine Article (not yet uploaded)
Other articles by Donna
"Four Centuries of Treasure"
"Truly a Golden Age"
"The Mystery of the Seven-stoned Ring"
"Ghosts of History Guide the Searchcoil"
"Cache or Bust"
"Treasure Hunting Through the Internet"
"Where Gold Coins Grow on Trees"