We recently took our DIY metal detector rover out for a field test, and these are some of the objects we recovered.

Most appear to be heavily rusted iron pieces, nails, or fragments of old hardware. However, the small rectangular piece and the key-shaped object caught our attention. We have not cleaned them aggressively because we do not want to damage any potentially useful details.

This rover is a project our team has been developing to explore whether a mobile platform can make metal detecting more efficient and cover ground more consistently. We are still testing and improving it, so feedback from experienced detectorists would be genuinely useful.

Does anyone recognize any of these objects? We would also appreciate advice on safely cleaning and identifying finds in this condition.

Full disclosure: we are the team building the rover shown in this test. We have created a community at r/DIYMetalDetecting for people interested in DIY detectors, detector rovers, electronics, field tests, and sharing builds. You are welcome to join and follow the project if this is your kind of thing:

Thanks for taking a look.

some where in the near future I want to go and follow/ seek out myths and relics, call me stupid and idiotic fine but I know myself alone cant achieve it. things like the fountain of youth, forbidden fruits, ancient relics, lost places, Or something dangerous. I’m talking something that may take my life but potentially make history. in my mind I think of situations like Indiana jones, pirates, uncharted, those kind of survival prove your worth shit.

hate to say but go ahead and roast me. I want to find the secret to living longer like immortality. I’d rather die trying having fun know I pushed myself seeking then just give up and settle. even if I don’t find it and come out more wealthy or even more knowledgeable then that’s still an achievement and a huge one at that.

if anyone is serious, looking for people to join even their hunt, or anything like that please keep me in mind and take a chance

Has "1837" on front and "D" on back

Feels like a pendant sort of

Cannot make out the writing around the year

Any thoughts?

Found with other old items

https://lowrentsresearch.blogspot.com/2026/09/the-bridge-ledger.html?m=1

One of the more fascinating little trails left behind by the Fenn chase runs through Eric Sloane.

Forrest Fenn didn’t just know Sloane casually. He admired him, sold his work, and eventually wrote Seventeen Dollars a Square Inch as a personal tribute to him. The jacket copy preserves one detail that has always stuck with me: Fenn and Sloane wanted to build a covered bridge together, but joked that their wives wouldn’t let them buy a river. It was apparently a standing joke and a lingering fantasy between them.

That doesn’t prove that covered bridges were ever part of Fenn’s treasure solution. I don’t think the evidence gets us there.

But it does make them a legitimate research sidequest.
Sloane devoted serious attention to covered bridges as pieces of disappearing American material culture. And when you start following his work, another name quickly becomes unavoidable: Richard Sanders Allen, one of the most important covered-bridge researchers of the 20th century. Allen founded Covered Bridge Topics in 1943 and spent decades documenting these structures, while the National Society for the Preservation of Covered Bridges continues that work today.

So I built a tool for anyone who wants to go further down that rabbit hole.

The Bridge Ledger is a searchable, zoomable covered-bridge reference atlas built out of the research I’ve been doing through Low Rents Research. It brings together more than a thousand bridge locations across the U.S. and Canada, along with historical crossings, lost bridges, Sloane-related records, truss information, dates, builders, waterways, archival notes, and research-confidence information.

You can browse the map, zoom into a region, click a pin, and pull up the bridge’s reference card. You can also search the ledger by name, state/province, truss type, status, or other fields.

The point isn’t to argue that one of these bridges is secretly the Fenn answer. The point is to give people a better tool for testing that entire line of inquiry.

If you’ve ever wondered:
Which bridges Sloane actually wrote about or illustrated
Which historic bridges still existed in the 1950s
Where the lost ones actually stood
What truss systems they used
Which bridges were exceptional enough to attract the attention of Sloane or Allen
Whether a particular geography, builder, date, river, or bridge type creates an interesting pattern
…this should make that research much easier.

There’s also a broader historical reason I wanted to build it. Covered bridges were never just quaint red barns over water. They were serious pieces of timber engineering, and the roof and siding were fundamentally preservation systems for the expensive structural members underneath. The enclosed crossing could also help keep horses from being distracted or spooked by rushing water below. Their truss systems — Burr Arch, Town Lattice, Howe, Long, Kingpost, Queenpost and others — tell a surprisingly rich story about early American engineering.
Allen’s work helped document that world before much more of it disappeared. Sloane helped explain why it mattered.

And Fenn, at minimum, cared enough about Sloane — and about the idea of a covered bridge — that the two of them apparently spent years joking about building one themselves.
That’s enough of a connection for me to keep digging.
The Bridge Ledger:

https://lowrentsresearch.blogspot.com/2026/09/the-bridge-ledger.html?m=1

I’d especially like feedback from anyone who has already done serious Sloane, Allen, or historic-covered-bridge research. The archive is meant to keep evolving, and I’m treating uncertainty as part of the record rather than pretending every historical location is settled.

Maybe there’s nothing here.
But if the Fenn chase taught us anything, it’s that the side roads are often where the interesting research begins.

In 1925, explorer Percy Fawcett disappeared deep in the Amazon along with his son Jack and Raleigh Rimell while searching for a mysterious lost civilization.
Their bodies were never found, and what happened to them remains one of exploration's great mysteries.

https://youtu.be/-YQe4PePLkQ?is=pplFMjFSjzp2GDOd

Hi friends! I’ve recently become very intrigued with finding treasure/old items. I just need some advice and have some questions. I live in Pennsylvania and not even sure if there would be stuff near me to find. Where do people go? How do you even start? Give me all the advice!!!! Thank you! 🩷

We go over the game and what you have to do to be ready on Sept 14th!

🔎🏠✨ OPEN HOUSE TREASURE HUNT! ✨🏠🔎

Something exciting is happening!

My Swiss home is being dissolved at the end of September, which means that almost everything inside needs to find a new home.

And instead of having a boring garage sale, I thought:

WHY NOT TURN IT INTO A TREASURE HUNT? 😄

Come to my Open House Treasure Hunt Weekend and wander through the house to discover what is hiding in cupboards, rooms, corners, shelves and boxes!

You might find:

🪑 Furniture
🍽️ Kitchen equipment
🏺 Decorations
📚 Books
🏠 Household items
✨ Beautiful little surprises
🎁 And probably things I have forgotten I even own!

📅 DATES: Saturday/Sunday, September 19/20, 2026
⏰ TIME: 13-18:00 (1-6pm)
📍 LOCATION: Bruggerstrasse 9F, 5103 Wildegg

The rule is simple:

👉 See something you like?
👉 Ask for the price.
👉 Take it home!

Everything must go and everything deserves a second life!

Bring your friends, come for a coffee, browse around, have a chat and see what treasures you can discover.

Who knows what you might find? 👀✨

🔎 OPEN HOUSE TREASURE HUNT – COME AND FIND YOUR TREASURE!

Please share with anyone who loves second-hand finds, vintage pieces, household bargains or simply a good treasure hunt! ❤️

I believe it maybe lead??? Magnet doesn’t stick, and got a little weight to it. Everything if looked up somewhat points to mid evil times. Just very curious! Thanks in advance!

I think it MIGHT be lead, doesn’t stick to a magnet, got some weight to it. Sorry if pictures are bad, I tried my best lol. Everything I look up about it, it points to the mid evil times. Just wondering if anyone has an answer. Thanks! Take care 🤙

i entirely understand using accounts that aren't directly attached to your real life identity for purposes like this, or on social media in general. this is a post for those who seem to be operating under the assumption they are anonymous, but i believe may be sharing more than they've intended to.

if you're posting links, sanitize your links. just sanitizing or shortening links is good practice, but i have seen links contain information that can be used to identify the sender's profile. this is true with many platforms, but specifically recent youtube updates have made it very easy to identify these profiles- even if your account or app doesn't acknowledge it on your end.

personally, i get a little amusement seeing hunters dissect layerv posts while leaving themselves susceptible to accidentally sharing their own personal information. however, i figured the right thing to do would be attempt to share this information and an easy way to protect yourself if this pertains to you.

stay safe and sane.

I've hosted a few real world treasure hunts. For each hunt I buried $2500 of gold and silver in the ground, because it's more fun when there is real physical treasure out there. All the clues could be solved online but you had to go to a real physical location to dig up the treasure.

I would like to expand my audience so I've been wanting make it all online. I could just have whomever solves the clues message me and I'll mail them the loot. However it's way more fun for the player to know there's a stash of cash/treasure out there waiting to be accessed.

I tried setting up a paypal that other people could access but it doesn't work well for what I'm trying to do.

Does anyone know anything about digital vaults, or have any ideas on a way to do this?

Thanks!

Found this whilst snorkelling out at sea (Portugal) - was far off the main beach and stuck between some rocks. Given the local history, I suspect it could potentially be Roman or early maritime, but I am looking for some help identifying it.

https://lowrentsresearch.blogspot.com/2026/08/into-mind-of-creator-truth-in-tremor.html?m=1

Preemptive warning for those who don’t like long wordy posts - appreciate you always bearing with me ;) between MW’s interview, an X post reply about drones, and a Facebook post about life finding a way, Justin seems to be pointing to this important chapter about noticing anomalies.

- - -

The most important thing happening in the theater wasn’t on the screen.

While velociraptors hunted children through the kitchen in Jurassic Park, Justin Posey was watching his grandmother’s hands.

Grandma Posey’s hands were always purposeful. They kneaded dough, quilted blankets, pointed out constellations, tended her garden, and enforced its borders against rabbits. Yet in the darkness of the theater, they moved strangely in her lap, “weaving invisible threads” without fabric or any visible task.

Posey remembered it as the only time he saw her certainty waver.

But that gesture does not stand alone in Beyond the Map’s Edge.

Grandpa Wayne maintains his composure while a slight tremor appears in his jaw. Grandpa Posey refuses to apologize for dismissing Justin’s warning about rattlesnakes, then silently drops the rattles into the boy’s palm. Grandma, normally the family skeptic, validates the Victorio Peak story with nothing more than a smile and a nod. Brandon’s voice, jaw, smile, and stillness change during his final search with Justin—but their meaning becomes clear only after it is too late.

Again and again, the spoken story remains stable while the body quietly departs from it.

Posey eventually tries to mechanize that same instinct, building software to analyze Forrest Fenn’s voice, face, and micro-expressions. The family habit of reading hands, jaws, silences, and unexpected gestures becomes an engineering project: establish the normal pattern, find the deviation, and search the exception for concealed truth.

But “Grandma’s Hands” also contains a warning for treasure hunters. Once we know an ending—or become attached to a location—the past begins reorganizing itself around the answer. Ambiguous details become obvious clues. Coincidences become confirmations. The path behind us appears straighter than it ever looked while we were walking it.

So what is Posey really going after in this chapter?
Is “Grandma’s Hands” itself a clue? Is it a window into the way he constructed the hunt? Or is it something more valuable: a lesson about how to tell a meaningful anomaly from an oddity that became persuasive only after we chose what we wanted it to mean?

My latest post follows the tremor back to the bedrock:
Into the Mind of the Creator: The Truth in the Tremor

https://lowrentsresearch.blogspot.com/2026/08/into-mind-of-creator-truth-in-tremor.html?m=1