Meire Grove man has been metal detecting for more than five decades
By Tim King
Metal detecting was not a common pass time when Mike Revermann took it up over 50 years ago.
Born in 1957, the seventh of 13 children, Mike was a typical Stearns County farm kid. He attended District 1977, a country school near Meire Grove and within walking distance of the family farm.
“The farm was 100 years old in 2000,” said Mike, who still lives on the farm.
If you ask Mike what his favorite job on the farm was when he was a kid he is, at first, surprised. It seems that the words “favorite” and “farm job” have not often been put side by side in his mind.
“Favorite farm job? As a kid?” he wondered. “Working in the field during harvest time and cleaning out calf pens with the long straw in them. I liked picking corn and filling silos with silage. Mainly I liked fall field work.”
With work on the dairy farm and school there wasn’t a lot of time for a farm kid’s mind to wander. And, since the Revermann family was poor, a boy’s mind certainly wasn’t allowed to wander in the direction of buying that which boys might be interested in.
But Mike’s Dad had a creative mind and he was inspired by that.
“My dad was a collector,” Mike said. “He rummaged in the dump for old license plates, signs, and scrap copper and metal and sold it when prices were high. He also collected old coins and trade tokens and showed them to me. Being poor made us look for treasure along river banks and town dumps.”
The edges of the town ball field also held treasure for the observant collector.
“I collected beer cans,” said Mike, whose experience has taught him that there’s a collector for just about everything. “I had good luck with the Schmidt beer wildlife series that I found near the ball field. I was able to sell the complete twelve-can series to other collectors.”
Mike met another man in the early 1970s that inspired him to take his interest in collecting to another level.
“I was maybe 18 or 20 at the time,” Mike said. “I saw an old man metal detecting in a local park. I went to talk to him. He showed me his coin collection and talked to me about metal detecting. He was very helpful.”
Mike found a brass bracelet that day and the joy he took in that discovery, and thousands since then, has taken him on a half century of adventures.
“Every silver coin that I dug was like a mini Christmas knowing I was the first person in maybe 50 to 100 years to see or touch that coin,” Mike said. “The thrill has not gone away in 50 years, even after a thousand common coins a year.”
Over the decades more people have taken up metal detecting and the equipment has become more sophisticated. Mike did learn how to use that old White’s detector but he no longer uses it.
“In the 1970s metal detectors were nothing like they are today but they did locate coins,” he said.
What’s his favorite metal detector today?
“Well, like a car, everyone has a favorite kind,” he said. “A really good one for a smaller dollar amount that’s easy to use is a Garrett AT pro. I have one like that and also a more expensive one that I usually use. It’s a Minelab 3030, I think made in Australia.”
Modern metal detectives also use a tool called a pin pointer.
“A pin pointer is like a mini hand-held metal detector that is used after you locate something with the main detector. Coins are hard to see so it’s called pin pointing.”
Once Mike has pin pointed the location of a coin or other object he digs a small plug to extract the object.
“You cut a plug so grass grows back after you look for the coin,” he says. “I never use a shovel, just a mini knife-like trowel or large knife.”
One of the many areas that Mike suggests metal detecting at are swimming beaches. Some metal detectors, such as the Minelab 3030, are waterproof and can search under water. For under-water searches digging plugs won’t work. Metal detectives use sand scoops instead.
“Some detectors you can put completely under water,” Mike said. “Others only allow the long tube up to the control box to be in the water. You will need a so-called sand scoop to scoop up coins and other discoveries. The scoop gets a scoop of sand and, hopefully, your discovery. It’s just a scoop with holes smaller than a dime so you just shake out the sand in the water.”
Using these tools, and 50 years of trial and error, Mike has explored abandoned town and country school sites, township halls, parks, playgrounds, Main Street construction sites, railroad depot sites, and other locations to find silver coins, rings, religious objects, and even a copper arrow head. Along the way he’s developed a network of friends and contacts to help him in his detective work. He’s also developed a code of ethics with rules, such as “never detect in a cemetery,” to guide him.
He’s put a lot of what he knows in a little book called My 50 Years of Metal Detecting. (available on Amazon books or call 320-249-8708).
If you’ve got time, ask him about the trophy whitetail buck that he shot in Clearwater County in 2019 after 50 years of deer hunting. He’ll tell you that one of the few things that he has been doing longer than metal detecting is deer hunting.
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