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Tim “Ringy” Saylor is an Explorer and Historian on the new National Geographic Channel series “Diggers.” He joins the show to discuss some of the lost relics of history he found and how people can go about finding hidden treasures during their vacations. Ringy has an amazing travel background, having traveled for both work and pleasure. He shares his favorite hotspots.

Find out more about Ringy Saylor and National Geographic’s new series “Diggers” at www.natgeotv.com/Diggers.

ANNOUNCER: Welcome to the JetSetter Show, where we explore lifestyle-friendly destinations worldwide. Enjoy and learn from a variety of experts on topics ranging from upscale travel at wholesale prices, to retiring overseas, to global real estate and business opportunities, to tax havens and expatriate opportunities. You’ll get great ideas on unique cultures, causes, and cruise vacations. Whether you’re wealthy or just want to live a wealthy lifestyle, the JetSetter Show is for you. Here’s your host, Jason Hartman.

JASON HARTMAN: Welcome to the JetSetter Show! This is Jason Hartman, your host, where we explore lifestyle-friendly destinations worldwide. I think you’ll enjoy the interview we have for you today, and we will be back with that, in less than 60 seconds, here on the JetSetter Show.

JASON HARTMAN: Hey, it’s my pleasure to welcome Tim “Ringy” Saylor to the show! And he is on the show Diggers, it’s a National Geographic show; he’s an explorer and historian for the National Geographic series, and I think we’re going to learn some fantastic stuff. He digs up all kinds of crazy things, including atomic bombs. So, let’s talk to him a little bit about that. Tim, welcome. How are you?

TIM “RINGY” SAYLOR: Great, it’s great to be here. How are you?

JASON HARTMAN: Yeah, it’s good to have you. So, you live in Montana, I believe. Is that correct?

TIM “RINGY” SAYLOR: That is correct, yep.

JASON HARTMAN: And you’re coming to us today though from Maryland, is that right?

TIM “RINGY” SAYLOR: Right, right. I’m in Maryland right now. We’re still making shows out here, and we’re doing really good.

JASON HARTMAN: Fantastic. Well, well, before we ask you about specific episodes, tell us a little bit about the series in general.

TIM “RINGY” SAYLOR: Well, Diggers is just kind of a thing that developed out of—it’s not just me; it’s KG, the other guy on the show. We met in Montana and started treasure hunting over the years, and making our own DVDs, and then it just kind of exploded into this television show in combination with National Geographic. And it’s been a great thing. Not just for us, because we get to do what we love to do, but we get to go to all of these, you know, historically significant sites now, that are normally off limits to most people. And we get to dig things with an archaeological team, and mark it all out, and we get to discover all kinds of interesting and weird things that most people never get a chance to do.

JASON HARTMAN: Sure, yeah. Very interesting. Now, it’s—so it’s not limited, then, to metal detecting, right? That’s just one of the tools in your arsenal? Would that be a correct—

TIM “RINGY” SAYLOR: It is correct. I mean, we use sifters, and other things as well. But our main tool is metal detecting. That’s generally what we use, and then—for example, like, there was one archaeological site that was about to be destroyed and all covered up because they’re building a new highway and bridge in there, and they were just trying to get everything out of the soil floor from the 1700s that they could, and they were going, and they were running out of time, and they gave us a call, and we went out there and found literally hundreds of things. And it worked out as a win-win situation for everybody, because now their museum gets to have these things that were probably going to be lost in the long run, had they not.

JASON HARTMAN: So when you say they, who is they? In this particular case?

TIM “RINGY” SAYLOR: Oh, well, there’s—I don’t know if it was a private or state, probably hired by the state, because when they’re building highways and stuff, a lot of times they’ll have to do mandatory digs to make sure that they’re not going to ruin anything, or cover, say, an Indian burial ground, or something that might be there that we’re unaware of.

JASON HARTMAN: So it’s a governmental agency in this case, like the Highway Safety Commission, or whoever decides where highways are built, and how they are built, right, I assume?

TIM “RINGY” SAYLOR: Exactly. And everyone once in a while—obviously, there’s nothing—there’s so much stuff out there that eventually, you know, they’re gonna conflict, and you know, it’s fairly common, actually. But it’s just nice that they’ll allow them a little time to try to dig some stuff up to save it. Because over time, a lot of the things made out of iron, or even copper or brass, can pit, and eventually rot away. So it’s nice to be able to save some of that stuff before it’s too late.

JASON HARTMAN: Sure, before it’s kind of buried or entombed forever, right?

TIM “RINGY” SAYLOR: Yeah. Or before it actually disintegrates and disappears forever anyway, you know what I mean?

JASON HARTMAN: I’ve always wondered—how powerful of a tool, Tim, is a metal detector? How deep—how much ground can it penetrate?

TIM “RINGY” SAYLOR: Well, there’s so many different kinds. But when you think of like the guy on the beach walking along looking for rings and stuff—the one like that, like the one that we use, generally they’ll go a couple feet underground, if you’ve got some gigantic target. But if you’re looking for something as small as a ring, or a dime, you’re generally looking about eight inches. And usually more like four to five.

JASON HARTMAN: Wow, that’s not much. So, what kind of equipment do you use?

TIM “RINGY” SAYLOR: Well, we actually run something called an AT Gold, which is just kind of an all-purpose machine. It’s waterproof—you know, you can drop it in the water, and wade in the surf with it, and it works on land, and it’s really lightweight. So, we tend to use that—it was actually designed to find gold, tiny bits of gold, but we use it because it works so well on other things as well. So.

JASON HARTMAN: And so, I mean, if people want to do stuff like this recreationally—like you mentioned the guy on the beach, and so forth—what should they look at spending? What kind of equipment do they need? I have a friend who’s into metal detecting. And I kind of tease him about it. It’s like, what a funny sport, you know.

TIM “RINGY” SAYLOR: Exactly. Yeah.

JASON HARTMAN: But people are still into it. And you know, I would also think that a lot of the things that you can do, like the guy on the beach example that you mentioned, but my friend, he goes on trips, and flies to places just to do metal detecting! Like it’s a big deal. And you know, I’ve always wondered—isn’t it sort of picked over? Aren’t—I mean, the world’s been pretty explored, hasn’t it?

TIM “RINGY” SAYLOR: That’s the thing. Every day on the beach there are thousands of people out there losing stuff. Every single day something is lost. So it’s constantly being replenished. And the other thing is, you know, there’ll be yards, or places that we go, and 99 out of 100 of them have already been hit multiple times by people. But you know, technology keeps getting better, and the depth on them, and the accuracy gets better and better, and the crazy thing is, is we’ve hunted places, say in Montana, before this show ever aired, you know, 20 and 30 times we’d hunt them. Because you can walk at one angle, and a slightly different angle, and not hear something. And you could hear it going back over in a different pattern. So, you—it’s almost impossible. It is impossible to get everything. if you go into a place, you can never get it all. We always say that. And so, you shouldn’t get discouraged in that respect. And to answer your main question, you really don’t have to spend a whole lot of money to get a detector to find something on the beach. You can spend even a couple hundred dollars, you know, two or three hundred dollars, and get a pretty decent machine, and it will find things, and it will discriminate things out so you don’t have to listen to nails, for example, you know, iron, and you can just listen only for silver, or copper, or whatever you want to hear.

JASON HARTMAN: So, they make different sounds, the different metals?

TIM “RINGY” SAYLOR: Absolutely, yeah. The funny thing is, you know, this is kind of ironic, but the you know, a gold coin like a little dollar gold coin—sounds very similar to a nickel, which also sounds similar to a lot of different beer pull tabs. So, you know, you have to dig thousands and thousands of beer tabs before you’ll ever come across a good gold coin.

JASON HARTMAN: Yeah, yeah. Well, tell us about some of the interesting finds. Certainly we want to hear about the atomic bomb. But you know, other stuff too.

TIM “RINGY” SAYLOR: Well, we found—really, most of the stuff we find is not really, you know, like a gold coin—I’ve hunted, you know, almost my who