About Treasure Island Metal Detectors

On November 8, 2018, my wife Lara and I evacuated our home due to the Northern California Camp-Fire. It was the deadliest fire in the history of California, and destroyed the towns of Concow, Paradise, and half of Magalia (our town). We lost our home, and all of our belongings, and escaped with just what we could stuff into our Expedition, including 3 metal detectors, a sluice, a few gold pans, and 2 cats.

When we returned after the fire, virtually nothing was left of the town. Seventeen thousand structures were destroyed and 85 people were dead. The area looked like Hiroshima. I’ve never seen such destruction before in my life. People were frantically searching for valuables with very little success. Because we had experience metal detecting, we volunteered to help as many as we could search for the valuables amongst the rubble. We spent over a year in the ash and debris finding lost rings that had melted into tiny blobs of gold, and coin collections. We had about an 80% success rate, which was surprising considering the severe conditions. To learn more Read Blogs.

In January of 2019, Dogtown Trading Company was born. Our Name is from the original mining town name for Magalia, California. Throughout that year we continued helping fire victims both locally and out of town find their lost items. We are a multi-line dealer with great pricing and we also offer excellent advice. We are treasure hunters ourselves and we’re happy to give advice.

As one old treasure hunter told us, “I would never even attempt to detect the burnt places you guys do, and because you can do that, I’m sure there ain’t nowhere you can’t detect for treasures. You’re way beyond anyone I’ve ever known.” That was a great testimony from that old timer. Because Dogtown Trading Company is mostly associated with prospecting and local wildfire survival, we opened a sister company, Treasure Island Metal Detectors, to help treasure hunters and beach detectorists.

We offer Sales, Instruction, Consultation, and Search Services.

We’re here for you, our customer, to make you the best treasure hunter that you can be.