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Our story starts with a guy and his metal detector.
I got it as a Christmas present one year when I was young, 12, 13, or something like that.
One of the cheap ones, but I just liked the mystery of it.
There's this open field, nothing around, but here's a silver coin. Like, that was magic.
Brian Allen grew up metal detecting in his hometown of Gainesboro, Tennessee.
A teensy town in the foothills of Appalachia.
People call it the Switzerland of the Cumberlands.
Lush rolling hills, sweeping vistas, and a lot of history.
I found a lot of moonshine sites, old shotgun shell heads.
You can tell modern ones because they have the plastic.
During the Civil War, the Confederate Army would post up by Gainesboro
to seize the Union Army's supplies as they floated by on the Cumberland River.
More horse stuff, broken horseshoes, axes.
Just the mystery of just putting something together.
I'm a very quiet person.
If I'm talking about something I'm passionate about, then I can go.
There was one piece of land that backed right up to a curve in the river.
Brian had been eyeing it for years.