My father has always wanted a good metal detector to search around his house.  Possibly search the new housing developments for a good chance at some Civil War items.   Today he asked me about going half on a 'good' metal detector.  I asked how much and the ones he was looking at are around 800 dollars!!!   On Ebay you can probably knock off a few hundred.

He has a crappy $50 one that he and I have played around with, but we really haven't searched for anything good.   My question, are the 800 dollar models that much better then the el cheapo ones?  Do they actually show you what is under the ground via the display screen?

Give me some info... all knowing Arf com.  

There's a forum for everything on the interweb.

http://gometaldetecting.com/forum/index.php

Also keep in mind that specific models are optimized for gold prospecting, coin hunting, relic hunting...