About Dogtown Trading Co

ABOUT US

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 8 months 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.

Dogtown Trading Company

MAGALIA, CALIFORNIA

Because of a previous program we had started to get disabled people used metal detectors through Whites Electronics, we were awarded a dealership in January of 2019, thus 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. Unfortunately, due to Covid-19, in 2020 Whites was forced to close their doors, but other manufacturers who had heard about our volunteer work made us offers which we gratefully accepted. We are now 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. Now we’re here for you, our customer, to make you the best treasure hunter that you can be.