Metal Detectors being Sold in UK Right Now

I am putting together a text for a collected volume on artefact hunting in Poland. Obviously a fundamental question is "how many of them" are there? Estimates of my Polish colleagues seem to me to be wide of the mark and not based on anything much except a "project fear mentality". I cant believe that Poland has a metal detecting population more then three times that of the UK. I wondered how one could tackle the issue and wondered what would happen if you looked at numbers of online sales of metal detecting equipment and estimates of artefact hunting populations in other countries. It could give an "order of magnitude" that must be better than sheer guesswork.

So I had a look at eBay detector sales and I have my Polish answer. But I was worried that doing such survey in lockdown might produce a distorted value, surely when detecting if restricted by health regulations, dealers would not be advertising the equipment. It turns out that this may not be the case if we compare the results with an earlier microsurvey I did two years ago (PACHI Monday, 16 July 2018, 'Metal Detectors on Sale in the UK Right Now'). So here are today's figures in the same format. Compare the two.

for sale

eBay, right now, 'item location, UK only': 4810 results (New 4337, Used 371, For parts or not working 27). Of these 18+ are kiddies detector toys.

Brands available today
Garrett (213 items)  Minelab (103 items) XP (113 items) Macro 72, C.Scope (31 items)   Bounty Hunter (22 items) Mercury 22, Fisher 19, White's Electonics 12, Vida XL 17,  Viewee (10 items), Golden Mask 9, Tesoro (6 items), Nokta (9 items)  Treasure Cove (1 item), Treasure Hunter (2 items) Golden Mask (8 items) Homcom (5 items) Teknetic 2, Cobra 2, Voilamart 1, Compass 1, Detector pro 1, Bosch 1, Viking 1, Viper 1 Unbranded (749 items)   Not specified (1197 items)

The fact that UK dealers alone are offering (so have the expectation of selling) 4800 metal detectors in one week/month suggests that there are a fair number of potential customers in the UK - bearing in mind that many metal detectors are also sold in brick-and-mortar venues (as well as at rallies etc).  How many?

In British antiquities, sold from the UK alone, there are 1313 'metal detecting finds' auctions, some bulk lots.