The short version: buy a pinpointer first. It roughly halves your recovery time and it's the only accessory that changes how many targets you actually get out of the ground.
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A handheld probe that finds the target inside the hole you just dug. It roughly halves your recovery time and stops you widening a hole hunting for a dime. If you buy one accessory, buy this.
What to look for · Look for full waterproofing (you will drop it in a puddle), a bright LED for dusk, and a loud enough buzz to hear over headphones. A holster matters more than you'd think — dropped pinpointers are the most-lost item in the hobby.
A garden trowel bends on the second root. A proper detecting trowel has a serrated edge, a thick blade, and a handle that survives leverage — and it's the difference between cutting a clean plug and tearing up somebody's park.
What to look for · Stainless steel, serrated on at least one edge, with a full tang. For hard or rooty ground, a long-handled digger saves your knees. Get a sheath so you're not carrying a blade loose in a pocket.
Digging wet sand with a trowel is a losing fight — the hole refills faster than you empty it. A scoop sifts the sand out through its holes and leaves the target sitting in the basket.
What to look for · Stainless steel for saltwater, and a long handle if you're hunting in the surf so you're not bending into waves. Hole size is the real spec: small enough to retain a thin gold chain, large enough to drain fast.
Headphones let you hear the faint, deep targets that a speaker loses to wind and traffic — and those are the good ones. They also stop you annoying everyone else in the park.
What to look for · Wireless if your detector supports low-latency audio; delayed sound ruins your sense of where the target is. If you'll hunt water, you need genuinely waterproof headphones, and they must match your detector's connector or wireless protocol.
A second coil changes what your detector is good at more than most settings do. A small coil separates targets in trashy old parks; a large coil covers open fields faster and reaches deeper on big targets.
What to look for · Buy the coil that fixes your actual problem: small (6"-ish) for iron-infested sites, large (13"+) for open ground. Confirm it's made for your exact model — coils are rarely cross-compatible even within a brand.
Two pouches, not one: finds in a zipped pocket, trash in an open one. Carrying out the junk you dig is what keeps sites open to detectorists — and pocketing a sharp rusty nail is a bad afternoon.
What to look for · Look for a belt-mounted pouch with separate compartments, a drain hole for beach work, and a loop for your pinpointer. Cheap ones fail at the belt clip; that's the part to check.