Good for you! You are keeping at it. That "junk" can be viewed many ways, but here's the way I look at it:
For the longest time I was bothered by what I perceived to be 'junkitis'. I discovered that for all the goodies I unearthed, there was a mountian of trash to wade through. I suppose all detectorists go through this at some time. It was the same whether I was at an old site, or a new one. I soon had a box full of "stuff" and an even larger box of trash. The SMALL box of treasures was, sadly, much tiny by comparison.
Then I had a revelation that changed my perspective. I realized, in a roundabout, way that where I was finding junk, I stood the greatest chance of finding "keeper" items. Plainly put, "Where Junk is found there people have been - and lost that which I seek."
Nowadays I call myself a 'detectorist' and have dropped the "treasure hunter" moniker altogether. First of all, I dont want anyone to connect me with any treasures I might actually have or may be searching for.
Secondly, what I (we) do is detect the presence of metal in the ground - that's the plain and simple part of it. This metal is primarily there due to human activity (except in the case of free or organic gold. However, even THAT has been surrounded/manipulted by humans in search of it, since it's locations are hardly a secret any more).
What kind of metal one my find as a result of this human activity is always a crap shoot. Precious metals are what we want, but they are to be found in very small proportion to the more common metals with which we humans surround ourselves. Alas, the only way to know for sure is to dig up those metallic items which you DO find.
But one thing does remain sure:
Where people have been, they have left trash behind.
