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Gold And Gem Prospecting Literature For The Layman Amateur Prospector


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I'm surprised there wasn't beer available.  Most of Arkansas is 'wet'.  Must have just been that city.  Texarkana, TX is my home town.  In those days, the AR side was wet and TX side dry.  There is a state hwy that runs through the middle of town.  One side all the beer & liquor joints.  The other had DQs, Sonics & such.  Wknds had the TX teens running across the street to purchase and then run back.  Or it was just a short drive down to Bossier City, LA, where you only had to be 18 to buy a beer and get in clubs.  So its an individual municipality thing.  The voters have to vote it wet or not. There's been lots of changes recently, even lots of TX cities in NETEX now have beer & wine sales.

Chris

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2 hours ago, EastTexasChris said:

The New 49er headquarters is located here. 

I see they have an Associate membership at the new 49ers for a 100 dollars.  They have contacted me a couple times offering a 1/2 price associate membership.  I have thought about going there for a few days just to detect for nuggets but haven't made up my mind yet or not to go there.  

Terry

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2 hours ago, EastTexasChris said:

A pretty good haul this day.

Those are some pretty nice flakes of gold!  

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I had several offers to purchase a full New 49er membership for $1,000.  Now with even more restrictions on motorized highbanking, you might find one for even less.  Many have been disappointed at not being able to dredge for many years and if they can't highbank, are ready to give it up.  There were other members MDing on some of their claims, but never did see any results, just hearsay.  Most activity was around the river and creeks flowing into it.  Lots of people would raft/kayak across to the far side of the river.  Seemed not to be worked so hard for so many years as the near side.

NIK_3829.JPG

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1 hour ago, Roughwater said:

Those are some pretty nice flakes of gold!

I did get some nice comments from my friend and others who were highbanking.  Working in pairs or three, they would run 40, 50, 60 or more buckets for the same time I worked.  They would get more, but again there was 2 or 3 of them working too. My few half buckets of crevice material was pretty rich. Did spend lots of time breaking up pieces of bedrock to extend the reach.

SmallCrevices.JPG

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I love the look of water worn, uncut alluvial gemstones. Need to pick up an alluvial topaz or something at the gem show one of these days. So cool how you can actually feel the weight of a gemstone compared to just a plain rock that's the same size.

Like Steve said Fistfuls of Gold is a great read. It took me a while to finish it, was slow getting through some of the hardrock chapters etc. but I wanted to read the whole thing.

Most other books out there just have brief chapters on nuggetshooting (look for bedrock) or aren't really up to date on some of the newer metal detecting technologies. 'Fistfuls' pretty much sets the bar covering all aspects of gold prospecting that you'd need to know about.

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12 hours ago, Tortuga said:

Like Steve said Fistfuls of Gold is a great read. It took me a while to finish it, was slow getting through some of the hardrock chapters etc. but I wanted to read the whole thing.

Most other books out there just have brief chapters on nuggetshooting (look for bedrock) or aren't really up to date on some of the newer metal detecting technologies. 'Fistfuls' pretty much sets the bar covering all aspects of gold prospecting that you'd need to know about.

I like to read a lot on the metal detecting subject: internet, magazines, and books of which I have a decent collection.  As you say, Tortuga, many books are pretty basic and say the same things.  They are for beginners (even some with, IMO, misleading titles that imply they aren't).  However, Chris's book is clearly not (just) for beginners.  It is the textbook for the geology of gold.  For someone who does not have an education in geology it is a deep read.  In fact, make that plural because this is one of those manuals that can't be absorbed in one reading -- some sections (for me, anyway) require more like 3 or 4 coverings to really get full value.  I'm in my 2nd (and some cases 3rd) time through the book right now.  Chris does the same detailed writing in the ICMJ where he is (at least in the issues I've read) the #1 contributor.  BTW, anyone who wants good reading material on metals geology, prospecting, and mining with emphasis on gold should definitely subscribe to this journal.

I get mildly annoyed when titles of books use words like 'bible', 'encyclopedia', 'manual of', when they really should state 'introduction to...' or 'elementary basics of...' or 'beginner's guide to...'.  IMO, Chris's book (whose title uses none of the above words) is certainly qualified to wear one of the stronger words/phrases.  It's far more than an introduction, at least from what I've seen of its competition.

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The book (Fist's fulls of Gold) came in the mail this morning but at the moment am reading the Andy Sabisch Book on the CTX 3030.

The book Fistfulls of gold looks pretty substantial.  When i get retired in a couple weeks I'll have a lot of time, for a few days anyway till I start my trip west.

  The Andy Sabicsh book on the CTX 3030 is easy reading and very informative with a history of the BBS, FBS and FBS2 technology and I'm just a few pages into the book.  Though maybe I should be reading the fist fulls of Gold book as I won't be using the 3030 much on my trip, I don't think so anyway.  

Lot's to learn.

Thanks for the info provided so far.   

Terry 

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