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Cost To Develop GPZ 7000 Over $10 Million


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I seriously doubt any other metal detector company would make such an investment in the next greatest nugget finding machine. Especially since the nugget patches and gold fields have been plowed and plucked clean by 40 years of nugget shooters. Just think how many nugget shooting snow birds are pounding Arizona right now!

I would like to think First Texas, Garret and White's are working on some "top secret" detector prototype with incredible hyper accurate discrimination. Features that could pinpoint a 5 gram nugget hiding under a pile of buried old timer iron garbage.

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5 hours ago, Hard Prospector said:

I seriously doubt any other metal detector company would make such an investment in the next greatest nugget finding machine. Especially since the nugget patches and gold fields have been plowed and plucked clean by 40 years of nugget shooters. Just think how many nugget shooting snow birds are pounding Arizona right now!

The other thread got me thinking that I've heard it over and over again about areas being "pounded to death" by hoards of detectorists over the years. But I've been doing this hobby for almost five years now in Arizona and I can count the number of detectorists I've ran into in the field on one hand. 99% of them have been forum members. It must have been different in the old days and a lot more people must have been into detecting. Or maybe I'm just hunting in the wrong places..

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14 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

I have always believed that Minelab can trace their success to not underestimating what people will pay for high performance detecting gear. I too many times when making a pitch to detector companies in the past was told "people won't spend that much for a detector". Gold detectors in particular got treated as a niche market by the U.S. manufacturers and Minelab took full advantage of that fact to eventually dominate the market in that respect.

People think of places like Africa as being dirt poor. Yet for a couple years Minelab could not build and ship the GPX 4500 quick enough and every dealer in the US got calls from buyers willing to pay over retail to buy detectors ten at a time, which they then sold for double or triple retail in Africa. It does not surprise me the GPZ is selling well in Africa and probably in greater numbers by far than anywhere else.

Steve regarding the 10 at the times story i heard the same story in france north and south and belgium........one of french shop la maison de la detection sold 100s of deus to Africa...........

 

 

RR

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One little note about statements from manufacturers about sales.

Unless they sell direct to the public ONLY, their sales figures are generally reported based on what is called "sell into".  This means sale by the manufacturer to their distributors and dealers.  A more realistic sales figure is what is called "sell through" which only counts sales to end users.  The difference can be huge, especially if the manufacturer uses distributor and dealer agreements to "cram down" inventory into the distribution chain of distributors and dealers.  Some manufacturers are famous for this.

here's a link on the terms if anyone is interested

http://smallbusiness.chron.com/sellthrough-vs-sellin-34397.html

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About the $10million number.  It is quite credible in my view.  An engineer probably costs somewhare in the neighborhood of $150,000/year - based on salary, benefits, facility, equipment, it support, etc.  

if you subtract some number from the $10m for material,  supplies, specialized equipment etc - let's say $2m.

the remaining $8m - divided by 5 years - gives us the "burn rate" per year - $1.6m

Divide that number by $150,000 and you get 10.66 engineers.

Someone (not in ML) recently told me that ML likely had about 20 engineers in metal detection.  Using about half of them full time for five years in GPZ development and pre-production seems highly plausable.

In any event, it was a wise investment which will pay huge dividends based on the fact that the GPZ is undisputed as the best gold detector today.

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18 hours ago, Tortuga said:

The other thread got me thinking that I've heard it over and over again about areas being "pounded to death" by hoards of detectorists over the years. But I've been doing this hobby for almost five years now in Arizona and I can count the number of detectorists I've ran into in the field on one hand. 99% of them have been forum members. It must have been different in the old days and a lot more people must have been into detecting. Or maybe I'm just hunting in the wrong places..

Like you Tortuga, I`ve been chasing the stuff seriously but not professionally since 79. All through those years if in a group talking about gold detecting the conversation would most times get around to a agreement that fields have been "pounded to death", there is bugger all gold left etc etc, very rarely over all those years have I come across other users out in the field swinging, plenty in caravan parks, pubs etc. To me today it is the same as the old days, it has always been if you go out there believing it has been "flogged to death" you might as well stay in the pub. This may be a "brutal" view but it has been mine for yonks.

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We generally do a couple trips a yr to nevada outback areas and we see very few detectorists in a week. Been that way for several years. I heard that yrs ago with the release of the sd minelabs there were as many as 25 vehicles a night camped in a single  gold producing area , sure don't see that now despite the much better machines, coils, etc.  we are using.

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As a person that has developed a new product and prototyped it and brought it to market, I can see 10 million or more is likely.

And I am very happy Minelab continues to impress with innovation, their design team continually successfully delivered great cutting edge technology. I'm willing to pay a higher price for that. You never know when Minelab could make a technology breakthrough (GPZ) that will revolutionize the goals they have set.

Thank you Minelab for the new GPZ 19, I receive mine in the mail tomorrow. Well worth it for me. Keep up the innovation. maybe some day it will be cost effective to map the magnetic field and display a 3d image to the user. It can be done but dev would be too expensive, but in ten years it will be within reach. How would you like to have the depth of a GPZ and see a 3d image on the screen. What better discrimination could you have than that.

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