Thought For New Finds Contest Forum

[Chase Goldman]

Of course you do this AFTER I find my gold coin.  

Seriously, though, the charity aspect is a noble motivator.  This will be fun, as long as we can keep Calabash out of the water...

Since we're allowed to put the finds in context with words, that may alleviate concerns regarding voting skewed towards natural gold finds, jewelry, coins or relics.

[FloridaSon]

I like it. Simple clear rules.

[normmcq]

i think that having more than one category is a good idea. Having competed in the find of the month in a club I used to belong to, a really good find that could have been anything usually lost to a piece of gold that was not really that great.

                                                                                                       Norm

[Guest calabash digger]

need a banner across the top of the forum???

[EL NINO77]

It's definitely a nice idea ,, Steve ... I'm behind ...
 ...... and the idea of donating a win to charity is also beautiful ..👍.

[kac]

Sounds good, start it after things thaw out up here in the north? Feel like the Southies would have a jump on us otherwise 🙂

[GB_Amateur]

1 hour ago, mn90403 said:

belong to a club (PCSC) that has encouraged its members to display their finds of the month for many many years before I joined.  Over the years their 'contest' voted on my attendees at the meeting consisted of categories.  Roughly the categories were Best Natural Gold, Best Man Made Gold, Best Silver, Best Coin and Best Odd Find as examples.

I was thinking the same thing.  The Eureka Club in Denver (of which I'm a 'family member' -- and long distance in my case 😁) does this, at least with their face-to-face (pre- and post-Covid19) monthly meetings.  Breaking into categories makes a big difference as Mitchel and others have noted, for those very reasons they mention.  Possible categories:  jewelry, coins, relics, naturally occurring metal (which could include both nuggets and meteorites, although the latter may be difficult to determine...).  There could even be a forensics catgegory.  (just kidding )

A solution to not having to give away multiple prizes every month would be to have some kind of random drawing among the category winners to find a prize winner.  If you want to get fancy (I volunteer to help...) you could even weight the drawing by number of entries.  For example, one (virtual) ping pong ball for each entry, colored by the category.

[Steve Herschbach]

2 hours ago, mn90403 said:

I have some additional thoughts about contests and certificates.

I belong to a club (PCSC) that has encouraged its members to display their finds of the month for many many years before I joined.  Over the years their 'contest' voted on my attendees at the meeting consisted of categories.  Roughly the categories were Best Natural Gold, Best Man Made Gold, Best Silver, Best Coin and Best Odd Find as examples.  This allowed for 'like to compete with like' so that voting was made a bit easier and not based upon one category favored over another.  PCSC has relic hunters, beach hunters and nugget hunters.

Steve's website focus is mostly for gold nuggets and natural gold.  I would assume that most of the 'voters' would vote for a few little nuggets over a big ring but that is what can happen.  Gold nuggets will probably win more 'finds of the month' than other items.

I'm not much of a relic hunter but if someone found a really, really rare relic and the nugget and beach hunters don't understand its importance then it may not be voted on.  How do we level the 'judging ground' so to say?  Do we try to estimate the dollar value of the find in our story about it and the research we do on it afterwards?  (i.e. This nugget is worth $1000 and this Civil War Button is worth $4000?)  How will we know how important or valuable something is unless the finder helps us.

One of the best parts about Steve's proposal is that no matter how 'fair or unfair' the rules the winner will be a charity.  We just want it to be fun and unpredictable.

Will people be encouraged to talk openly about their vote or will it be discouraged and be an anonymous vote?

I agree Mitchel, though a big reason I am doing this is because the coil, relic, and jewelry side of this forum is growing rapidly. And it is getting pretty hard to find serious gold these days, and even then it tends to be seasonal. But having a category system is a good suggestion for sure and I'll probably implement it. Or just start it and see, and if it gets too one sided I can just declare a category any time.

It will never be perfect, but you did hit the key part - this is for charity. Hopefully that will deflate the issues that might otherwise occur. I mean if you lose, so what? The charity still gets the money, and that should be the real focus.

Thank you!

[Steve Herschbach]

2 hours ago, Chase Goldman said:

Of course you do this AFTER I find my gold coin.  

Seriously, though, the charity aspect is a noble motivator.  This will be fun, as long as we can keep Calabash out of the water...

Since we're allowed to put the finds in context with words, that may alleviate concerns regarding voting skewed towards natural gold finds, jewelry, coins or relics.

Personally, I think story telling matters. Would I rather see a post with a picture of a coin, or the same picture with the story of how it was found? With story of course. So I do think that the best find story of the month would be the proper way to present it. Maybe the find is not too interesting, but the story is incredible. Of course that favors story tellers, but we will never get it perfect. All ideas are still in the air though

[Steve Herschbach]

1 hour ago, calabash digger said:

need a banner across the top of the forum???

Well, I was thinking a couple, one with the running donation talley, and another with the most recent find? or something like that.