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The Gpx6000 Adventure Begins!


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11 hours ago, Gold Catcher said:

That's why I haven't thus far come across a "professional" detectorist here in the US who is not living full time in a tent.....unless of course you have some sort of other income, like being a detector dealer.

GC

In terms of specifically selling nuggets found detecting, it was possible for a while after the Great Recession. I lived full time in the field from 2010 to 2015 off nothing but gold finds, and I had lost pretty much all my money in the crash, lost my house, and had to cash out my 401k early to pay for hospital bills, so no padding to fall back on, but nothing left to lose either. Still had truck, RV, and detectors though, all which thankfully I had paid off before the crash.

So, I definitely wasn't living in a tent, I had a pretty good degree of comfort all things considered, and I kept it up for quite a long time since most people I had met in the field prior to that had all quit by then due to bad luck or declining gold prices.

I think the ability to make a real somewhat-comfortable living off just nugget detecting in the US ended in 2016 after gold declines and 1-2 years of GPZ flogging. I know people who still do it though - almost all with private land or heavy equipment, and they definitely aren't in tents.

Back then my daily goal was always the same: 2 grams/day avg over the course of a month. It was enough to live off, but not make savings. Every detector I bought was bought with loans and paying it off with gold quickly was priority #1.

These days, it's still possible, but the profit is in recognizing large scale trends that might be marketable to exploration companies, not finding individual nuggets.

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On 6/30/2022 at 1:35 PM, phrunt said:

Nope, I've got a long way to go to pay for either of them 🙂  Although I've broken the two ounce mark, If I was to take into account fuel costs I'd likely be in the negatives again 🙂

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This is with the plastic bottle zero'd out. 64 grams, I put the little guys on there too that are not in the bottle as I've been using them experimenting but they didn't change it at all from the 64, these scales aren't accurate enough but my little accurate scales can't weigh in the ounces.   Don't know how many hundreds of nuggets that is, a bulk of them are very small.

The Equinox was the only detector to pay for itself, and it did it easily four times over and that was with ring finds more so than gold although it's done pretty well on the nuggets I think.  One ring it found was worth $5630 NZD, a Lord of the Rings Elf 18k Elfish ring which my wife claimed.  If I wanted it to I'd say the Equinox would be the one to pay for the detectors by using it for coins and jewellery as that's a lot easier than gold nuggets!

My best week with the Nox for modern money, even found a note flapping in the wind stuck in a fence that week 😛

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That rings probably worth near my total gold nugget finds, fortunately for me it's not about the money, I like having my collection of nuggets but they're more about the memories and the finds themselves than their value, they'll never be sold. 

I would say for someone with my skill level and time spent gold detecting that coin and jewellery would be where the easy money is, even my silvers add up to some decent money, a few rare ones among them and this is only about half of them now, never took a recent photo of my coins or jewellery finds but I've broken 6 kilo's of coins now and haven't even checked through most of them to see if there is any rare ones except the silvers.

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That gold sovereign I gave away to a friend, not sure it was a real one but pretty sure it's a fake, it wasn't the right weight.

So I guess if I wanted to pay down detectors I should start looking for coins and jewellery far more and less for gold, however I enjoy looking for gold a lot more and don't care about the money side of it.

Cool man...I found one of those rings years ago! At first, thought it was some sort of middle Eastern wedding ring, lol.

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You know someone finds a decent amount of gold when they find something like that, and smash it up 🙂 I'd treasure that thing! 

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Nice! I was wondering how the 6000 does on speci gold like that. Good to see it's hitting it relatively deep all things considered with the target type.

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5 hours ago, phrunt said:

You know someone finds a decent amount of gold when they find something like that, and smash it up 🙂 I'd treasure that thing! 

I prospect to supplement my income so unless its an amazing looking specie, in the crusher it goes! Ive found thousands of species better looking than this one, so it wasn't an issue for me.

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1 hour ago, Aureous said:

I prospect to supplement my income so unless its an amazing looking specie, in the crusher it goes! Ive found thousands of species better looking than this one, so it wasn't an issue for me.

Simon might be a buyer for one of your species?

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29 minutes ago, mn90403 said:

Simon might be a buyer for one of your species?

Think he'd prefer to find one himself lol

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6 hours ago, jasong said:

Nice! I was wondering how the 6000 does on speci gold like that. Good to see it's hitting it relatively deep all things considered with the target type.

I'm sure if it had a solid piece internally that was over a gram or so, it would've triggered a Ch1 (dipping-inverted) response. All the pieces were hackly and spongy so Ch2 it was..... Amazing depth though! I'll pay more attention to these deeper signals with Ch2 response in future. Certainly different to a 4500 or 5000.

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