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Finally! Found with White's GMT and the 6" concentric coil. Couple grains, about 3" deep. Smaller foot was perfect for working bedrock cracks and avoiding giant hot/cold rocks in highly mineralized ground.

Jacked around at a parking lot edge with the 4x6 shooter coil yesterday. Been there many, many times for fast 30 min hunts using larger coils.This time I slowed down to 1 foot per second sweep speed and went for co-located and masked Dug two nickels and a dime. They were stacked and nearly on edge at 3-4". V3i read them as 64-62 depending on sweep angle. Nickels normally read 19, Dimes 72-74 (can't recall...lol) I find lots of targets like this and the read/soundsolid, generally. Found a ringpull with no tail at about 4" - 2" under a medium sized bent nail. I could clearly hear a non-ferrous down there...again, depending on sweep angle. Solid ID coming from one direction, choppy from the other. I used to analyze alot, but not nearly as much anymore. There is an intuition that comes with experience for sure.

Dear Valued Members,For those who are curious about our company and team, here is a video about Nokta & Makro Detectors, enjoy! Dilek GonulaySales & Marketing Manager

There is an organization known as the Professional Numismatics Guild which has extremely strict requirements on ethics. There are, of course, a lot of honest, ethical coin dealers who don't belong the PNG, but the chances of getting ripped off by a PNG member should be next to nil. If you don't have time to shop around, this would be you best option, IMO. They may not necessarily be in the position/need to buy you coins but I'm sure under the circumstances they would be happy to give you some indication of value and likely recommend someone who would want to buy them. I searched thru their website (pngdealers.org) for PNG members in AZ and found these four. The first guy (Grovich) sounds like the right guy, but I don't know how close you are to Carefree (which I think is ~25 miles north of Scottsdale). The others could certainly advise and very likely appraise if they aren't interested in buying. Even if you aren't in driving distance I would at least call and tell them of your situation. They will help. Nicholas Grovich Member No. 553 Since 12/31/1997 American Federal Rare Coin & Bullion P.O. Box 5810 Carefree, AZ 85377-5810 United States Hours: 8am-5pm MST Phone: (800) 221-7694, (480) 553-5282 Fax: (480) 553-5290 eMail: nick@americanfederal.com Website: http://americanfederal.com, Specialties: We trade in all types of gold, silver and platinum bullion. We specialize in buying and selling both rare and bullion type coins. Cash offers. We purchase all types of coins from Indian cents to proof gold. We will travel to inspect collections and pay on the spot, or you can take advantage of our Consignment Program. Cory Frampton Member No. 682 Since 08/09/2010 World Numismatics LLC P. O. Box 5270 Carefree, AZ 85377 United States Hours: 8am-4:30pm Mon-Fri Phone: (480) 921-2562, cell (602) 228-9331 Fax: (480) 575-1279 eMail: cory@mexicancoincompany.com Website: http://mexicancoincompany.com, Specialties: Mexico and Latin America PNG Awards: Robert Friedberg Award - 2010 Richard Snow Member No. 707 Since 05/18/2012 Eagle Eye Rare Coins, Inc. P.O. Box 32891 Tucson, AZ 85751 United States Hours: 9-5 Mon-Fri in store Phone: (520) 498-4615, (866) 323-2646 Fax: (520) 529-1299 eMail: rick@indiancent.com Website: http://indeancent.com, http://greatcoins.com Specialties: Flying Eagle and Indian Cents, Eagle Eye Photo Seal Brett Sadovnick Member No. 760 Since 09/02/2014 Tucson Coin & Autograph 6350 N. Oracle Rd. Tucson, AZ 85704 United States Phone: (520) 219-4427 Fax: (520) 797-1482 eMail: tucsoncoin@theriver.com Website: http://tucsoncoin@theriver.com,

To get a good idea of the bending, kneeling and digging involved in an easy day of nugget hunting, go to a local park and dig every signal...every signal! Do this for 4 to 8 hours and see how you feel. I suggest a good, comfortable pair of knee pads or neoprene knee braces ( the ones without a hole)...this will ease a lot of the strain on your joints... Better yet, get a digger to do the work for you...a willing and well trained child or wife will do... fred

A simplistic way to look at it is imagine the sensitivity control as making your coil larger or smaller. Going to smaller coils can help in dense trash as it reduces the number of items under the coil at once. Making the coil “smaller” by reducing the gain or sensitivity can have similar benefits. Some detectors also overload easier than others. Nokta/Makro detectors are very high gain and overload easily in close proximity to surface trash so reducing sensitivity to very low levels is critical when using those detectors in dense trash.

I didn't even think of this -- that the reason I may have missed these small targets before but picked them up now is that I had the gain set too high previously. Just another example of why it helps to post here: others can point out details/reasons/etc. that I've missed. When I was in Colorado a month ago and was able to pick the brain of an experienced F75 user he told me that he often runs at a gain of 50, which is just halfway up the gain scale. He suggested I try that. John, your post clarfies why he said that. Thanks! This also may be another emphasis of "simple isn't better" when it comes to understanding how an MD works. In one of Dave Johnson's posts he mentions how unrealistic it is to think of the zone of detection of a coil as an inverted dome or cone. He goes further to say something about over 24 degrees of freedom (>24 variables) that affect how a target will signal. (The number he specified may have been 27.) And I'm pretty sure he was talking about a single target. How many variables when you add another target in range, and another.... Further speculating, suppose you have a small nail at 6 inch depth and nearby a dime at 4 inch depth. The signal you get will not only depend upon where the coil is with respect to these targets and the direction and speed of motion, but also on the gain. If you can reduce the effect of the nail more than the effect of the coin by turning down the gain then you come out ahead. Is this (still an overly simple explanation ) a description of what is happening?

Rough gold from Sparks Gully Moliagul: Spectacular 20 oz nugget from Moliagul (held by Ian in an earlier image) purchased by "Rattlesnake" John: Reg writes: "The Beagle boys with Zig the wonder dog (so called as it was a wonder no one had shot him!) at the 'Welcome Stranger" monument, Moliagul. The coil shown here was my Lance Hewitt special. Just brilliant!" The Monument marks the spot where, in 1869, the worlds largest nugget (specimen) was discovered by Cornishmen John Deason and Richard Oates. It had a calculated refined weight of 3,123 oz (214.1 lbs) Immediately below the Monument in Bakers gully, John detected a 6 oz colour. The late Jim Stewart was with him at the time, and had another photograph with them posing with it at the monument. I found a pretty 6 grammer there many years ago: A contemporary image showing the discoverers and their families, taken some time after the discovery 0f the welcome stranger using a lump of quartz. Sadly, no actual images of the nugget were taken before it was cut up and melted into sovereigns. Image: Wikimedia

This and GB's and AU's comments should really be part of Detector 101 training. So many hunters go into their settings and crank everything up as high as they will go in an attempt to "go deep" - then wondering why their machine is falsing all over and they are digging so much trash. I am guilty of leaning that direction on occasion... but these comments remind me and hopefully others, that detecting at the "next level" requires a finesse and patience... not a sledgehammer approach on a sprint through a field. I am embarrassed to say that I was hunting last week and pocketed several beautiful sounding bent rusty nails from an old park... then I realized I had bumped my gain up to 10 on the SE Pro at the end of a previous hunt and forgot to reset it to 7 where I feel the sweet spot is for my ground.... I didn't dig another bent nail the rest of the day. Great comments guys... #tip of the hat# Tim.

Well GB what proved the high Gain issue to me, was me and a Mate were both using MXT's with the 12" coils, I was running mine just on the edge of the 10+ area remembering that the MXT's dial goes up to 10+3 and he was running his in the 6.5 to 6.7 yet he was digging them large English Penny's at over 13"and a half inches where all my finds were between 5 to 10" range and I put that down to the fact that I was Blasting ALL targets good and bad where he was just feeling his way through to each of the good targets, Another thing to remember is running 2 high powered identical machines with big coils don't play well together because we could hear each others machine approaching from a long way away when the Gain is up around the 10+ area because they will cross talk from well over 2 to 300 feet away starting with a soft pulsing sound and then ending up sounding like a V8 with a couple of plug leads off, So there is a lot to be said for running lower gain settings, hope this helps, John.

Thanks Mitchel. Reg writes: "About 40 ozs from Tarnagulla and Poseidon. The red bit is from Harris's property. I missed the monster patch by a stones throw" The 'Monster Patch" he refers to was later discovered by moonlighters and has now developed into a large scale alluvial operation called the "Big Hope" This is an alluvial "lead" that the old timers missed, and is producing some very large nuggets. In Victoria, deep leads are buried valleys of Tertiary age. It started as an extremely rich surface patch (missed by Reg) below the dry dam on the right and is projected to run to the left of the green dam, and will eventually cross the Poseidon road at the top. It will then join the older worked leads to the north. "The one that got away" eh! Reg? I'd hate to know how much gold we have all just missed!

I'm waiting for my ZEQ patiently.... I'm "all in," as Steve says I decided last month to send my Makro Gold Racer out to a friend in eastern Colorado who is a newbie to coin and relic hunting.. So far he is having a blast with it and he is making many FB videos--- I had already given my Nokta AU Gold Finder to a travel nursing friend from WI last March and he too has gotten the bug bad,,,lol Seems it is my job to spread this disease nationwide!!!! Seriously, I love to give back ---- Much has been given to me by a lot of you out there... so it is actually a direct reflection on your generosity and kindness....not mine. Now go find some weight !!!!

Thank you Minelab!!! https://photos.app.goo.gl/8tDxt9WJl4SnETqm2

Tim, Gotcha. I know how that is...can't tell you how many times I get "just enough of what I want" from the machine -- i.e. enough of a clue in the tones to make the "dig" decision, and then, once I have the target, I end up "surprised," and wished there in hindsight that I would have "interrogated" the target a bit more, from different angles, for the "educational" aspect the machine might have offered on that particular target. I recall that specifically, awhile back, on the last half I dug. I was hunting in trash, and had already dug a few rusty iron things, and got another tone that didn't sound all that great, but kind of hastily said "what the heck, I'll just dig it" and then, up popped a Walker! My partner said "how did it read on your machine," and would you know, I couldn't even tell him? Other than to say "kind of crappy?!" Wished I would have been more careful, rotating around and listening to it...it would have been a good target to "get an education on," as it was certainly in no way CLOSE to the textbook air-test 00-27/00-28 (that they read on an Explorer). BTW -- I didn't make it clear (for the sake of others), I am talking about FBS machines specifically, in terms of how they report co-located targets (especially that "HIGHLOW" or "LOWHIGH" blurb), because obviously each machine does things differently in terms of how they report co-located or close-proximity targets. Anyway, Tim, I am going to guess that your two coins were probably on top of one another, or even touching, if you had a pretty stable ID and tones, at least as far as you can remember. That "12-30" is obviously a clue, in that if it was stable, as you noted you recall it being, then the machine WAS treating it as a conglomerate, and not two separate targets...so they were likely touching, or close to it... BY THE WAY, really good post just awhile back, GB_Amateur... Steve

Hayesman 76, I am not trying to be a dickhead or burst your bubble but if you have bad arthritis in your knees this may not be the hobby for you. Please don't spend a lot of money on equipment until you figure it out. Try this, get down on your knees for a couple minutes grubbin around. Repeat sixty times. This may replicate a easy day nugget hunting. Throw in a couple miles hiking over uneven ground and a couple slips, trips, and falls and well, you get the idea. I hope it works out for you.

Anyone using hydrofluoric acid in high concentration form please be extremely careful even if you know what you are doing. It's bad if comes in contact with your skin, bad if you breath the fumes, it will eat through glass containers. Any specimen that have been treated using hydrofluoric acid, the specimen need to be neutralized. Unless you know and fully understand all the risks don't consider using hydrofluoric acid for treating gold specimens. Again please use caution when using this stuff.

Well my 8 x 14 coil came yesterday and I got to hunt at an old school yard where coal waste has been discarded for many decades. The coil seemed to run fairly good. Noticed a few things: Actual ground balance was a little higher (tad over 8) than with my other coils. Increasing the delay didn't change the GB as much as my other coils. It was obvious when the GB balance was off by the increased false audio reports. I could actually run gain to 7, but past that the machine would false in this bad ground. With the stock coil I usually settle with gain of 6. Very good coverage. Felt lighter than the 12" stock coil, but I believe the 12" is a deeper running coil, air test might be in order I could actually pinpoint better (off the front end of the coil) than the stock coils. My holes were noticeably smaller due to better target location. Plenty deep enough, I know some may laugh, but I dug beer beaver tails at 6" in this terrible ground. But I was hunting for gold not coins. Looking forward to my next chance after Nate passes by. No gold jewelry found this time.

You can simply post those photos right here on this thread and we can all share in the fun (I'm serious) of valuing them. Hey, we all hear you on that -- there are many who have detected 40+ years and have never found a single gold coin let along a cache of them. Right now (I'm really only a couple years experienced) I would be thrilled to find a silver half dollar. While I'm at wishing, might as well make that a Walking Liberty..., 1921(any mint -- I'm not greedy)..., Extremely Fine condition....

Great album JR, keep 'em coming. Someone once said "an inch may as well be a mile" in the detecting game. Might have even been someone on here ?

What an album!

Be cautious, emergencies are the sellers worst enemy and the buyer's best friend... If you can go to two or three coin shops and ask for an offer... There is or was a forum member that buys gold...don't remember who he is.... btw; ordinary dates and worn coins will only be worth spot minus their cut... maybe you should post them in the classifieds with pic's...? fred

I admit, I didn't spend as much time as I should have walking around the target, so I didn't notice anything but the 12-30, which was pretty solid and a single tone... though thinking back, it was a higher tone than I would expect for a "30"... whivh is probably as much the reason I dug it quick as any. I was also swinging the stock coil, which is pretty great at target separation, but a sniper coil may have separated the two targets better. In hindsight, this would have been a really good "in the wild" test target... I will try to keep that in mind the next time I run across one similar. Tim

Check Ebay....you will see what todays market on those coins are. Than you will have some idea of what to expect from yours. Grade and key dates and mint marks are key to getting top dollar. Good Luck !!

Tim, I have had this happen, also (two coins, screwy ID) but usually, there is an angle -- or sector of angles -- that as you rotate around the target, you get some indication in the audio that there might be two items present...like the machine (at that angle or sector) can't decide what it wants to report audibly so it kind of "reports both," and it has some semblance of a HIGHLOW or LOWHIGH blurb of tone. That's not always true -- especially if the coins are touching, or right on top of one another (then, it's often just a cleaner, single tone representing the "conglomerate" of the two coins). But often, I get this really weird tone -- hard to describe -- that I have come to recognize as co-located targets. Did you get any of that, or was the tone "clean," and indicative of a solid 12-30 ID? Steve

Sounds like a good coil - now it just needs to get over some gold!

Hey JW, i used only the external speaker on the z for well over 18months and picked up plenty small stuff…only put the earbuds in and lowered the chatter (volume) as a play around to see what i'd missed on a few virgin patches…………..i have been surprised…BUT i have also 'slowed' down my swing heaps so gotta factor that in…switched to Bogenes the other day out of interest because i hadn't tried it in this area of tiny gold and it only picked up 85 odd% of the dozen bits:) Now to run the 19 over those shallow gold patches to see if/whats deeper down..

I'll bet those old boys left one for you somewhere KJW. With the hours you put in swinging, it's only a matter of time! Edit: "Opss....I should say.....a one ounce "colour" " Cheeky bugger!

Elections do make differences!

Nice assortment of nuggets Rick. you always seem to do well out there. I've got to drag my trailer out there one of these days and put some time in. haven't been in years.

Great post deft.... Your a lot more systematic than I am.... I look things over and get a kind of gut feeling for the area and go from there...

I am eating this up! Great post Deft... thank you. This inspires me to be better about documenting my research and finds. Looking forward to your next post. Tim

Fabulous photos JR and I am honored that you are posting them on the forum! The quote above reminds me how I wish I could go back about thirty years and rearrange a few things. I was up to my neck in life at the time and the bulk of the electronic gold rush passed by before I finally caught on. No technology can ever replace the heady early days when large gold was literally scattered around waiting for the first detectors to arrive at various patches and locations. It quite literally is all history now at most locations and so sharing that history is appreciated greatly by myself and others. Many thanks to you and Reg and all the others who participated in making these photos available.

Very informative essay. Different ideas can really pay off. Thanks.

I just shake my head, what can I say, except where the bloody hell are my chocolates...............True that is top service US & OZ Minelab, you not only make the best , you are the best, I think the whole lot of you are good enough to be Queenslanders............... Wait til we get Tangles downunder and in detention again. PS. If you are ever at an airport waiting for Paul don`t hang around the arrival lounge or luggage carousel , the lad`ll be in the restaurant.

Metal detectors only detect things that have conductive and magnetic properties. Most rocks a metal detector will pick up are iron ores plus a few metallic minerals like some copper ores. The types of rocks one would normally tumble, like agate, jasper, etc. are usually not going to be found with the detector itself. However, you can find such things visually while wandering around with a detector. I have a nice chuck of agatized petrified wood and some quartz crystal I have found while detecting recently and wandered into a nice agate patch not too long ago. The reality though is you don’t need the metal detector, just the eyeballs! There are many cheaper versions but I was always a fan of Lortone Rock Tumblers

This is what it looks like after the hf treatment. Sorry LipCa, I couldn't find the after pictures this morning.