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On my first trip to the desert southwest 20+ years ago armed with my trusty Fisher Gold Bug 2, I looked up a nugget shooter by the name of Glen “Griz” Anderson in the Arizona outback town of Quartzsite, who was gracious enough to take me out to an old nugget patch that he and some other locals had hammered. He said if I hunted it thoroughly that I should be able to turn up a bit or two. Sure enough, careful searching with the six-inch elliptical concentric coil of my GB2 did coax a couple of crumbs out of the old patch, but other than that I wasn’t having much luck. So I decided to be adventurous and started detecting up slope away from the patch, towards the crest of a small hill. That’s where I started encountering the bird shot pellets...LOTS of them. After recovering about a dozen of them, I dug what sounded just like another, but it turned out to be a very small bit of purple quartz laced with thin stringers of gold instead.🙂 It seemed nobody had bothered to detect this area for long because of all the bird shot, but I stuck with it and for every dozen or so of the tiny lead pellets, I would find another bit of the beautiful purple quartz laced with gold, until I had a couple dozen pieces. I hunted the spot for a few days until it dried up, and I’ve been back again every time I have acquired a new detector over the intervening years, which has found me a few nuggets off of the patch, but never another bit of the purple quartz. So I was hoping to find more the other day with my White’s Goldmaster 24k, outfitted with the 6-inch round concentric coil. I was finding birdshot, but alas, no purple quartz and gold. As I pushed the coil under a very small palo verde tree, the 24k let out a healthy ZIP! declaring something definitely larger than a bird shot; I was fully expecting to see a 22 bullet or casing sitting on the surface, but could see nothing. So I raked a bit of the loose surface material into my nugget scoop, waved it over the coil and ZIP! got it! It turned out to be a small 4-gram speci with a limonite crystal, quartz crystals, and gold! I’ve never seen anything quite like it - a very unique piece.

Me as well. Sort of related: When I first started detecting I Thought I'd be a smart*rse and sneaked into a well known rich paddock (Slip Up Lead at Tarnagulla) under the cover of an early morning fog. I latched onto a nice sub oz piece just as the fog lifted alarmingly quickly, leaving me exposed and stranded. The owner (Hedley Price) spotted me while feeding livestock nearby and quickly drove up beside me in his old ww2 "blitz" truck. In a panic (and not knowing what else to do) I put my hands up in mock surrender. Hedley (fortunately) saw the humorous side of it all and chuckled! I showed him the piece I'd just found, he wished me further luck and drove off. Having learned my lesson, I've always asked permission from that day forward and rarely ever been refused.

Had a bit of luck detecting recently with the Deus and 9" HF coil at a country town, gathering by the result the location hadn't seen a detector before. Ended up with 44 silvers on two successive outings, plenty of predecimal coppers and a bit of petrol money to help cover costs. Most of the silvers are .925, with the odd 50% silver makng up the later dates - the green looking shillings are 50%.

I've sometimes wondered why many in our hobby relate to pirates and use the pirate logo to symbolize their activity. I've also heard folks use the term "looter" to describe those hunting primarily on beaches. If we consult Webster, neither of those two describe our hobby in my mind: Pirate: a person who robs or commits illegal violence at sea or on the shores of the sea. any plunderer, predator, etc.: confidence men, slumlords, and other pirates. That's certainly doesn't describe the folks I know in this hobby! Loot/Looter anything taken by dishonesty, force, stealth, etc.: a burglar's loot. to carry off or take (something) as loot: to loot a nation's art treasures. to despoil by taking loot; plunder or pillage (a city, house, etc.), as in war. to take loot; plunder This doesn't fit either does it? We're not dishonest plunderers. So neither fits or describes what we do. Now a word that comes close but not quite is Scavenger a person who searches through and collects items from discarded material. But then the items we collect aren't really "discarded" are they? For the most part, they're lost So my simple soldier mind says that we are simply....Treasure Hunters Treasure Hunter: One who searches for anything of value or that which is highly prized. Yes, It's cold outside and our beaches aren't filled with depositors so I confess to being somewhat bored and have time on my hands right now but hey....I'm fully retired and therefore authorized to such free time, thoughts and wonderments! 😎 Soldier on....👍

The second NEW ITEM - Coming soon in approximately 40 days. Doc's Nugget Stalker™ Brand, The "Gold SPOT" or "G Spot" Nugget recovery scoop/pocket gold pan. So what about a recovery scoop and a pocket gold pan in one? I promised you that I would be giving you another surprise this week. I have always loved using a recovery scoop, but it sort of aggravated me that little pieces of gold would sometimes sneak out of the scoop when I was trying to sift dirt into my hand. This aggravation has been even more exacerbated by the introduction of machines like the Gold Monster that find such dinky pieces of gold that they can surf right on top of the dirt and be easily lost. I have always advocated that when you get the target into your scoop try to agitate the dirt so the heavy gold sinks to the bottom. Well what if there was a scoop made where the bottom of the scoop was recessed a little to make it a SPOT to catch the GOLD. A Gold SPOT, Or a "G" Spot? Then what if the scoop was designed with an incline that led to three riffles of three different heights? This way when you sift the dirt out into your hand, the riffles stop the heavy gold and hold it making it easier to recover? I designed the "G" Spot so the scoop is smooth on the bottom so you can shove it in your pocket and take it out with ease. I looked at gold pans and they always form the riffles by molding them into the pan by raising the riffles on the inside of the pan by indenting the molded material on the bottom of the pan. This just causes a weak spot, and leaves crevices for dirt to collect in. This scoop is made of tough ABS plastic, the same thing they make sewer pipes out of. I weigh 170 pounds I stood on one and bounced up and down and it's solid. I am seeing whether they can tone done the shiny look as it causes too much glare. Like to work crevices? Scrape the material out of the crevice, put it in the G Spot, add a little water to the "G" Spot and you have a pocket gold pan that really works great, very fast and very convenient. I think the "G" Spot with these unique features will speed up target recovery and it's just fun to use.. I guess this is actually sort of a tease because I only have these 5 scoops. They are just the pre-production proto-types sent to me for approval. So what do you all think should I approve these to go into production? I vote yes! What do you think? Price to be determined after I know the shipping costs, duty and tariffs. I don't even want to tell you what the mold costs were for this project. My kids and grandkids really didn't need to have Christmas presents this year. LOL Doc

Yes I still got a couple of those Radio Shack amplified speakers kicking around. Used them on the GP series to good effect. Great for training a small group of people as they went really loud without distorting. The 1/8" inputs were a pain though, and I ended up running a curly cable through the housing and soldering directly onto the board. Never missed a beat after that.

At this point they missed the Christmas selling season so it does not matter much from a marketing perspective at the moment. A spring 2020 release along with other machines like the new Time Ranger Pro would be a good reason for a website revamp and a new set of 2020 literature. The website in particular is really looking dated. FT should hire me as their webmaster/social media guy - I would kill it! There are probably more moving pieces here than we are aware of.

Getting to know your metaldetector and its features can be very demanding. This video explains how to quickly adapt the XP ORX Gold program for inland use along with other metal detecting top tips.

The pirate thing comes from people looking for pirate treasure, not from being pirates. But it seems to have morphed into something other than that for some people. They used to call it coin shooting and nugget shooting. I never was fond of those terms and have never used them. Why did anyone ever decide to go “shoot” for coins? Even treasure hunter has negative connotations and for archeologists it is synonymous with looter. I am none of the above. I am a detectorist and gold prospector.

Our so called hobby has to do with a ugly word that I’ve done for over 50 years called work. We may have been called names for what we do but it’s because they too lazy to get off their fat butts . When they see us find something of value they think everything we dig up has value. They don’t see the hours we spent digging up trash. To start with that scrap iron we swing what they don’t know it didn’t come cheap. The truth of it all it shouldn’t be called a hobby. We need to start calling it a business. Anytime you have to put out money to buy equipment to find something of value that becomes a Business. So this years end when you file your income tax be sure to claim your business expenses. That includes equipment car or truck upkeep. Let’s not forget office space where you keep all your finds . If you do file we both may be cutting back on office space called a jail. Getting back to what we call a hobby is cheaper than lots of other so call hobbies. Look at the cost of a Bass Boat or Deer Lease. Well don’t look too long you’ll be buying that boat for treasure diving. I too am retired and when I did my wife let me know I could work fixing things around the house. I let her know real quick I didn’t retire to work on this house. I’ve had many lives. The first I gave to my wife and the second to my kids . Then maybe a little to my grandkids but what’s left belongs to me . If one day you see this old fart that looks like most of the life is gone out of him it’s just me detecting. Chuck

Does it matter what machine we swing, the brand or model, old or new. As long as it gives us pleasure to do what we do and we sometimes find something to excite the imagination.. My detectors and I have a catalogue of happy memories... Early mornings in summer, the colour in the sky, the sounds and smell of the ocean... very few people about in the early hours. When I'm old and frail I'll cast an eye over the Musky hanging on my display wall, many fond memories. Best wishes for the jolly season and a wonderful new year to you all. Karelian

When people ask me to help them with modern tech I tell them "ask someone who really knows -- don't you have grandkids?" I think Simon is the closest thing we have on this forum to a grandkid. 😜

Blackened metal I found is from hydrogen sulfide. It is more common in water that has a lot of rotting matter. Good example is a local pond I fished a ton has some houses around it and they use a fertilizer company to keep those lawns looking like a golf course. In turn that caused massive algae blooms that chocked out much of the natural plant life. I was pulling blackened lead sinkers. No old dimes but the new ones were darkened. With silver Hydrogen Sulfide causes Silver Sulfide (tarnish). On copper it causes Copper Sulfide (patina). Beach coins are subjected to electrolysis which makes them thin especially the alloys like zinc/copper pennies.

Likewise......

Up to this point it's been a whole lot of vaporware. Building handmade one off prototypes is one thing, consistency at production quantities while dealing with stray reactance is a whole other kettle of fishies. Perhaps some consultation with Howard Johnson, no not the 28 flavors Johnson(Blazing Saddles 1 flavor), rather Dr Howard Johnson signal propagation consultant. I found his research quite informative when dealing with parasitics.😉

Had a couple warm days and field was thawed, nice and muddy to stomp around in. Found this about 10" down in the muck. Has all it's detail but missing the ball inside. Think they should bring them back for the electric cars out on the road so we can hear them coming? Worked on the horses back in the day.

I figured out, way to late in life, that I wasn't indestructible. The last time I took my commercial drivers' medical exam I nearly didn't pass because of hearing loss. The funny thing was, I realized I was more concerned about the effects on my detecting than I was about loosing my C.D.L. J.P. Would you like to have your 2 cents in cash or wired directly to you Swiss account? Thanks for the tips

Kinda hard to tell what your looking at in many of the pictures. Close pictures with good focus on the area's of interest in natural lighting will help. For the ones that stand out good pics 5, 6 and 7 are iron minerals either hematite and or limonite. A streak test would help but 5 and 6 have good form and luster. The last 3 pictures are pyrites. Overall a very heavily mineralized area is on display.

I usually don't get harassed until I get home.. On those rough days when you're prospecting new areas and come up with nothing to show for the long hours and wasted gas. I'll unload the truck, putting everything neatly into my messy gold equipment corner, and go to the refrigerator for a cold one. "So did you find anything?", comes an echo from our living room couch. "Not today, but it was gorgeous out", I say trying to sound positive. "Sounds like you're a LOOOOSER, today." My wife and daughter bust out laughing, and of course I bust out too because you just have to laugh about what we go through for gold. Anyways …. probably not the point of the thread, but I thought I would lighten it up. 🙂

After finding a decent amount of silver on my favorite beach the other day, I had to get out there again. A storm had just passed and I wanted to see if the silver continued in my new area. I had a lot of competition, with 8 other detectorists. But they were all hitting an exposed area like piranhas 😄. I was alone in my area. I used the GPX for this section because I needed the extra depth. I wasn't expecting this good of a day. A total of 34 silver coins, a silver chain, a silver religious medal and a nice 14K gold and ice? cross. I can never seem to get a good shot of anything that sparkles with my waterproof camera. 137 coins for the day. My copper to zinc penny ratio was threw the roof at 62 copper to 2 zinc. That is what a good storm does for you 😊 I won't be able to get back until next week, but I'm hoping I can start where I left off. Fingers crossed.

Hello everyone, I have received many emails about the REG mods and responded to them. I finally spoke to Reg by phone and he is OK with me Posting the mods on this forum. He just wants me to send the info back to him to revise and make sure everything is OK. I am also glad he is still doing well. We also spoke about Whites and the situation at the company and how some of us are brand loyal and hope to see improvements. This way it will be easier as some times I delay email responses. Hope to post soon with Steve's permission of course. Gilbert

Came across this little gadget. It is a mini equalizer. I thought it might be good on machines like the Garretts that would allow adjustment on the base (iron audio) to tone it down. Has anyone tried one of these?

To many folks are misinformed, not thinking for themselves, not just about detecting but many things in life, too bad, an open mind is what everyone needs to strive for. metal

Doc, thanks for your continual pursuit of making our detecting experience more comfortable.

Lol, perfect then. Like I said, I thought it was funny. But I would hate for him to go through all the expense of page layouts, etc, then find out, lol, I could see that happening with my dad. You just never know without asking.

If anyone is aware of the double entendre it would be Doc!

Simon, I didn't know that you were a fashionista!🤣 We will have to get JW to give you a fully color coordinated, or best dressed detectorist award!🏆 Make sure your shovel matches too!!

It would probably work fine, if you can remove the base stands. Then I would get suspender clamps and secure them to the back of the speakers. Then you can clamp them to your suspenders or back pack and they will not be flopping around. Doc

Probably because many detectorists and gold prospectors evolved from hunting and shooting...at least I did! just the thought of finding stuff offends many people, why? I haven’t a clue fred

Looks like a great trip. Not sure why you lost the post. The editor normally holds work in progress even if you log off and back in as long as you don’t start a new post somewhere else. For real long posts however doing offline and pasting in when done may be safer for some people depending on the hardware and browser in use. Anyway, I’m sorry to hear about the lost effort.

Tell me about it. But I like to give them to kids to get them interested in detecting or coin collecting. Yeah, adult collectors would turn their noses up at them but kids holding a 100 year old coin gets them thinking (though in today’s age of electronics, perhaps not as exciting as when I found my first toasted IHP at a swap meet when I was 9 or 10 years old which started me collecting, I suppose).

It was actually in Victoria, I live just over the border!😎 Getting very hard to find the older sterling Florins these day, hence why it is always memorable to see one unearthed - actually 2 so far from this site. Both hunts were each about 6 -7 hours long, so was happy to be swinging such a lightweight detector for the duration - the legs were a different story.😟

Don't fret too much if you can't find it, as that is a pretty common strike error, if it is indeed an error. Based upon the found condition of the coin it doesn't really change the collectable value. But a wheat is a wheat, and casually throwing it in coin star does seem like sacrilege to a coin collector, despite their minimal collectable value as they are dated items nearly 100 years old.

I can see you found a sterling and 50% silver "Two Shilling" bit. The Australian two shilling coin, also known as the florin or "two bob bit", was issued from 1910 until 1966. It was worth one tenth of a pound, or twenty-four old pence. It should not be confused with the british medieval gold florin, which was nominally worth six shillings. 2 bobs are rarely lost as they could buy a lot back then. The last year they were made I could get 5 lt of petrol with one of them. You had a very good day, keep it up. I guess I am lucky that you live in South Australia.😀

Holy crap! You made me look, and it sure does! Honestly, hope I dont sound like an elitists dick...but I dont like finding wheatys. Usually throw them in the change jar bound for coinstar. Now I gotta go find where I put that! Thanks for pointing it out, guess I will look carefully for now on!

Not a fossil in my opinion. It appears to be either a geode or a nodule of quartz that surrounded a softer material thats since eroded out of it similar to a concretion. In the second picture there appears to be banding like that of agate's and some crystal formation towards the center. A slab cut off the open face and a light polish would make the internal structure stand out and help identification.

No release date has been announced and it would not surprise me if they haven’t decided yet. LE.JAG will know when Fisher announces it, if he has any “inside” info, I am sure he will respect that it is competition sensitive information and keep it to himself - just like I would. It is coming - when - nobody who knows will say and anyone who says, doesn’t know.

Yet to find gold in this region of the TID scale with the Minelab Equinox but I have with other detectors (e.g. Minelab X-Terra). It's probably just selective memory but it seems the Equinox has a penchant for ID'ing things right on top of the US 'nickel' coin! Pencil ferrules, beavertails, the internal flap on aluminum drink cans with square tab (why, oh why do they break even those off?!), various pieces of can slaw, some pieces of lead (e.g. certain size fishing sinkers), and even some Northern Nevada hot rocks! If you asked me to make a list 20 items long I'm sure I could do it. Like many of you I often play a game of predicting what I'll be recovering when I see the TID. 12-13 is the US nickel sweetspot but I get fooled at least half the time when I see a clean signal there. Last week I was getting pretty consistent 13-14 and predicted "broken square tab". Out popped a nickel. At that point I hoped it was a silver Warnick, but no such luck. Likely it was (nearly) on edge and the 14 was coming from swinging perpendicular to its edge (along its axis). I never really know until I dig. I, for one, am quite thankful when a previous detectorist ignored the nickel zone. If they were picky maybe they also left me a few Indian Head pennies (typically below most bronze Lincolns and in the aluminum screw cap / high end of Zincoln region).

2Valen thank you I wondered about that

Well I bit the bullet and ordered the 1/4-40's, will know and post mid January. Dave

Hey Cal....now you gotta get Tom to chop HIS up! He’d go into cold sweats at the thought...😰

It won’t take many holes to get that Park closed....your Rangers must be very tolerant....any excuse will do to stop metal detectors here! probably a drop from some careless prospector. fred

Very topical subject, in my years I have had a gun pulled on me, had a dog purposely baited by I suspect another prospector, have been advised by someone who didn`t want me on that ground to go (I went), although I explained I had the property owner and lease holders consent. Walked across a "cash crop" location by mistake, fortunately not being discovered but I immediately packed up camp and have not been back to that very productive gold field although this happened some 20 plus years back. Have become very "cowardish" over the years due to these experiences that highlight the old saying "Gold brings out the best in mans ingenuity, the worst in his nature"

Good finds without your headphones, wish you better luck next time. My 800 is mad at me right now because I won't take her out when there is 7 inches of snow on the ground.

The last two trips among several groups I really only saw two detectors in use - the Equinox and XP DEUS. And a few CTX 3030 for those who can swing one with a 17" coil all day long for a week straight. Other detector models are so rare as to be almost non-existent. I have used the Equinox with 15" coil in the UK for almost 5 weeks total now and if I was heading back tomorrow would choose the same. The DEUS is a sweet detector but I like the ground coverage and inch of extra depth that 15" coil gives me. The Equinox is still ridiculously sensitive to tiny targets even with the 15" coil.

Hi Mitchel, I just imagine my kids when they were little, running around the beach with no thought to where they were going…why should they, they were kids. I always do my best to fill my holes. Someone else's kids may be playing nearby.

Nice work Ray...good to see your taking a break once in a while... strick

This is your plan to impress your "soon to be fiancée"? Tell me at least, you know how to operate a metal detector. Please have plane B in hand. I'm pulling for you big time. GaryC/Oregon Coast

Hi Glenn, I struggle with your questions even after owning both! I like the simplicity of the ORX. I like the adjustability of the Deus or even the Deus Lite. All three will hit very small gold easily with a little tweaking of the reactivity (recovery speed) settings and the transmit/receive frequency. If you decide to buy a used Deus make sure it has at least version 4.1 software or the latest 5.21. Goldfield has better prospecting settings and you can use the HF and X35 coils. Coil wise, in my moderate to highly mineralized dirt, I prefer to run ANY detector I have at around 17 kHz for coin and jewelry hunting and around 30 kHz or more for gold prospecting. Our smaller Colorado gold nuggets and specie need those higher frequencies in my opinion. No matter what I'm hunting for with the ORX or Deus, great depth is not the goal due to the soil conditions. Just an observation, to me the 9" round X35 coil is chattier in EMI than the 9" round HF coil on the same detector set at around 17 kHz or 28 to 30 kHz. Depth on small targets is about the same with either coil. I have used the HF elliptical and the HF 9" round is definitely deeper by an inch or so. Target separation with either HF coil or the 9" X35 is great. The HF elliptical makes the ORX/Deus very unstable when you try to put the detector down on a hillside. Some kind of stand, even a .99 cent plastic clamp from the Dollar Store makes it a lot more stable. Like Chase mentioned before, the best combo for me would be the 11" X35 for general detecting and maybe getting that extra inch or two on bigger deeper gold when prospecting and the HF 9" coil for general prospecting. I have not seen any great benefit in having that extra higher 25 kHz that the HF elliptical offers. Bottom line, if I only could have one coil it would definitely be the HF 9" coil with the 9" X35 a fairly close alternate choice. As far as the Deus VS the ORX, if you will be mainly using an XP detector for prospecting, I would go with the ORX. Its prospecting feature set is just better, period. I'm not referring to depth of detection or sensitivity. Those two factors are similar. The big display, iron probability bar and iron volume coupled with IAR are superior to the Deus. It's just a no brainer. A new ORX with remote control and wired back phones or wireless back phones (my preference) is around half of what a new Deus with remote control and wireless back phones costs, and for prospecting you are not getting half as good a detector if you buy the ORX. It really is a better prospecting detector. If you want to be able to use an XP product for say 90% coin, jewelry and relic and 10% or less for prospecting I would get a Deus. The Deus Lite (just the wireless back phones using V5.21 software and no remote control) is definitely a viable option too for a compromise but make sure it comes with the audio adapter (see below). For me, very subjectively, the nature of the audio for general coin and jewelry hunting is offensive on both the Deus and more even on the ORX. I am still getting used to it (spoiled by Whites and Minelab audio forever....) For prospecting, the VCO audio doesn't bother me one bit, since I'm used to and want VCO audio for prospecting. What does bother me too are the really uncomfortable wireless back phones on my big head. They also are a joke if it is windy or there is traffic noise since they offer little or no noise reduction. For a hot day with no wind in the mountains or the desert they are fine for awhile. For really small or deep, just barely break the threshold targets, forget it. What is better is to take the module off of the back phones, buy the $20 audio plug adapter and plug in some great wired headphones like Sunray Golds or any other quality noise cancelling headphones or in the ear buds. That way you are not tethered to the ORX or Deus. Just put the module in your pocket (don't need line of sight) and go hunt. Another option is to just get the ORX with the wired headphones and plug them into the remote control or use your own wireless transmitter plugged into the remote control like those from Garrett or Quest/Deteknix. There is no volume control on the ORX remote control. Deus Lite module has volume control. The Deus/ORX wired headphones have an inline controller. The ORX wireless back phones also have built in volume control. Jeff

I had a guy come up to me in a park about a month ago with an attitude telling me that i had better be filling in mine. I about did the same, but i am not trying to relive my teens and 20s...lol. But it was irritating when I aways fill in mine and someone comes up with an attitude trying to, indirectly, say that I am not. But, I put on my statesman style face and assured him that I was. He then went on to tell me how he knew someone who had gotten hurt tripping on somebody's dig. At that point I could admire the irritation that we both had. I don't want to be accused, and others don't want tore up land and tripping hazards. If we don't police ourselves, somebody else will for us. And also, it helps not to have a hot temper either. That is a shortcoming of mine that I work on continually. While it might be nice to imagine kicking someone's ass, please don't do it. Even if they really, really, really deserve it. And yes....i knoooooow it can be hard.