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This is what I am finding with my 5000 in the Gold Basin/ Meadview area with my Gpx5000, three different days out detecting, recently.

I went out for a short hunt at a park in Albany, OR on Monday. I wasn't really expecting to find much, I mainly just wanted to get out of the house for a while and get a little exercise. I had only found a few clad coins and was on my way back to my truck when I decided to make a quick trip around the edge of the basketball court. I was about 3/4 of the way around the court when I got a 56/57 signal on the Deus 2. Out popped this 14K gold ring with several small diamonds. I tested the diamonds and they are real. I was using my modified General program. So far this year that makes 4 gold rings and 1 gold pendant that I have found with the Deus 2.

Four rings so far this week.. I know it probably doesn't seem like many to some of you but from where I'm sitting four rings is doing mighty fine.. I'm probably jinxing my luck again by showing you the plunder before the week's even finished, but my luck is of the feast or famine variety anyway so it won't make too much difference.. Besides, I've got the feeling that these rings are only the entrée, the main course is still to come.. Can't wait for dessert.. All rings were from the same beach, the goldie and plain silver were found wading waist deep whilst the others were in the sand under shady palm trees..

Well, it appears the rumours of price increases for Minelab products are true. This from Lost Treasures in Australia, a dealer I trust and have bought from before. "Just to let everyone know that Minelab will have a price increase for all of their detectors and pin pointers coming in to effect on the 1/1/24. So there is no better time than the present to grab a machine before everything goes up next year." These are obviously Australian dollars. I'm not quite sure why there are two GPZ's on the list but I assume one comes with the 19" coil. It's impossible to put up the price of the Pro-Find 35 😛 I see this list and realize how much money I've burnt when I add up all my detectors 🤣

Short 3-hour hunt at lead lake, dug over 100 pieces of lead LOL. I did manage to find a nice sterling silver bracelet along with a junk ring. The ring was maybe 18" from the bracelet, it had me fooled at first. Running the XP D2... 9" coil.. modified Gen Mode.... 3 Tones.. Sens 97... Reactivity 2... Audio Response 5... Disc 9.4... Digging from 25 and up. Loving having the MI 6 paired to the WSA II - XL headphones.

I'm down due to a severe shoulder injury, but not out. 😀 I've been thinking a lot about this article for a long time, even teased it a couple of times, I always keep my promises. A farm is a complex system, and to my great joy I've found that most detectorists have their "eyes on the prize", the immediate areas around barns, houses, and roadways. My best finds have come from other parts of a farm, partly because many of the farms I have hunted were previously detected. I want to share some of my observations over the past 4 years with you. I've also posted two other tutorials, one regarding using the website historicaerials.com and the app OnX Hunt, and another showing how to use the incredible Lidar imaging website from USGS. Here is the link for those: Probably the most important and first thing I will share is not only to get permission to hunt a farm by interesting the farmer in having you search it, but also to inquire as to the history of the place, and listen. Allowing a farmer to talk at length about the property is one of the top ways to ensure cooperation and the possibility of being able to keep some or all of what you find. If you act hasty, impatient or shady in any way you will be rejected. Scour the Internet prior to and after talking with the farmer so that anything the person says will make sense, but do be careful not to reveal too much of what you know. Promise that you will not be a liability, and that you will not call attention to the farm with any historical authorities. I'm not an artist so all of my illustrations will be somewhat crude, I apologize for that in advance. 🙄 Above is an actual aerial photo of a farm from Google Maps, not necessarily one of my permissions. 🤔 "Turn Zone" I've noticed that most farmers make one or two passes around the field both when planting or after harvest. This serves as a guide for what I call the "turn zone", this area will be at either end of the direction the field has been sown. Prior to mechanized farming methods, farmers used large animals to pull the various tools used. Traditionally a farm will be tilled and sown in the direction that produces the least amount of turns the animals would have to make. At best you will be able to determine this by eye and perhaps using old aerial photos, but sometimes large tracts are farmed in different directions in order to produce different crops at random. Generally the turn zone will be at the end of the furrows, not along the sides. I have illustrated these zones in red on the aerial photo. Typically most finds will be located in this area about two bush hog or tilling widths (modern equipment) from the edge of the farm. Buttons, tack buckles, and coins can be found in this area in abundance, as not only is it a stress on equipment and clothing turning the animals, it is also a rest area before continuing back in the other direction. "Rabbit Hunting Zone" This zone is found usually in the more remote parts of the farm to avoid discharging firearms in the direction of the house and barns. It is illustrated by the orange tick marks along the tree line. Hunters flush out the prey there, and sometimes just fire into the woods, as small prey won't usually be seen in the open. Coins, buttons and other pocket contents can be found there, as well as a tremendous amount of spent cartridges from various firearms which makes this zone a bit difficult. If you're not up for a lot of signals you can avoid it. There will be a lot of other junk there such as discarded lubricating cans, parts, tools and lots of can slaw. "Stress Zone" One might think farms are usually flat, but in my experience they are anything but. Gullies, washouts, and rises from the sublime to the ridiculous abound! An aerial photo doesn't show these anomalies well so I created a crude drawing to illustrate it below. The incline might seem steep but I've seen it often. Getting farm animals to cooperate going uphill and downhill is no easy task. Therefore, relics get lost in this stressful endeavor at the bottom, middle and top of a rise. Buttons pop, buckles break or fall off with straps, and coins are lost from resting or maintaining tack and tools at the top and bottom of a hill or rise. In addition, relics get washed down to the bottom of the hill by storms. When searching a hillside, be mindful of shelves or indentations where relics might get trapped. "Hot Spots" Old farms were often the center of local activity. Fairs, Markets, Horse racing or riding and local entertainment to name a few. There is often no surface evidence of such activity. There may also be little evidence that a building once stood in the field. While searching the above zones, it is often good to crisscross the field to see if iron concentrations can be found in open space. The presence of such can well indicate a hot spot where activity occurred, and finding the edges of such a hot spot will allow for a more concentrated search. When concentrated iron is found, simply search in concentric circles or straight lines to find where iron is no longer detected in quantity. Miscellaneous Look for washouts, contours where water drains from the field, any evidence of running water during storms. If you search these spots from end to end there will be a high concentration of lighter materials such as aluminum at the lower end, but often heavier objects can be found at the beginning. The presence of many lead bullets in a particular spot indicates it is the drop point or backstop of projectiles such as one might find at a shooting range. Unless the actual target spot can be located where there is a possibility of finding pocket relics, it is somewhat doubtful that anything but bullets or shot will be found. Flattened bullets in quantity would be an indicator. Look at topographic maps on historicaerials.com going as far back as you can, they often indicate the presence of roads that have been moved or are no longer in use. Many relics can be found along old roads. Those maps prior to the 1960s will often indicate the location of buildings that no longer exist as well, represented by square dots in the oldest maps, and up to large rectangles in later maps. Water features on a farm present an extra degree of challenge, particularly waterproof equipment. Look for really tall trees that appear to have been on the farm for a long time after noon (12PM), these "signal trees" indicate the possibility of a break area from the hot sun. I've found coins and buttons tracing the shade. I also want to call attention to "dragged" objects that get caught up in the various implements, and items broken by such as well. Dragged items can be found anywhere, and broken items can often be found in straight lines from the piece you have currently discovered. Hunting in an increasing spiral from the object or along the apparent furrow may produce additional pieces. This is as much as I can think of at the moment, should I think of anything else I'll post it, or if any of you have other suggestions, please post them here. Happy Hunting!

Is it alive 🙂 just downloaded it.

Reese, Just proves that certain detectors/coils can work in different goldfields better than others. I have always stated the GPX 4500 and 5000 have the most versatility overall with their 8 timings and various settings/combo's. However, the GPX 4500/5000 are only good to the guys that really like the experience and try different settings, rather that just a "Turn On and Go" PI, like the GPX 6000. I like the GPX 6000, but I would never run it against a GPX 5000 or GPZ 7000 in high mineralization or anywhere there is a lot of depth. This is just my personal opinion, but I have used them all long enough to prove to myself what I'm stating. The GPX 6000 is deadly on small gold and specimens, shallow ground or bedrock hunting, but not a real great unit on going for depth. I think you are proving this yourself out there at Gold Basin, where most of the gold is buried deep in the washes, or maybe shallower on the hillsides and flats. Also, I'm sure Gold Basin has had no much attention, especially after the Gold Basin Meteorite discovery, so the ground has been pounded in areas out there, so I'm sure a lot of the easy gold is picked away. Great to see you finding gold, regardless of detector. Keep up the great work! Rob

Also found a bit of junk jewellery, although the ear stud and the little Buddha head on the bracelet are silver.. I nearly had a heart attack when I saw the huge sapphire, I first thought it must be attached to a ring.. When I picked it up it turned out to be plastic with a metal backing..

The map is showing my property with faint outlines of my house and the outbuildings. I can see my approximate location where I'm sitting in my house, nice!!

Hard to believe the winter of 2023/24 winter is headed down upon us already. The winter of 2022/23 dropped enough snowpack for a massive spring runoff for all us gold seekers. The photos are of a cabin located on the western side of the Sierra Nevada divide. By December of 2022 the season snowfall totals had reached 366 inches. By April 2023 another 302 inches of snow had fallen for a season total of 668 inches. We didn't have much time to sniff out the placers this past season with the chainsaw replacing the pan and the metal detector. And here it is November 2023 already. These old granite boulders where dropped by a glacier that also deposited a few quartz pebbles rounded by some ancient river. Well, ain't no flakes a falling' yet, time to grab the pan and shovel before they freeze to the wall and get to diggin'. Let me how you made out down stream this past season...and don't forget to write.

Beach hunt # 9 is a return trip to the same beach that I did last week. This was going to be a scouring and expanding hunt of the small area (approx. 30’ x 20’). I also wanted to try out some larger coils I have and opted to take the Detech 15” Spiral coil, the 17x21” Detech SEF coil and maybe the Coiltek 14” Anti-interference coil, if there was any time left. I left the Detech 18” DD coil at home, figuring it probably would not add anything to the test. I started by using the 12 ½ inch coil I had on the machine and went straight to another section of the beach where I have never been able to get any deep coins. It is far more sanded in than the area where I found the silver from my last visit. No luck there, so I switched to the 15” spiral coil and went back to the silver patch. I remember it feeling heavy and it is. 😄 Worked about 2 hours in the patch and did not hit any silver. Did get a Buffalo and a Wheat, so it did pick up some missed coins. Then the 17x21” coil came on. Each of these coils ran in the cancel mode as this is the beach with the Accela / Amtrac train that is just about right on the beach. The 15” coil was the noisiest coil, even in cancel but only when the trains were actually passing by you. The 17x21 handled that better. Both coils ran relatively quietly when the tracks were powered down a bit. I was glad that such large coils were usable with the heavy EMI. Depth was solely dependent on the level of EMI that they were exposed to. I ran the 17x21 coil for about 4 hours. I also expanded the hunt length and width wise. These coins were not easy to get at, and most were at the 16” mark. One Mercury dime was a surprise, since I thought I was going to be digging some ground noise, but it ended up being silver. 🥰 The large coils were harder to pinpoint since cancel mode shifts the pinpoint from center to the left side of the coil. Also, it was hard to find the target with that 17x21. Took a bit of time for me to figure out what part of the coil I should use as a guide. Fun times. All in all, I did better that I thought I would do, but swinging them coils is way harder than the 12 ½” coil I am used to. I’m done at this beach and if I get out next week, I’ll be looking at trying a new beach.

I would have liked to try it for free also but as a tech the temptation got the best of me! I went ahead and signed up for the premium.

Just be aware that while using it the remote battery will run down about half as long as normal.

It's all about water temperature Tony, you have to have titanium marbles to use an Excalibur in NZ, we get icebergs from Antarticia some years 🙂

I'm going to try it on a hunt this weekend before subscribing.

Funny you should sat that. 2 days ago I dug a 114 gram stainless steel bracelet. I was getting a 85 solid, dug the hole and out pop a huge bracelet. Scanned the bracelet and it read 6 with a low iron grunt, scanned the hole again and took out a lead weight lol.

Wishing you some good news on Monday I loved Green Acres . Fred and Arnold , Ralph and Alf ...Mr Fred .LOL But mostly for the massive harmonica sound ! Permanent ear worm ? Mention one of the songs I had to do 1000 times.

Just downloaded it.

I think the fisherman there need to start using a little higher # test line! That's nuts.

Beautiful rose gold. 👍I know a person who can make nice rings like that magically disappear especially if they fit her... I married her 15 years ago. 🤔 She's quite the magician. 🧙 😁 Great find! Congratulations.

I still have and will keep my 3 Tesoro’s due to their simplicity and no nonsense operation. (Lobo ST, El Dorado, and Silver uMax). They’re also great to have around for other family members to use on occasion.

I'm mad at those VLF guys for being able to discriminate out those bottle caps and small bits of aluminum. They should be removing them for me 😄 Now I'm stuck digging them to get to the deeper stuff. I'm calling the metal detecting police on them! I'm trying hard not to imagine that. 😵 ............😆

I’d certainly agree all the buzz on the forum for some time has boiled down to Minelab, XP, and Nokta. It’s really become a Big Three instead of a Big Five or even the Big Four. As you note serious VLF users are most often swinging an Equinox or Deus, with Manticore and Legend now in the mix. On the PI side Minelab long ago crushed the competition. Fisher has not had a serious release in over a decade, and if Garrett wants to get serious attention again they need to move much faster than they have been. Anyone without a top tier SMF is essentially no longer part of any conversation. People here give lip service to buying American, but fact is that performance is all that matters, and U.S. manufacturers if anything engender anger and scorn when brought up in conversation amongst serious users. The main takeaway for me from this thread is that it is time to retire the concept of a Big Five and recognize that there has been a consolidation take place. What we really have now are the Big Three making all the waves.

I used the Impact several years ago. It was an excellent detector no doubt. I mostly detect in moderate to high iron mineralization and the Impact suffered from the same symptoms as all other single/ selectable single frequency detectors which are loss of target ID accuracy and loss of depth along with inconsistent ground balancing and ground noise chatter. So actually using that big coil you mentioned would have made things worse not better. The Legend may not have the biggest coil compared to the Impact, but in dirt around here it will detect deeper, detect targets with more accurate target IDs, ground balance much better and be less noisy from ground conditions due to its excellent simultaneous multi frequency tech compared to the Impact. Plus, the Legend has five selectable single frequencies to help fight EMI and a ton of other great features. I would pick the Legend every time over the Impact, without another thought.

I got the same message that my free trial had expired. 🤔 10 bucks a year seems reasonable to me but i would have liked to try it first for free.

Currently $1768 NZD, $1638 Australian Dollars (AUD) at our dealer. Minelab Excalibur II Waterproof Metal Detector - Jacobs Digital I bet that price is about to disappear, thought I best post a screenshot in case it changes quickly 🙂 Inflation huh? 🙂 Damn those Malaysian manufactures and their labour price increases! Soon it will be $2299 AUD.

Great week your having and it couldn't happen to a nicer person. Good luck and stay safe out there.

Thanks Northeast, I couldn't read yours so here is a better image of the Miners Den Price "Udate" 🤣 It's funny they think the 19" coil is worth $1000, although it makes a fantastic adapter. Dealers are dealers, they exist to make money although the current price isn't the current RRP, it's the MDA price, I assume that means Miners Den Australia price, which is why it differs from the Lost Treasures current price. Miners Den was cheaper for the Monster than Lost Treasures too. Interesting the GM1000 now only includes the 5" coil even with the massive price jump, I guess almost nobody uses the other coil anyway. The jump with the CTX is pretty incredible, it is a good detector though. I don't know why there were rumours of the 5000 being discontinued, it's gone up by a grand. Sellers of second-hand units will be overjoyed.

It sounds really inviting as a start🫢... A good reason to go back and explore again.

Nice. Good for you & happy for you. D4G

Rings have been elusive to me, I don't know why, I have found some beauties that have paid off their founding detector in one hit but they're still very elusive. Four in a week of non-junkers is more like a year for me 🙂 Well done Erik.

I just downloaded it. It is saying my free subscription has expired and I am being offered memberships. Did y’all just sign up for the premium membership? I am guessing that it is $9 a year?

Lead and foil , sometimes I have to force myself...maybe the next one will be ?

I'll give it shot next time go out. I never used the GPS on my CTX, this may be more time consuming than it's worth. Some of the places I hunt don't have cell service.

Thanks Dan, Shame I can't use it much but installed it anyway. Looks good. I'm afraid it might be a bit too "social media" for me but we will see. 🙂

Thanks RVP, I've been toying with the idea of writing a book, first I want to gain enough experience that I'm satisfied with it, and then I want to be able to refer back to some of my posts to see if I'm interested in what I've written. 😀 Being an IT guy since the early 80s, I've had plenty of opportunities and attempts to make and edit videos, and my conclusion is I'd rather be covered with tuna and thrown in a room full of cats 😹 I dislike the sound of my voice and appearance on video, and despise the hours it takes to edit. I do like to write, and have won awards and praise in the past. 🤔 I also know that illustrations break up the monotony of TL:DR 😀 no matter how cheesy. 🤣 Of all the different detecting I've done, I have to rob Green Acres and say that "farm detecting is the life for me" - hope that doesn't cause an earworm. 😀 I appreciate the well wishes my friend, and hope that the orthopedic specialist i'm going to see next Monday gives me a fair prognosis. 🤞 🏴‍☠️ I am indeed going to have second thoughts about anything other than detecting pain... 🤣

That's a great batch of clues 350 , thanks for sharing them ! You've mentioned some in finds posts but great to see it all in one place with illustrations on top ! A nice little tutorial . You should write a book , many here have . But there still isn't exactly a huge library to pick from for people trying to learn more about these things we do. It might even make a good YT vid if you find that less daunting ? So you fell , but you COULD get up !! (👍 👍 two of these ) When we get old if you fall , it usually breaks something or at least messes you up somehow ! I can add it still can happen when you're much younger , you just have to try hard enough 😜 BTDT to all of the above. Old friends are hard to find. Making it to senior status isn't guaranteed and the warranty is getting kinda sketchy but some of us actually get there. Just need to adjust things in the direction of causing less pain..... Take care of that shoulder and then get back out there ya lazy dirt pirate ! 🏴‍☠️ arrrrrr We're all rootin' for ya matey !

Belief and should are nice I guess, but you’d be surprised how often companies make changes you might want to know about, and don’t tell anyone. A small improvement to a product could be perceived as meaning the earlier versions were substandard, and some companies don’t want to open that can of worms. So it’s a valid reason why Gerry is asking, because I’m pretty sure he knows just what I’m talking about. It’s not necessarily the case here, but I’d sure not assume otherwise without actually knowing the facts.

Thanks very much and haha, VL. 🤣 Worse, there are those that think that big ol' park is theirs. 🤔 I grew up in cities, but always managed to find the neglected woodsy areas that held mysterious antiquities. As I got older I realized that microcosms are not a center of reality, the reality of them is that they are a very dangerous lens with which to view the world. A font of group-think and rule of minority. I went rural in the 90s and did not look back. I have been very fortunate to see some of the world, from Europe in the military to Mayan temples with my wife, and choose people with very open minds to associate with. 😏 Were it that I could travel far and wide and learn still more on this fixed income... 🙄 I think it is time in my life for yet another change, leaving risky behavior to the younger set and focusing more on history's great contributions. 😀 Heck, if could find a decent illustrator along the way I might write a book on metal detecting and learning from history to not repeat mistakes of the past. A compilation of discovering our past and thoughts on how the future could look if we would seek and embrace history instead of letting it rot in the ground... 🤔 But right now I need to overcome this setback so I can get started 😅 I dread being told my days are shortened.

Over here in my part of Germany, the "serious" detectorists seem to use Minelab / XP exclusively, with Nokta strongly catching up. I sometimes see beginners with a blend of entry-level Garrett / Teknetics / Fisher / Quest machines - but even those seem to fade in favour of Nokta / Minelab / XP lower priced models. Imho, the Nox opened up a whole new era in many ways - not only MF / SMF-wise.

I'm also finding silver , not enough to allow me to find gold yet but I have found lots of lead and I've come up with a plan. A Gourmet Black Tie Dinner Party. ,,,at my beach !🤩

Thank you. I googled the inscription as soon as I saw it and knew that I had a gold electroplated ring. I guess it's better than 100% junker ;)

Way to fight through the pain, Dan, and congrats on the silver, well done! 😎 I hate to be the one that posts this part, but GE, GP, or HGE stamps on jewelry usually mean gold plated, but there is gold on the ring none the less. 😏

Yeah ,the ring looks nice for bling ! It sure is Lead Lake ! wow . I'm getting sore just thinking about carrying that pile ! But I'd dig 'em all too . For possible yellow and to get it all out of the lake . The bracelet links look BEEFY 🥸

Finestkind 🖖

Ahhhhh yes I see it now 😎 , so , it's a teleaxester ! Probably a '52. def not a repro. You might be able to use it to dig for gold during the day and play it at night.

Buddy and I were able to get permission on an old farm. The owner doesn't want anyone else on it and has been incredibly generous to let us dig there. Think we still have about 20 acres to fart around on, targets are sparce but there are interesting finds. Image of some of them. For privacy reasons I won't post pics of the landscape or of key structures. Figured a few of ya might enjoy these, maybe even have more info on some of them.

100% factual. Not an opinion. TRUTH. 👍