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Another great Winter for Northern Nevada and of course it’s still giving this Spring! This is my second trip between Weather Systems this Spring. I decided to keep it simple and hit some sweet spots of old patches with my 6000 with the aide of the little Coiltek Coil. The Hills was alive with fellow Prospectors, we all shot the breeze and caught up on each others life’s. My first 1/2 day, I scored 5 nuggets and was somewhat content. The next full day, I struggled for the next 5 nuggets before heading back to camp. What a workout! I left with many old spots yet to have my detector combo swing on them and one spot I can’t find 🙁. Well maybe next time on another Hunt! There’s plenty of space for everyone at the Rye Patch Gym. LuckyLundy

Tomorrow night the family and I will be going on a camper van trip to New Zealand. It's not a gold trip but I have accepted an invitation to hunt a couple of days in the Queenstown area. That will be in the second half of the trip. I'll be with Simon and JW for a few hours to experience some of the mild soils I've been hearing about for years. There is so much to do in New Zealand before I get to Queenstown and on the ferry return. Seventeen days don't seem like enough now. I was not aware that it is about a thousand miles from Auckland. When you add in a ferry, some hot springs, a worm cave here and there, the Hobbit village and a train ride it eats up all your time. Maybe I'll have to go back but for now my kids have a chance to miss a bit of school here so I'm going. If any of you have some 'don't miss spots' please let me know and we might be able to stop.

I don’t post much, but I thought this might be interesting. The weather has been beautiful the past week, so I hit up an elementary school and a snow sledding hill across town and found a total of 21 rings including three gold, three .925 and fifteen junkers. As pictured. On Saturday the school gave up six rings, including a 2.3 gram 10k, one .925, and four junkers. Someone had cleaned out most of the high tones, but left the copper pennies. That’s where the silver leaf ring was, in the Pennie’s. The top row is from the school Sunday I scouted a small snow sledding hill nicknamed “suicide hill.” Lots of injuries from stupid behavior, like six kids crashing a kayak on the hill resulting in a broken leg. Duh. During the summer kids ride 20 pound blocks of ice down the hill. Sounds like some of the stuff we did growing up in the 50s! Anyway, I hunted the hill and little quarter acre park on top Monday thru Friday and did really well. I don’t believe it had ever been hunted. Rows two thru six are the rings found each day. Monday brought a silver ctr ring and a broken silver earring. Tuesday gave up a 6.25 gram 10k white gold men’s ring and a Versace medallion. Wednesday was all junk. Thursday gave up the 2.8 gram 10k with the brilliant stone flowers, a .925. And by Friday, I finished gridding the hill itself and called it quits with one last junker. i still need to have a jeweler look at the flower stone ring before my wife claims it. Clad count for the five days was $49.30. Wednesday produced $15 in quarters from the apex of the hill along with the six junk rings. This was an unusual week. With clad counts dwindling, I have been focusing more on mid-tones and lower in my daily 2 1/2 hour hunts. I’m at 60+ rings for the year (4 gold, 12 silver), but only $150 in clad. I feel like I’m digging fossil coins. Good sites are rare but still out there. Happy Hunting to you. ”J”

One of the hardest things to do at Rye Patch NV proper, is to find a specimen gold piece attached to quartz. Not sure how many of my Rye Patch NV swinging buddies are left from the mid 90's but we all have agreed on a couple things when it comes to gold at RP. Chevron gold is the most desired and valuable. There have been some amazing high dollar pieces discovered at the patch. Specimen gold on the other hand (gold and quartz mixed) is most rare to find at Rye Patch than many realize, why is that? I personally have found thousands of nuggets and have seen 10X dug up from all the local legends back then. But to see a piece of gold with quarts on it that came from RP, just does not seem to happen. There's big quartz boulders and quartz pockets scattered all over that area. Heck, one of the locals (Peg-Leg) used to dig out some of the pockets to discover massive beautiful clusters and even single solid monster crystals, but he never found any with gold. This is the largest specimen I have ever seen from Rye Patch proper and it was found in 2005/6 by one of my customers (Scott from Idaho) with a GP-3500 right near the burn barrel. As for me and all the thousands of nuggets I've collected in my 30 yrs of detecting RP, I have only found 2 small nuggets in the 2 to 3 gram range that had a piece of quartz attached. Anyone else seen specimen gold come from Rye Patch? Do any of you geology experts know why we are not seeing it happen more often, especially with all the quartz rocks and crystal pockets that are exposed out there? On a side note - My 1st of 2024 Rye Patch Field Training is coming up next weekend. Anyone wanting to learn some real hands on Field Knowledge and up your chances of finding that beautiful and expensive rare gold, contact Gerry's Detectors at 208-345-8898 for details.

This story begins in 1929 - 11 years after World War One. That year Congress authorized government-funded pilgrimages for mothers and widows of American soldiers killed in the war. Leaving from New York, they sailed to France, and visited the American military cemeteries in Europe. In 1930, a grieving widow, or mother, boarded a train in Utah, bound for New York. She left New York Harbor a week later, aboard a United States Lines cruise ship. After two-days at sea, the mothers and widows were invited to the fore-deck for a formal ceremony. Each woman was individually honored with a serialized medallion made by Tiffany & Co. The bronze medallion had a raised gold-plated star and was numbered on the rim at the six-o-clock position. The serial number matched a certificate that was presented along with the medallion. Obviously, the medallion and what it commemorated would have been precious to the owner. Our story now jumps ahead 94-years to present day Vernal, Utah. Louis Haynes, a U.S. Army veteran who suffers from anxiety related to his service connected PTSD, is metal detecting with a machine presented to him by Metal Detectors 4 Veterans (MD4V.org). Since receiving the metal detector Louis has found several silver coins from the early 1900s and, more importantly, says metal detecting therapy is helping his anxiety. As Louis slowly moved his coil across the ground carefully listening to the machine, he had no idea he was about to find a real treasure, an actual piece of American history. The detector came alive, telling him some type of non-ferrous metal was below his search coil. The target was deep, and it took some work to get down to it through the hard soil. At the bottom of the hole was a 1930 Gold Star Mothers and Widows Pilgrimage Medallion! “The opportunity provided by Metal Detectors 4 Veterans has been wonderful. It has gotten me out and moving, and provided me with something positive to focus on,” said Haynes. Louis hopes now that he has identified the serial number on the medallion, he may be able to return it to the family this piece of Americana belongs with. Metal Detectors 4 Veterans Inc. (MD4V.org), is a 501c3 charitable organization that supplies veterans suffering from service related Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), with metal detectors and metal detecting equipment free of charge. Research has shown that hobbies like metal detecting can be very beneficial for combat veterans suffering from PTSD, as it provides a way for them to be distracted from negative thoughts and feelings, reduces their stress, and improves mood.

I live on the property of a 1400 acre conference center that also has two summer camps for kids. Up on the mountain behind my house is a former camping area. There’s also an old spring up there where I’ve found old relics and two silver dimes. The camping area probably hasn’t been used in at least 20 years so there’s older stuff mixed in with newer stuff. I hiked up there Saturday afternoon determined to find something good. I’ve hit this area quite a few times, but I never really scoured the camping area that hard. I immediately stared hitting some modern clad and then I got a solid 57 using the Tekkna program. About two inches down was a 1.43 gram 10k ring! Soon after that I hit a shiny silvery looking ring (not silver😧), and then not long after that what looks like an old copper wedding band. Here’s some pics. The pic of the spring was taken back in 2022 when I discovered it.

That last photo was when Simon used to detect without a pin-pointer 😛

Well all my squat exercises came in handy after getting up and down to recover all this bird shot in the Vic. Goldfield this week. I can tell you that the E1500 loves the stuff and will definitely hear the tiny ones missed by others. My first gold with the Algo was a welcome sight in the scoop all the same...😃

My best prehistoric find wasn't with my detector. I was a surface find. Early Archaic "Dovetail" made of Sonora flint. (Dates 9500-8000 BP) With a detector, it would be coins/tokens dating to the mid-early 1700s: 1749, 1776 Reales or a Jetton token. All found in middle TN.

YouTube is very problematic for newbies. There is good stuff and bad stuff. Sometimes the boring guy has the best info, and the entertaining guy spreads misinformation, but the entertaining guy gets the eyeballs. If you already know the subject well you can sort out what is what real fast, but for newbies they simply can't spot the bad information as they don't know any better. I can swear to one thing. Nobody taught me how to metal detect. I just got a detector and went detecting. I read the manual. I experimented on different targets with different settings. I learned what worked and what did not. I do the same to this very day. All you need is a metal detector and some hours behind the wheel plus an inquistive mind. It's really not rocket science. Experience is the best teacher.

Nugget Shooter forum members welcome for sure! Just a friendly reminder for those not used to how this forum works…. it is an absolutely zero politics zone. I don’t warn I just delete. I set this place up as a refuge from all that and if people want it there are plenty of other places to get it. This forum by design sticks to dry boring topics like gold prospecting and metal detecting.

As I told last week, I was preparing the Manti for today's session on the seabed. In a few words, "damn it works"... Even if I abused the machine using underwater the beach LC program, I however managed to take with me three pieces. The second attempt will be with surf and seawater, which I think it is the proper way to use it when diving. Not bad for the day one💣

TEKKNA FOREVER .. Two days ago we went out for a militaria outing with my cousin on a 1stWW German camp. We had hunted this area in 2012 2013 and never been back again . Curious to see if we could still find things there 12 years after .. I have my trusty Deus2 WS6 set on Tekkna , my cousin has a Deus1 WS5 with a slightly modified Basic1 program. This camp is quite large , the Germans have built many wood houses here, probably several hundred soldiers were living there .The ground is infested with irons of all sizes, it should be ideal for the Tekkna program. Not very lucky at the beginning with just a few basic buttons . Tekkna works very well though and it filters very well the ferrous . Half an hour later a clean high tone signal and a big button . It is a sergeant major button with a Prussian eagle on it , wow what a nice find ... 🙃 When detectecting you very often find unexpected things ... A few minutes later I hear a medium tone , probably a 1st WW rubbish .. No it is a Roman coin lol .. An other very nice find .. 🙂 My cousing will find a splendid helmet eagle a little later with his Deus1. 😇The D1 is still an excellent performer in the iron trash .. I will find 3 other coins , a French 1920 , A German 10 pfennig 1876 and a very nice French Revolution coin dating from 1800. The Revolution coin was deep with a faint high tone signal and my Quest Xpointer Max helped a lot to locate it at the bottom of the hole. I have used my Xpointer Max almost all the time during this outing btw .. After 3 hours detecting its time to go home . It was a great outing in a very nice area during a sunny day of Spring .. Looking forward to come back here again .. 1) The wood : 2) A Prussian sergeant major button : 3) A Roman coin : 4) A French revolution coin located with my Quest Xpointer Max : 5) My cousin with a Prussian helmet eagle and his Deus1 WS5 : 6) The sergeant major button after cleaning : 7) the roman coin after cleaning , Aurelianus , date around +260 8 ) 10 pfennig 1876 : 9) The French revolution coin after cleaning ( AN 8 , 1800 ) :

I am not worthy.😩 My reflection in the mirror is probably the oldest relic I've come across lately.😝 My oldest find is probably a piece of rusted iron,,,,,sorry , best I could think of, probably threw it away. No pic.🙄 WAIT ! When did they come out with those Playboy rings ?

I have been trying to put in as much time as I can on my old swim park site as the window of opportunity is closing fast. The last few hunts have been concentrated on areas the D6 dozer has scraped off the top soil in leveling the site. It is amazing what the removal of 4-6 inches off the top changes. I have dug a fair number of additional targets, all at mid depth to fairly deep. So, 4-10 inch targets + 4-6 inch top soil removal = 8-16 inch original depth of these. I thought this to be instructive. What has surprised me is that of these additional targets, there have been 3 separate pairs of coins next to each other. The first, a V Liberty Head Nickle & an early Buffalo a foot apart, the second, an IHP & early Wheat Cent about 8 inches apart. The next day was my third pair, a 1907 O Barber Half Dollar, and exactly 5 feet away, a 1918 S walking Liberty Half Dollar. This struck me as being pretty neat. Then I realized that each pair are consecutive issues. I think that is really neat. Maybe I can find the other 3 pairs.

Yea, NZ maybe skinny, but it's long. We are in a gold area down the bottom here, but there is gold all along the West coast and the top of the South Island, and the North Island has probably the biggest of the gold mines where JW used to live. Maybe one day when the golds run out, they'll let it fill up with water and those houses on the edge of the mine will suddenly be worth multi millions as lakefront properties 🙂

Just a few US buttons I've framed. I need to get more framed ASAP. Keeps them protected as they are fragile.

My oldest coin is a 1792 German Pfenning, found in a farm field in Sleepy Hollow, New York. The Weaver Mining District, Arizona, gold nuggets are probably good for a few million years, and the pieces of the Gold Basin meteorite I recovered, are estimated to have arrived on Earth 14.3 thousand years ago.

I open this topic for new users of the Garrett Apex and the Pro-Pointer, a.k.a. "Carrott". There might be something experienced operators might want to ask as well. I had originally planned on writing a huge intense review about Apex features and detail the operation of it, but I think it might be less boring and more productive if users asked me specific questions they have. I have owned the Apex now for 4 years and really enjoy using it. I'm not a water hunter, nor gold prospector... I hunt mostly coins, flat buttons, jewelry, and relics in the oldest locations I can find. If that interests you, I will be happy to share what I know about the Apex and land metal detecting in general. Yesterday (4/16), on a permission I have been hunting (more like beating to death) for 13 years now, the law of diminishing returns is starting to become evident. So I spent the day hunting in random directions over my colonial era crop field... hunting more slowly, hoping to find anything at all actually. So I relaxed a little and removed some pressure from myself by not competing with myself! I have found everything imaginable here from coins, buttons, and relics lost by the people who plowed these fields long ago... Right on through to items people are still losing today. Towards the end of day, expecting to go home empty-handed yet again, I hunted near a good-sized Hickory tree in the middle of the field which likely presented an obstacle to one of farmers long ago. It was probably left standing anyway because it was at the crest of a hill and possibly for its never ending crop of nuts. My target signal (only 8 feet inside the shade from the tree) sounded surface loud. The pitch bounced from "foil to pull-tab", back and forth. Walking around the target, I was able to somewhat isolate the "60-ish from the 40-ish" conductive ID, making it more stable and repeatable in the higher direction. A quick glance of the depth scale in the custom search mode I use showed 3 bars or only 6". I ran my iron technique in Pinpoint and proved the target not to be large iron at least. There were plenty of little iron "grunts" around the location though. OK I thought, one more out of context pull-tab or gnarly foil wad and I'll hit the road for home! Folding a plug back, the "Carrott" started to "Bugs Bunny" in the bottom of the hole... A little more dirt and it's out! I checked the hole depth with the embossed scale on the side of the pinpointer... 6" nearly on the mark. But no pull-tab or foil... It was an 1863 cupro-nickel Indian! Normally the "Fatty's" are oxidized into date oblivion, but this ground was kind. This penny still had some light green patina in the recesses. It must have been dropped not too long after circulation. It was in the same era of a rare campaign button I once found in the other end of this field. Not far from my dig, I got another signal that read "51". I was hoping for possibly a "Shield" nickel, only to be disappointed with a 1981 Jefferson at about the same depth as the Indian! 🙂 Hopefully this little (true) story will invite some questions about how I use and adjust the Apex and get us started!

Last monday I finally started the test phase with the Manticore and the M8 underwater. After a minimum of settings adaptation, I recovered three small and light pieces for a total amount of almost 6 grams in total. Tuesday underwater again and Wednesday wetsand workout, nothing to register...Until today on the wetsand...I was again with the M11 and after the usual coins and an unexpected sinker on the slope, minutes after a solid 17 screaming to dig it. It was a 4.45g 18k piece. What else can I say...Jeez...If there's something left, this is the most similar tool to a vacuum cleaner 😅

The young lady below lost her favorite sterling silver ring on a sports field playing lacrosse a couple days ago. Once she demonstrated approximately where she was on the field and where/how she was throwing the ball when the ring popped off, it look less than a minute to find it. Right on the surface under the unmowed grass, and multi-repeat 42/43 on the Legend. It took longer to power on and set up the machine than it did to find the ring!

Recently @steveg asked for volunteers to test a new RCDIGS mount for the XP Deus 2 WS6 headphone puck that doubles as a Deus 2, often called the WS6 Master. I got the first prototype and am very impressed with it. I wish I had a photo of the mount before I installed it on the XP Deus "Lite" shaft I bought for it, I wanted the opportunity to create the lightest possible configuration, and I'm glad I did. The mount consists of the shaft mount portion, and a screw down cover to hold it in place. Here is the mount before putting the puck in, it has a slot at the bottom to hold the puck in position. The headphone adaptor when attached will also fit. Screw the bezel on and you're done, in this case you have a metal detector that weighs 1.8 pounds, and does most everything the Deus 2 RC can do. I took it out for a field test, and found a bunch of buttons, which was my last post. I had a few suggestions for Ryan, the creator of the mount: 1. The angle of the mount is the same as the standard XP mount, I thought for better access to the buttons it should be tilted back more toward the user. 2. Water/heat mitigation - the original mount is a solid enclosure. The WS6 might get hot in there, and if one got caught in the rain enough water might build up inside the mount to "drown" the WS6. It hasn't been warm yet on any of my hunts but I recalled when I first got my Equinox I put a cover over the control box, and at the beach it got so hot it blanked out the LCD. 3. The wired headphone adaptor - the enclosure is deep enough to fit the adaptor, but there was no exit for a cable to connect wired headphones or a transceiver to use other wireless headphones. Ryan changed the mount angle and just recently sent me a photo of the improved mount which I was very impressed with. He wrote that I could review it when it went live on his site, today is the day. 🙂 As you can see the back of the mount is now similar to the top of the RC RCDIGS mount, a hexagonal mesh that will allow air flow, and water will go right through it. 👍 Also note the notch for attaching a cable from wired headphones. It may also allow a transceiver to be plugged in. These mounts are very well made, one does have to consider that anything that is printed like this might be a little more fragile than something that is injection molded. I love my RCDIGS mount for my Deus 2 RC, and can't wait to get my hands on the V0.3 mount which I purchased from Ryan, I'll be taking it for a week at a beach where I will put it through a rigorous marathon of detecting. You can order it now on his website: https://www.rcdigs.com My apologies to Ryan for posting his prototype photo, but I don't have mine yet. Coming soon! 🙂 Here's another idea I came up with, I bought some 20 mil vinyl and a cheap circle cutter, and cut a 65mm circle to install over the puck when I screw the bezel on: It fits nicely and keeps me from scratching the WS6 face. GL, HH 🍀

September 21 2002 Part Two These guys looked to be middle aged but it was getting hard to see clearly in the fading light. The sun had just set when they appeared out of nowhere. Clay hollered over to them and asked them where they were going but they ignored him and kept getting closer. They weren’t on a path directly towards our camp but were following the creek about 100 feet away. I stood up and shined my flashlight in their direction and asked them what they were doing. The one in the front turned toward me and said they were prospecting for gold. Mighty funny I thought as they weren’t carrying anything with them. Not even backpacks or shovels. I asked them where their gear was and all five of them stopped walking. I saw the one in front say something to the others and before a few seconds had passed two of them walked away down the creek and three of them cut up the floodplain north towards the base of the mountain. Then I heard one or two of those three trampling through the brush just above us to the north. They had us surrounded. Conor said he saw some side arms on them. Clay said he did as well. Jacob said they might have been watching us weigh the gold and waited until dark to make their move. It was almost as if they had walked up near enough to size us up. Jacob said that if it's trouble they want he will give it to them in spades. He had his old Thompson ready for action. I was thinking to myself that what the hell is all this? Have we gone back in time to the 1930’s ? None of us were ready to give up our gold. If they wanted a fight they would get one. TO BE CONTINUED ................

September 18 2002 We got back to mining this morning. Conor and I got the tom set up while Jacob and Clay started digging and hauling pay gravel. The weather is sunny and warm and things are beginning to dry out. The creek is still running fast but the water is back within its banks. I test paned the first load of gravel before we started processing and the gold is there in spades. We let Clay bring down three loads before we started running at 10:00 AM so as to give a cushion for the transport of material and we won’t run out or have to wait on him. One of the Forest Service people came by this morning as well and checked on us. I showed him the repaired road and he also took a walk down along the creek to check the waters and floodplain. He seemed pretty impressed that we had already repaired the haul road and were ready to mine so quickly. He said there was a mining operation along the creek about ten miles west of ours and they had lost their small trommel in the flood. We had a good day and were able to process 70 yards of gravel. We are going to run until around noon tomorrow and do a cleanup. Jacob has gotten deeper into the dig site with still no sign of bedrock. The gold seems to keep getting better. TO BE CONTINUED ..................

My earliest coin to date. 1608-1609 Philip III Kings Monogram 1/2 Real Cob.

Found this copper culture point some years back. Estimated to be around 4,000 to 6,000 years old. Not native to Massachusetts. Likely traded in from Great Lakes. I remember pulling it out of the hole along with a handful of dirt and thinking it was just a stone point, I set it aside. I kept rescanning the hole looking for that screamer of a signal that had mysteriously disappeared. 😁

The Legend Beast Mode Demonstration FB: https://www.facebook.com/noktadetectors/posts/pfbid02FoBkfoE1LcNycut7ttJGorTMvVEjJ26PWrAfQ9DrPy5dH7ogUdwL2EkCD6NaRGjCl?__cft__[0]=AZWFP5TjsgWR-2-p2CgU58PvXg3OYaMVrETfyTYFVpoPZUT4Uu0kg51-Xa1_SXZtLnVt-LNAR370Zo-3EBFyNSmc4Lm50MPEAgz8FVybnnLo0PiVRuszjPkI84KJvNJYOpAyJbtWnhXPVzuDHWtRqFjkyPSxgFh-ZJI8UtAjrbXHYZSN4GWUMUX14Ld_FIYIrUUYDLpvxhe0pN-P5AZyzAJ_&__tn__=%2CO%2CP-R YouTube:

I'm sure most of you have seen this by now, but thought I'd bring it to the attention of those who haven't. There's a new cable available with a simple push-on plug for the remote. It works well. It may not seem like a big improvement at first since you can just push the original plug on without screwing down the nut, but this one actually goes on a lot easier. When you pop it on, the cord will always be facing downward, which eliminates the issue of having to rotate the plug until it finds it's seat. Got mine from Serious Detecting for about 15 bucks. Money well spent IMHO. Sometimes its the little things that make life easier.

September 20 2002 The weather was in our favor once again today. Conor and I really like running the tom. There are no moving parts to worry about breaking on us. The downside is it will only process about one third of the gravel the trommel is capable of and it is not catching as much of the fine gold. However, it is doing its job and we may build a bigger one for next season. It would be something like a Pearson Box with a big grizzly and hopper capable of running much more pay gravel. The only issue is the fact that you aren't breaking up all the clay. If you are not in heavy clay it would work fine. I plan on getting some good opinions on all of this during the off season. We got a good start this morning and worked until nearly dark to get our 100 yards washed. Tomorrow will be another cleanup. I went up to the dig site this afternoon and Jacob has got himself quite a pit going. He’s down about 35 feet in depth and slowly widening the diggings towards the west. There’s lots of rounded river rock and the bedrock seems flat. He’s having to send upper gravels that are not as rich along with the bottom bedrock gravel. We are definitely on the gold with no end in sight. TO BE CONTINUED ................

You used the right word - belief. Dowsing is a belief system backed with nothing but anecdotal evidence. Everyone wants to have super powers. Believe what you want, but you are on the wrong forum if you want to promote the supernatural as being scientific fact. It’s not up to me to prove dowsing does not work, it is up to even one dowser on this planet to be able to pass simple scientific tests showing that it does. Nobody ever, ever, has been able to do so. People have been offered a million dollars to show that dowsing works, they can’t do it. The excuses why that is are endless but that’s the way it is. These are the facts, so believe what you want, but take it to some other forum for discussion. And good luck.

I found this on a cold April day two years ago, it warmed me up and I hunted till dark.

Hello Old Miner Don & good to hear from a reader I hadn't seen here before. Early on it was determined that each crew member would receive his share of the gold after a gold weigh was completed. Then it became their personal responsibility to take care of it as best they could. I did not put this in the journal but we dealt with several gold buyers and some of the crew converted part of their poke into good old U.S Dollars. Some held on to most of their gold. As you have read previously, there was a turnover of the members of the crew and Jacob considered the ones who left weak links in our mining machine. I'm not convinced of that and every man must make his own decisions under difficult and sometimes dangerous times. I still have gold from that season & right now I wish I had kept it all but sometimes you need to cash some of it in to live on. Cheers & thanks for reading the journal.

September 19 2002 The Gold Vault It was a beautiful morning. The sky was clear and the temperatures were warm. We ran the tom until noon and shut down for lunch after having run 30 yards of gravel. That put us at 100 yards which is what we like to run now before doing the cleanup. I could see visible gold in the black sands and there was a load of it. More than we had ever seen. Jacob told us he had finally hit one area of sloping bedrock as he worked the pit north. Then he backed the excavator back away from the sloping wall and got another five feet deeper and hit bedrock again. He was around 30 - 33 feet in depth. He said the wall looked to be traveling across the back of the pit to the west and he would start following it tomorrow and see how far it went. He had a good feeling about the dig site and so did the rest of us. Conor and I finished up the gold weigh while Jacob and Clay dug and hauled pay. We finished the cleanup around 6:00 PM and set the pan on the table near the scales. There was a lot of gold in that pan but we waited until Jacob and Clay finished up for the night around 6:30. Clay’s eyes glazed over when he saw the pan. Jacob gave me a smile and a wink and said to weigh it up. There were 77.4 ounces. Conor suggested we name the pit and I came up with a name that everyone liked. The Gold Vault. TO BE CONTINUED .................

The most amazing one I seen from RP was a 1 ozt. Stood about 1.5" tall and was a triangle with 3 sides and a bottom. Most amazing chevron on all 3 sides. The finding was an old friend from Reno area that used to stay down there weeks at a time in the 90's. The amazing piece in the pic below was recovered by one of my Field Staff just a few miles down the road. Beautiful gold has come from that country for sure. This is a pic looking from top of the rock, notice the hole. Pic below is the bottom of the same nugget. Most interesting, there is a hole right in the middle that goes all the way through. Left is 1.5 ozt and the right one is 1/2 ozt. Glad you enjoy seeing something different.

That's the 15" Concentric coil on the GPZ for you, it goes deep 🙂

My oldest object with a date on it found in the United States is a 1689 cob minted in Lima Peru

Funny, Andy Benson and I were just talking about this yesterday. Since day one I have repeatedly said that with the Manticore, less is more. I don't pound my chest over being an original prototype tester on the machine but I was running this detector way before any of you ever heard of it. I tried to pass the knowledge won there on to early users who kept having difficulty with the detector. In every case the main problem in my opinion has been running settings higher than would be ideal. From this thread in 2023: "Basically Manticore is a high strung Equinox with a graphic display and main way to tame the beast is reduced sensitivity until you get a handle on its high performance engine. This would be directly via the Sensitivity control, or through the use of lower power modes, or both together." and "I can only repeat so many times that the Manticore at 1/2 to 3/4 settings is like a maxed out Equinox. The Manticore has extra headroom, but only for locations and situations that allow it. Anyone with a mindset that they can drive a Ferrarri with the pedal mashed to the floor anywhere all the time is going to crash and burn with Manticore. It is imperative that people back it down and then work their way up. Again, target ID stability is a great tool for determining when you have good settings, and above that, well, yeah, it's going to get squirrely." Getting more depth by using lower power modes and reducing sensitivity may seem counterintuitive but it is a reality when running in bad ground. The main benefit will be better target id stability and less false signals. When I say lower power modes I am referring specifically to ATHC as being the root cause of many problems. ATHC boosts the transmit power, which can create blowback in adverse conditions. This can result in less depth, target id instability, false signals, especially ferrous false signals, and reduced target separation. Long story short is people tend to think that maxing out settings gets more depth, reducing settings gets less depth. This might be true in air tests and pure white sand or loamy conditions. Adverse ground and salt conditions changes everything and taming the beast by avoiding ATHC and running lower sensitivity levels will benefit many users. The use of small coils like the 5x8 can also really aid in the worst ground by reducing the amount of ground seen by the coil, which improves the ground to target ratio in favor of the target. Very often, less really is more.

All with the 14x9 mate....super sensitive on the smallest lead shot and punched pretty deep on some larger junk targets. I think it is the ideal all rounder for the Algo.

He was on the ground near the pool negative edge a little hummingbird fledgling, we planned on just keeping an eye on it so it’d be safe from pigeons and geckles until it fell in the pool. My daughter rescued the poor little thing luckily it seems to be hanging in there. crossing fingers it makes it through the night. We will put him back out tomorrow and hope mom shows up. We called a rescue place too hope they return our call in the morning. this is gunna be a long night I think, lol I put him in a Dixie picnic paper bowl nest and set it on my nightstand cause they gotta eat every 20 to 30 minutes sat down on the bed and he was hanging by one foot off the side of the nest bowl heading in my direction, ha guess this is how it’s gonna be tonight anyway. shucks, it was cold…

Actually there was an anything goes sub-forum for years that finally got nuked as even Bill got fed up with it. That plus the “sooner or later” and “habitual offenders” is why I made the comment. Action here is immediate and more than once is a probable ban. I actually hate being a watchdog so the easiest solution is to get rid of those that need watching. I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be a jerk to new arrivals. I just don’t want anyone being caught unawares by my evil draconian oversight.

This must be Minelab’s way of dealing with the competition, about 30% off of their top multi-freq. detector is quite rare of a sale for sure. Manticore $1199 about 30% off plus another 15% military off for those who served for a total of 45% off. Equinox $999 and also the veterans if you qualify. Free shipping and Oregon is a no tax state. Ron’s Detector’s 208-739-8079 rrlmmc@gmail.com Please support your local small dealers as we are going to be going to the wayside pretty soon with most companies going direct sales. With that being said I will always remember when Gerry, Doc’s and Rob were always the ones to ask technical questions as they usually had the answers.

Northern Nevada does have some of the best specimen’s. This was found north of Rye Patch.

I'm going to brag up a little project I have been working on. As the AMDS nerd I have single-handedly been building a new website for the location. Got the domain name, chose the hosting service, chose the software to run the store on, then set it up by customizing it for our use, and then the tedious part - adding all that product. I got most of it up in a month of spare time work, and now add bits and pieces when the mood hits me. Funny looking at this old thread, but reminds me I should get the Banjo Pan added to the site. You will note that the site has no prices or buy buttons. It is basically a catalog site. This is for several reasons. First, it makes my job way easier. Second, it is being realistic about a new reality. Shipping costs from the Lower 48 to Alaska and then back down to the Lower 48 are so much higher than they were 20 years ago mean we realistically can't compete with outfits based in the Lower 48 on price alone. Free shipping on a gold panning kit to the Lower 48? Are you kidding? It is more than we make on the kit! It also means that if we charge that shipping people down south will just buy somewhere else, so we are not going to waste time (money) chasing a market we can't realistically serve. There are some higher price smaller size items like metal detectors where it might work, but for now we are trying to do what we do best - serve the Alaska market. If people down south see something we have that they want, then they can contact us for a quote. For me as the web head though implementing a system that will update price increases, current inventory, and shipping is more than I want to tackle being off site. At a minimum I'd need to tap into the company database and script the solution to that can of worms. Long story short a catalog site at least shows what we have while avoiding a lot of maintenance headaches. I've set it all up so they could add online sales later if they want to but pretty much told them it will have to be somebody else doing it other than me. With that set of parameters it has been a fun project as I enjoy building sites. I like them clean and simple as possible and I like good photos. That has been a challenge given a lot of the crappy imagery outfits like Keene have available. Luckily new AI upscaling tools are available now that let me do way more with what is available - plus the fun for me of playing with those new tools. Topaz Gigapixel AI is truly amazing it what it can do and constantly improving. Just eliminating backgrounds has gone from hours long work to seconds now, and free in MS paint instead of a fortune in Photoshop. Anyway, doing what I can with what I can legitimately lift from vendor websites, and will fill the gaps taking photos on my next visit to Alaska. Enough of the nerd talk. I'm really only posting about it as I have and am putting a lot of work into it and am proud of my new baby and want to show it off a little. Check it out if you are interested at https://miningsuperstore.com/shop/ and do not miss the stuff we have you don't see in most shops - mini excavators, trommels, the Sierrablaster, etc.

The pictures are of nuggets I’ve found in VA using the gpx 4800 and the gold monster 1000. The gpx finds were all on hill tops and hillsides at location in and around old gold mines. These locations were found by a good friend of mine back 10 years ago or so. I’m just picking up scraps compared to what they found. The gold monster finds were in creek finds at a property that I mainly dredge. Only a few areas of the creek have produced any gold to detecting. While dredging this creek it produced up to 12 gram nugget so far. I’ve detected all around the hillsides around the creek with the gpx and haven’t found any gold. It’s been frustrating lol. the vast majority of my nugget collection not shown in the pictures has come from dredging. Nugget shooting in VA is more of a winter activity when I get bored lol. I’d love to give a gpz a shot as it may be able to detect small gold deep enough to punch through all the leaf litter organics and topsoil But I can’t drop that kind of money on an unknown

Wow that is a spectacular piece of gold. Thank you for sharing Gerry.

Here’s one of my Buddies Poke from a Hunt at Rye Patch. I’ve only found like 3 Nuggets with Quartz attached to them out there. But, he found a little Nugget with a Quartz Crystal attached…I think he still has it? Rick

At the Battle of Murfreesboro (Tennessee) or Stones River as the Union called, there was an area known as McFaddens Ford. The small arms fire became so intense that several collided bullets have been recovered including my onw example. It was another murderous blunder by Confederate General Braxton Bragg, sending many southern men to their death. I recommend reading part of the battle which took place from December 31, 1862-January 2, 1863.

Well, I did a few air test swings over some of the lead shot sitting on my mild backyard soil. I was in the fine gold setting. The shot ranges in weight from 0.1 to 0.5 gms. The smallest wouldn't ID at all, but over say 0.3 pretty much all registered 00 with the exception of the only Iron one on the magnet which came up as 18. The two boot tacks were 21/22. Similar sized nuggets ranged around 14-20. As this was just a air test on the ID capability of the Algo, it goes without saying that the same targets buried in high mineralization may give ID'S like I experienced in the field. The steel shot and boot tacks you will definitely dig.

Forgot to add the others.

Gold nuggets, they are potentially millions of years old