Leaderboard

A coin/jewelry/relic detector with fixed pulse delay set for larger coin sized targets. It will ignore the really small stuff A gold prospecting detector with fixed pulse delay set for 0.1 gram nuggets and larger. Personally I would like both options in one detector. Waterproof would be awesome.

On the subject of gold and its value back in 2002 -- gold was anywhere from $310 to $350 an ounce that year. There were several partners that were part of the crew early in the season and left. They got their gold cut up to the time of leaving. When they were there and working it was a 4 way equal split. After they left the gold was being split up equally amongst Jacob and myself. When Conor came to the mine Jacob paid him out of his cut. Gold cuts and percentages can be a touchy thing, especially when there is gold fever in the camp. It can destroy a crew and ruin friendships. We were lucky. Jacob was not a greedy person. In fact, he was quite generous. Did we ever hit the jackpot at the end of the rainbow? Let's find out.

I just got permission to detect a large piece of land in a well known gold bearing area. It is private land that nobody has been prospecting for many many years. Everything around it is claimed up tight. It's hard to describe how excited I am about this permission. I will have miles, not acres to hunt. 😁😁😁

Howdy, I've been learning and panning the last year and a half. I've got sluices, wheels, and buckets of material. Now I want to get into detecting too! I'll be working in and around the CA motherlode, Nevada, northern Idaho, and hopefully making a trip up to Alaska. Thanks.

Hi team, just found this on Geoview map near Laverton. I have had a look and there is no mines or old works logged nor old GML OR P OR PA etc. is this something natural or? kind regards, ethan

See if you can get lidar imagery of the area. Prospect pits/spoil piles are easy to see on those, but they have the be high resolution imagery. In the US a lot of the lidar is still the low resolution and the prospects are harder/impossible to see on it, I'm not sure about Australia resolutions.

"I usually use General or ATLC and the ID is the same on both of those modes." These are my two favorites unless I'm on the beach... WTG on the gold coin...cant tell you how many 22 brass I've dug looking for that elusive $1 gold coin...Nice work! strick

Hang in there - We're almost home.

Texas vs Texas, maybe that’s the storm a comin’. I would enjoy reading future posts about an Impulse AQ and the Axiom Lite at $2,500 US. How about an upgraded ATX WP lite version with TID for coin, relic, jewelry, beach & salt water plus gold?

Yup. The silence is deafening. Is it so hard to just tell us what is coming and about when it will arrive? I have the attention span of a gnat and have already moved on.

You're optimistic, I think the settings required to be ideal for gold hunting won't be available on the relic, and vice versa. Having two separate models helps bring in the bucks but really shouldn't be necessary. I guess we'll see when they come out, but it doesn't seem in the interest of the customer to me to do it this way. Both will work for either job, but not be optimal unless buying the right detector is how I think they're going to play it.

Air tests are a must for establishing baseline results. In ground it can be all over the map depending on mineralization and adjacent targets. Thanks for adding to the results!

My $5 is a 1901 Maybe mode has an effect on ID. I usually use General or ATLC and the ID is the same on both of those modes.

I was hoping Nokta would make a multi-purpose PI more so than they've done to capture more markets, The Algo has done that to a degree and their firmware updates since release have even more so improved its general-purpose ability over being a Gold only machine. PI's are incredible technology and largely untapped by many detector users as they've never been made to suit their needs. I'm ony recently seeing how good a PI can be for coin hunting, incredible Target ID's and If this is the start of it, I'd love to see where they can take PI technology for general purpose detectors. If markets are slowing like Gold, having gold dedicated detectors limits buyers, and separating the Gold and Relic into two detectors seems a bad move to me, unless it was required for some technical reason. Gold only VLF's are struggling to survive with multi purpose VLF's taking over them. I could understand separating the General-Purpose and the Beach versions due to the waterproofing requirements. Let's face it though, this is Nokta, this being their entrance into the market, there will be more models in the near future, and they are about to really shake up the PI market. They will shake up the pricing too, maybe more so than they intended now the Algo's out, there is no reason they couldn't sell their PI for the price of a Legend if they wanted to.

I suspect that not only have you gotten technically more proficient at metal detecting, but that your research methods narrowed down the areas where those quality finds were to be made and you focused on hitting them. With better machines, yes, but I'm thinking the key to those quality finds is really between your ears.

As Steve said finds are drying up. Which is not to say that everything is gone. But it does take more research and effort to find good spots to detect. I've personally found more good quality finds over the last 10 years of my 40+ years of metal detecting, than those earlier years. Finds 40 years ago were plentiful, but the quality of the finds wasn't there. Technology has played a big part in bringing those good targets to light. That being said, I can see the writing on the wall and so my push over the last few years is to get my metal detector arsenal down to a few VLF's and 1 good PI. For me having multiple metal detectors is just getting to the point of it being too hard to store all the coils available for each unit and keep track of headphones, charging cables, etc. I've already settled on the 2 VLF's I prefer at the moment. But I'm still looking for the perfect PI. Hopefully Nokta will bring out something that will compete with what's already out there and at the same time offer people the features they have been asking for.

Steve you nailed it once again! Had the same chat this morning on the river Thames........finds drying.During the pandemic they issued licence like there is no tomorrow from 2k larkers to 9k.............now licence are not issued because most of licencee dont report their finds.......still managed some coins this morining with the manticore and yes 1 was silver no gold nugget though........... RR

It’s not that hard to find gold nuggets if all a person wants to do is be a hobbyist and find a few. It’s the making solid money detecting gold nuggets that has gotten extremely difficult. In a way it’s too little too late, but drying up does not mean dry, just getting there. Think silver coins. Not gone, but they sure are rarer finds than 40 years ago, even though machines are far better now. But on the other hand high PI prices have been a barrier to ownership for many; a good low price PI will find buyers, as Alfoforce has already proved. Also, rising gold prices is boosting interest in chasing even the crumbs that are left. Occasional large nugget finds keep the hope alive. Long story short there is still a market for a gold nugget PI, but as Minelab knows very well the heyday is long over. It’s just competition fighting over ever smaller pieces of pie 🙂 This is a real problem overall for all detector companies now. There is not one area of detecting that is not facing declining returns. People still beach hunt, still hunt for silver coins, still hunt for relics, still chase gold nuggets. Newbies are still enticed into the fold. But I doubt any of us here who have been at this long think things are as good as they used to be. In a way we are victims of our own success. Long story short Nokta has indeed missed the big bus with this detector that should have come years ago and now they will be fighting for a seat already taken by others. As a nugget hunter I know there is nothing they can do that will really matter except make a machine that clearly blows away a GPZ 7000 and I am not holding my breath for that. In the area of affordable PI AlgoForce is already taking sales from Nokta in Australia, and it’s only the delay in reaching the U.S. that’s giving Nokta any breathing room here. Yes, they are way too late compared to what they might have achieved just three years ago prior to the GPX 6000 release. What the market clearly lacks at this time, the machine that I personally would buy, is one that is a very good nugget detector but that also is a fully submersible water machine. Minelab only offers the SDC 2300 but it’s a joke for water detecting since it floats like a cork. Axiom, AlgoForce… not waterproof. Impulse AQ Gold dead before arrival. What I was hoping for from Nokta was a machine that would extend my nugget detecting by also being an excellent beach detector. I would sell all my other PI detectors to own that machine. I think others would also. If there is not a model that captures that desire, then not only will Nokta be late to the party, but they will have lost my interest in this detector. It’s the one thing really left to do, make a good alternative to the 7 lb Garrett ATX. Not a very high bar, but are they even going to try? The initial ad blurb is not promising. I need something better than this…..

September 23 2002 The Gold Fades Conor and I did the gold cleanup today while Jacob and Clay worked the dig site and hauled pay. The gold weigh was disappointing and surprised us. There were 35.5 ounces. This was about a third less gold than the last cleanup gave us and I was puzzled. However, Jacob told the crew he thought he knew why the gold total had dropped. He said that he was no longer digging at the bedrock level he had been at but now digging at the top of a new area where the bedrock dropped deeper as he had shown me. Therefore, the gravels from this weigh were well above bedrock but still fairly rich in gold. He continued on to say that what he believed about a huge pot of gold in the bottom of this digsite should still be correct. The only way we would know for sure was to find it. Our gold count from this pit now total’s a whopping 419.7 ounces. Our total for the year now sits at 1115.9 ounces. Jacob actually believes that we could double this total when our current pit is finished. TO BE CONTINUED ................

September 22 2002 Part Three We finished up our day without any problems or interruptions with 100 yards of washed gravel. We will do the cleanup in the morning. Guard duty will be shared in shifts tonight starting at dusk. I am ready to get the season finished up and head for home. I have not talked with Jacob or Conor about their plan to stay the Winter out here but I think it is a bad idea. TO BE CONTINUED .............

I think they'll quickly have a bigger piece of the pie than the one missing from the gold pie. Still can't see how the piece was taken from the pie with the crust left behind...

Nokta Gold Pie Generated with AI ∙ April 23, 2024 Nokta Relic Pie Generated with AI ∙ April 23, 2024

I was a little late in getting more done. Did get a small batch of park probes out. https://www.ebay.com/itm/276423995110?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=-5lIdJmkRTe&sssrc=2047675&ssuid=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY HH, Ken

Those look like they would be great for poking around in crevices, when out detecting for nuggets

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!

Today I got the RCDIGS V1 mount. I'm glad I did because I'm going to be giving it intermittent heavy use all this week. I'm headed to a beach campground. It's a pretty popular place but I've found the D2 can hit a lot of stuff others miss, however I'm going to have to dig for it. Just about every dig is 5 scoops or more down. 😵 I'm hoping that going a week later than last year will mean more warm days and fresh finds. My wife wants a diamond this year. 😬 This is the difference - V0 was solid, V1 is not. V0 had no way to use wired headphones, V1 has ample space to plug them in. You could probably even plug a transceiver in there. Next is the angle, I hope you can see it in the photo: It's much more comfortable to push the buttons. Could even be leaned back more. 🤔 Here is the new angle: And this is the old one. It's much easier to hold the button down for ground balancing. My hands are large but not huge. Below I have my 65mm (32.5 radius) circle of vinyl covering the WS6. You'll have to make your own. There are pilot holes for the screws, I recommend stainless. I'll be updating this thread more in the next few days from the beach, may just do a separate post. Ryan of RCDIGS.com has a real winner here! 👍

Said every hoarder, ever 😉 Saying that, if I could afford 10 detectors, I'd have em too...

September 22 2002 Part Two Conor and I were working gravels through the tom when I got a call on my walkie talkie. It was Jacob and he wanted me to come up to the dig site. He said he had something to show me. When I got up there he had shut down the excavator and was standing near the edge of the giant hole he had been expanding. He pointed to the west side of the pit and said he had struck a solid wall of sloping bedrock. He had found the lateral boundaries of the rich material. Then he told me that the bedrock continued to drop in that area with no sign of a bottom. He showed me a test pan from and there was still plenty of coarse gold there. The area of the second stage drop zone was about 20 feet by 20 feet. He figured the best gold was still to be found wherever the bottom of that drop contacted bedrock. There was no way to tell how deep he would need to dig. He had a nice platform sitting on the first area of bedrock to start the next section. He would be able to go down about 20 to 25 feet from there without expanding his footprint. If the bedrock was still deeper than that he would need to back out and come back in from the south side by digging what would amount to a massive trench that would slope downward deep into the channel. If that was needed it might require timbering the sides for safety or digging a very wide cut. In other words, a big project. All we could do was hope he struck bedrock from where he was presently stationed. TO BE CONTINUED ..............

If I'm remembering what I learned in class correctly, this is where I'm supposed to say I found them down in the lake . - Dave

Looking at social media a lot of people are getting very annoyed at Garrett and their marketing method for the Storm, people really don't appreciate these hype up marketing then nothing type releases. It's turning people against them, people are choosing to buy competitors machines as they've waited and waited and it hasn't arrived, a lot of expectations were around the Anniversary celebrations for the release, that never happened so now expectations are it's a long way off or they would have done it then. What we do likely know though, is its name is the storm, with a nice little coil for the O in the name. The hats are a bit of a giveaway. I don't think the detector is going to be bumble bee yellow and black, it's blue for sure. I think the long lead up to releases is very damaging for a company to do, they may see it as it stops loyal customers buying another brand in the meantime knowing the Garrett is coming while they get the detector ready for release, but it looks to me like the opposite is happening as very few like the marketing method, and it's pushing them into buying other brands and some other brands are taking advantage of that sentiment with very good price reductions going on now. It went from initial excitement to annoyance about waiting.....

September 22 2002 Part One Back To Mining Last night’s trouble ended as quickly as it started with no further incidents. The five men had vanished into the night. We must have scared them off. The question for us now is did they leave the area or are they still hiding out on the mountain waiting for the right time to rob us? There is no way to know. This morning we all got back to the work at hand after we had a quick meeting over breakfast. We will need to take turns on night guard duty for the remainder of the season. The weather remains in our favor and we will push on and hopefully get all of the gold out of the glory hole we are working. The mining season is growing short and I am anxious to get back home with my gold. TO BE CONTINUED ...............

6 tone Tone break 1 is 1 to 25, volume is 5(,if you want to hear rejected tones) and frequency is 1 Tone break 2 is 26-28, volume is 10, frequency is 20 Tone break 3 is 29-31, volume is 5, frequency is 1 Tone break 4 is 32-34 (this will catch beaver tails) volume is 10 frequency is 20 Tone break 5 is 35-49( or whatever high vdi you want to start on, can change 49), volume is 5, frequency 1 Tone break 6 is 50-60, volume 10, frequency is 25 or 30 depending how high you want them to ring And I wish there was a seventh tone because I'd eliminate 60 as well 60 is usually a false, but we will have to include it, I guess you could notch it, but I don't like notching stuff And this is my pulltabs and high tones program, I wrote it to do the pull tab challenge where you dig 50 pulltab signals and see if you get anything neat, and I included high tones because I just couldn't skip them, but it got me a lot of bottle caps too

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!

Hoping you have a great time. Gold will be an amazing bonus.

September 21 2002 Part Three The only place we had to go would be back into the creek and they had quickly gotten the high ground and to the north as well as blocking us east and west. I hollered out and asked them what they wanted. There was only silence. Then I heard Jacob holler out. His voice was loud and deep and enough to scare off a grizzly. He told them that if they wanted a gun fight then they would get one. He called them every foul name I had ever heard and maybe a few others I hadn’t heard. He told them we were well armed and would shoot them to pieces and bury them in a hole on the mountain where no one would ever find them. One of the thugs hollered back to Jacob saying we misunderstood what they were doing and they only wanted to talk with us about possibly leasing a spot to mine on our claims. I hollered out that they had a mighty suspicious way of approaching us about a lease. Then I told them we were not interested and to get off our mine. Once again there was complete silence. Suddenly, without warning, Jacob opened up with his Thompson. He discharged an entire magazine up into the woods in the direction where the voice had come from. The rest of us opened up with our guns but kept our shots high. It sounded like a war was on. They did not return fire and all was quiet. Once again Jacob challenged them to fight like men. I heard some rustling of bushes up to the north and it sounded like they were leaving. We all fired more rounds up that way and also a few to the east and west but kept them high. Then it got quiet again. I was thinking they might not have realized what they were up against but now they knew. Would they leave or come back? TO BE CONTINUED ................. .

Said like a true detector addict in denial, Simon. And being one myself, I don’t believe a word of it.

The translator sometimes plays tricks on me 😂

and the one made of relics sounds like a load of old junk.. 😁

The contest page states: "Deadline: April 30, 2024"

This has gone past a storm. It’s going to be a category 5 Hurricane before it’s over. Chuck

Its about time, hopefully Nokta took notice of all the design and performance suggestions that we here on DP gave to Dilek a couple years ago. Legacy Minelab coil adoption, tracking/fixed GB, basic or advanced Fe Disc and a damned clock on the screen! 😁

I don't see why anyone would think prospectors don't need ferrous disc. A gold PI is typically going to be designed to hit the tiniest bits possible and that can also mean tiny ferrous bits. A relic PI might be more tuned to hit bullet size targets at max depth while being less sensitive to every tiny bit of ferrous trash. In theory though you can do both in one detector so interesting to see why they feel the need for two models. It could be nothing more than what coil the machine comes with. We have no idea what the detector really looks like but let's go with the fuzzy profile as being real. Standard configuration with collapsing three piece rod, fairly large underarm battery. Big question - it it submersible? Beach hunters will be disappointed once again if the answer is no.

Finally! First we had Algoforce but now the real battle starts in pulse induction, with Nokta likely to set new price/performance ratios i.e. bang for the buck. "Join our naming competition and get a chance to win one of our future Pulse Induction machines! One designed for gold prospecting and another one for relic hunting! These detectors will redefine affordability and performance for you to break free from the grip of overpriced alternatives!" ENTER CONTEST Deadline April 30th

Progress, but lets not get too optimistic on the timeline. The last time we went through a Nokta naming contest, the Legend showed up 3 years later. Contest started September 2018 Name picked September 2020 Detector Announced Summer 2021 Detector Released December 2021 Perhaps they learned not to draw this out as much this time....

I’m using the ws6 master on my Steve’s detector shaft. It is a super light combination.

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 21 2002 Part One Here They Come The weather is still in our favor. We stuck with our routine. Conor and I cleaned the concentrates while Jacob and Clay dug and hauled the pay. We have a good system going now. There is still no word on the trommel but we have not really missed it much. Around 1:30 I radioed Jacob that the gold weigh was done. To my surprise he said he and Clay were going to keep working straight through to about 5:00 PM before coming down to camp for supper and to see the gold. So Conor and I got back to washing gravels and worked until 5:00 PM as well. We were able to get another 20 yards of gravels processed. About that time I heard Clay’s truck coming down the mountain with Jacob riding shotgun. I really wanted them to see the gold in the pan.Finally, just before supper, everyone was gathered around the table with the gold pan and scales. Clay let out a low holy sh.. and sat back in his chair. I just smiled and put the pan on the scale. There was 119.4 ounces. This was the bedrock gold we were dreaming of. And it looked like we might not be finished yet. Clay let out a whoop that shook the mountain and old Jacob did one of his Irish jigs. Conor had tears in his eyes and I just sat there stunned. It was getting on towards dusk now and Jacob brought out a bottle and we all had a drink and then another drink. As I set the bottle on the table near the gold we looked over at five men walking down the creek and coming towards camp. We didn’t recognize any of them and they sure weren’t Forest Service personnel. I didn’t like the looks of them and neither did anyone else. TO BE CONTINUED ............

Great looking product. Hopefully they will still be in stock when my check comes in later this week. I can see that being a really good tool.

You must be in Arizona ! we got the “Snaddle Rakes” !

March 26, 2024 view to the south; unless the month of March rolls out with a roar it looks to be a normal run off season. On the 20th of May, 1827 Jedediah Smith with two members of his party, six horses and two mules departed from a confluence on the San Joaquin River returning east to the Rendezvous over Mt. St. Joseph (Sierra Nevada). A quote from his journal "May 26th The storm still continues with unabated violence...The wind was continually changing and the snow drifting and flying in every direction...Our poor animals felt a full share of the vengeanc of the storm and two horses and one mule froze to death before our eyes... the sun of another day might never rise to us." From his journal that crossing may of occurred along a divide near the point of this photograph.