Rob

Swifty, Congrats on the great beach coins! Rob

Merry Christmas!.....Nice handy work Scott!

Nice shootin'!

Have a question..... I've taken up scuba diving and plan on doing some diving and detecting in Hawaii. I currently have a Whites Dual Field PI and just acquired a CTX 3030. Understanding that the 3030 is rated to only 10 feet and the DFPI hits on the lava, would an excal II be a wise investment? Can you notch out the lava with it? Any insight or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you and happy holidays! Rob Here's two recent beach finds... The ring is platinum (3.9gr) with diamonds and the earring is 22K (5.0gr) with sapphire and moonstone.

Nenad, Welcome to the forum. Funny.... just watched the video you did for ML on the CTX 3030. Happy Holidays and Hunting! Rob

What a fantastic gift.... the kit and your grandfather!!

Steve....you picked the right person!! Paul....congratulations!! Rob

The Hip Stick is far and away the best device out there for swing/weight/balance assistance. The ML pro-swing is uncomfortable and awkward. ML certainly excels in the technology, but lacks tremendously in the ergonomics of most everything they design.

dgatleyDP.....I have a tremendous amount of titanium and surgical steel in my right knee and lower leg. I have to time my swing (GPZ7000) with my steps so that when stepping forward with my right leg, my swing is to the far left. It works, and forces me to go slow.....which is a good thing. I have yet to try the Garrett Carrot with my 7000. The thing is dynamite though when coin shooting!! Leaps and bounds over the ML pin pointer.

gpz7000, sdc2300, gpx5000, GB2

Really great gold Lucky and Norm! Rob

Patrick, Nice gold and a great photo of the musk ox. Congratulations! Rob

Thanks Patrick for the update. At one point, I believe it was rumored that a smaller and larger coil for the 7000 would be marketed.

Anyone heard any chatter when Minelab will introduce a smaller coil for the GPZ? My arm is getting sore, but more importantly, it would be nice to be able to get between tight trees. Thanks, Rob

Good on ya Norvic!! Those are some nice mineral samples!

Physical gold as a buy an hold investment is a poor choice. As you hold it, what does it give you? It doesn't produce anything, it doesn't pay dividends. It just sits there and looks at you. Your money isn't working for you. If you need the cash value from gold you find, sell it as soon as you can after finding it, then go look for more to sell. If you have funds to invest and are looking for a passive investment (much like a physical gold investment) park your funds, for the long term, in an ETF that holds high yield equities. Historically over the long term (20+ years) equities have outpaced gold in terms of capital appreciation. As of late, the price of gold has been fluctuating between $1150 - $1250....back and forth. These price movements being driven by geo-political events as well as monetary policy from the worlds central banks. If you have an appetite for risk and think you know where the price of gold is headed in the short term....then play the ETF -GLD (yes paper gold) it's easy to purchase and sell. If the price pops in a day or two or the same day.....sell. Do that a few times a year and you're actually making money. If you think the price is going to fall then short the GLD. Some additional reading from Warren Buffet..... Perhaps my favorite take on gold investing comes from Warren Buffett, the iconic investor behind Berkshire Hathaway. Delivered at Harvard in 1998, it goes a little something like this: “(Gold) gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head.” The idea is simple: There is no use for gold, only some arbitrary "value" we place on it. Sure, gold was historically used as currency — but why not Cowry shells, which were one of the earliest forms of currency in China? Just because it's rare and some people value it doesn't mean that gold is an "investment," especially to someone like Warren Buffett who is concerned with statistics like book value and cash flow. More recently, in 2009, he echoed these thoughts in a CNBC interview. He was asked, "Where do you think gold will be in five years and should that be a part of value investing?" “I have no views as to where it will be, but the one thing I can tell you is it won’t do anything between now and then except look at you. Whereas, you know, Coca-Cola (KO) will be making money, and I think Wells Fargo (WFC) will be making a lot of money, and there will be a lot — and it’s a lot — it’s a lot better to have a goose that keeps laying eggs than a goose that just sits there and eats insurance and storage and a few things like that. For the record, gold was around $900 then, and has tacked on about 45%; Coke stock is up 100% and Wells Fargo is up 200%. That doesn't include dividends, or subtract the cost of ownership that Buffett points to. Another great line from Warren Buffett about gold came in October 2010, when he told Ben Stein: “You could take all the gold that’s ever been mined, and it would fill a cube 67 feet in each direction. For what it’s worth at current gold prices, you could buy — not some — all of the farmland in the United States. Plus, you could buy 10 Exxon Mobils (XOM), plus have $1 trillion of walking-around money. Or you could have a big cube of metal. Which would you take? Which is going to produce more value?” Gold is right back to where it was in late 2010 when that interview aired, at around $1,350 an ounce. Meanwhile, XOM stock is up 35% not counting dividends, and farmland continues to appreciate at a rapid rate. (For instance, one report says Iowa farmland just jumped 17% in six months.) It's hard to tell what the future holds for gold prices. I remain very bearish based on cascading risk of redemptions out of asset-backed ETFs like the SPDR Gold Shares GLD, +0.30%

Cool looking nugg!

Steve, Really great info! Thanks for posting. Rob

Have had a 25" coil for a year….no gold with it yet….and yes pin-pointing is a challenge.

Sounds like fun…just can't make it, will be in Gold Basin.