Lunk

I'm no subatomic particle physicist, but I am a vegetarian, and I haven't noticed any more charged particles than usual in my salad. Sorry Frozendaze, but I just couldn't resist!?

Seriously though, I'm in the same neck of the desert and I haven't noticed anything out of the ordinary when swinging the Zed through the green stuff.

1 hour ago, Steve Herschbach said:

Desert prospecting can be downright scary at times - I have already learned my lesson there!

Okay Steve, now your going to have to elaborate for those of us with enquiring minds...could be the start of a cool new thread where everyone relates their own scariest desert prospecting story.

Here you go Oneguy, a couple of sub-grain specks found with the Minelab Gold Monster 1000 in Quartzsite, AZ:

close-up of same:

and another:

Nice 1919 merc you got there, btw; my oldest is a 1920.

Sweet saves, my friend! You do realize that snow is a 4-letter “s” word, right?!

Best of luck on your golden adventures down under!

Congrats to the lucky finder!

Dr. Erik Melchiorre will be at the Quartzsite Gold Show, and will be happy to analyze your sample with his XRF spectrometer.

That’s a super awesome double whammy!

3 hours ago, Gerry in Idaho said:

The NOX has certainly helped in stepping up your game as for 1st's.  

And the firsts keep coming, amigo: I’ve since dug my first silver half dollar (1957 Franklin) and first silver Roosevelt dime (1964).

18 hours ago, mn90403 said:

Lunk,

Now you have another club badge.  Gold ring club, welcome.

I'll never catch up with you on nuggets and you many never catch up with me on rings!

Mitchel

Mitchel, I’m certain I’ll never find as many rings as you.? 

I was using the stock coil, Swegin.

Congrats to Dar on a stunning find!

Randy, you have aptly described the quintessential Quartzsite experience. Congrats on the gold; icing on the cake!

Had a couple hours to kill this afternoon, so I took the Equinox to a park here in sunny Arizona that I’ve not been to before. Typically, my goal on these time-constrained forays into the parklands is to cherry pick the higher conductive targets in hopes of finding a silver coin. But this time I decided to also dig targets that fell within the nickel range of the EQX. The first target was a shallow 20-21 signal; yep, you guessed it - a stinkin zincoln. Next up was a 13-14...could be a nickel, but most likely a pop can tab...sure enough, it was a can tab. Swinging along, next signal was a solid hit at 24-25; at 4 inches, out popped a 1963 D copper Lincoln cent: cool, definitely some hope for silver. After digging another pop tab, I got a strange deep signal that would bounce around from 25 to 31; a coin spill perhaps? The culprit was down around 10 inches, and turned out to be a corroded 1945 D copper wheat-back penny. Checking the hole and plug revealed no other targets...a total head-scratcher, but even more reason to suspect slver coinage was in the area. Moving on, the Nox responded with a tight 12 on the display. Down around 6 inches was a surprisingly corroded 2013 D nickel. Next was a broken pop tab around the 2 inch mark, then a nice sounding 27-28 ; the silver dime I’ve been waiting for? Nope, just a flattened aluminum scew-top.? Then I get another solid 12 hit at 4 inches. Fully expecting another nickel. I popped the target out of the hole and was flabbergasted to see a gold and diamond wedding ring! At 14 karat, it’s my first ever solid gold ring. I figured that I’d better stop at that point, since there was no way I was going to top that amazing find, but I decided to keep on swinging for another half an hour since I hadn’t found a silver coin yet. The very next target was a deep sounding solid 31, so I’m hoping beyond hope for a silver quarter. Getting down past 8 inches and the pinpointer was sounding off in the bottom of the hole; another couple inches and the target was out...a Washington quarter alright, and a gentle rub revealed the date: 1941...YES! I decided to quit on a high tone and call it a day. What a super awesome hunt, and I couldn’t be happier.?

WTG on the cosmic debris, Dave!

14 hours ago, Goldseeker5000 said:

Hey Steve do you have any ajustable rods for the Gold Monster?

GS5k, check this out if you haven’t already:

Lanny, out of those 2 coils, I've only used the 12x15 Commander on the GPX 5000 and it quickly became my favorite; it's big enough to have some serious punch on the large targets, yet at the same time has extraordinary sensitivity to deep, small nuggets as well. It's the coil I was using when I discovered the Pothole Patch - full story here:

https://www.naturalgoldtrader.com/The-Pothole-Patch.html

10 hours ago, IronDigger said:

So I made a mistake on the wet weight ..I looked at the link on how to properly weigh the specimen piece in water and I now have a weight of 173 for the submerged weight,  242 for the dry weight. In the beginning all I did was place a piece of Tupperware and filled it with water deep enough for the speci to be suspended without hitting the bottom or sides. I than tied a fish line to the speci and zeroed out the scale. I than submerged it by holding the fish line into the zeroed out scale...I got the original figure of 70. This figure did not make any sense comparing it to the dry weight, it was a huge disparity. So,  

D.W. 242 x 1.9 = 459

W.W. 173 x 3.1= 536

according to the video we subtracted these figures 536 - 459 = gives me the approx. weight of gold at 77 grams. or 2.48 ounces troy.

The speci is solid quartz...anyways hope this helps others as it helped me, thanks you all for the math lesson. 

Iron Digger,

You were actually on the right track the first time; your mistake was simply plugging the data into the wrong equation. Allow me to explain:

When lowering a specimen into a zeroed container of water, the resultant weight isn't the weight of the submerged specimen, but rather is the weight of the water that is displaced by the volume of the specimen; in your case 70 grams. One of the cool properties of water is that at room temperature, a volume of 1 cubic centimeter of water weighs exactly 1 gram. From this we can deduce that your specimen has a volume of 70 cubic centimeters. The formula you need to calculate the weight of gold in the specimen with this data is:

gold weight = (1.213 X dry weight of speci) - (3.1 X volume of speci)

Plugging in your data we have:

gold weight = (1.213 X 242) - (3.1 X 70)

gold weight = 293.546 - 217

gold weight = 76.546 grams, rounded to 77 grams

This method is less complicated to perform than the one in the video. Just make sure to gently tap the specimen against the bottom of the water container to remove any entrapped air bubbles before suspending it.

Well done!

Well done, Ron...looks like the law of averages finally kicked out a bigger nugget for you!

Congrats - way to squeeze those last bits of gold out of 2018.

Cool find!

That explains it, thanks Phrunt.

7 hours ago, phrunt said:

Good one, I found a gold coin with my T2 once, turned out to be a fake ?  But yes, that's a very nice looking coin and sounds like it's worth a packet.

Bro, not familiar with "packet"? From the context I gather that it means quite a bit or alot; I couldn't find it on a web search of NZ slang.

An incredible find Strick, WTG!