Reno Chris

Rob said in his post that if anyone had any questions to call him. I think if you called you'd get an answer. I don't think it was out of line, but there are rules as to what he can say publicly on his website before ML makes the official release.

Chuck - did you call Rob Allison and ask him a price?

That gold is not too far different from the Chevron gold of Rye Patch, Nevada.

Very nice. Glad to see you made it to AZ. Good luck - hope your prospecting is successful.

Yes, I have seen this several times, though its not really common.

I've seen uglier. A few years back a guy below the camp at Sierra City picked up a piece about two ounces that was part serpentine and ugly enough to make yours look beautiful. I would have crushed that one to put it out of its misery. Here is an ugly cousin I found in Africa last May.

I have a 20 incher and I have used it to find gold in places I had pounded before. Its not really for general use, but in certain situations its a great tool. My big problem with it is pinpointing. You can have a real difficult time recovering targets with it. I like to survey an area, dig on the targets a bit to confirm, then flag them and use a smaller coil to actually recover the target. I guess if I practiced with it more, I'd be better at pinpointing with it.

Agreed, a fine gent and the best of the best when it comes to prospectors.

I recently started a facebook page. It's set up now, but I will be working on it over the coming days to get things looking a bit nicer. I want to get it set up so that when I go to Africa in a couple weeks, Once I depart, I will share a kind of a daily diary of my experiences traveling with photos on the site. I will be returning to Burkina Faso, perhaps Ghana and maybe some others. We'll be out in the gold fields teaching Africans the skills of finding gold with a metal detector. I went there last May and it was quite the adventure and I honestly saw things like I had never seen before. It was also strange to be in a country where French is the language of the people. - I took French in High School, and believe it or not some of it came back to me after all those many years. So if you'd like to come along to Africa and share in the adventure vicariously, take a look at my facebook page, and be sure to like it, then check back to see the updates as I travel off halfway across the globe. My facebook page is at: www.facebook.com/nevadaoutback If you are a member of facebook, you will get updates in your news feed when I post my feed. We will be using products by First Texas - The Teknetics T2 and Gold Bug detectors are very popular all over Africa and do a great job of finding the gold.

Our government keeps an inventory of abandoned mines. You'd think they'd want you to know where they are so you could steer clear and stay away. Oh, no, this is a top secret database, a real spy the caliber of James Bond would not have the clearance to see. Locations of abandoned mines are a deep dark secret, never to be revealed. You might go out there and find something and that would be terrible! Here is as close as you can get without being marked as the target of a government hit. http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en/prog/more/Abandoned_Mine_Lands/abandoned_mine_site.html Maybe I should volunteer to be the "site steward" of some formerly productive gold mine. On the other hand, maybe that's too dangerous - If I show too much interest, I'd probably disappear this summer and be taken off in a black helicopter never to be heard from again. OK, so maybe I am being a bit tongue-in-cheek with this, but there is an element of truth in my sarcasm.

I got to hold that nugget not too long afterward at the Tucson Gem Show where it was for sale at a high end specimen display that specialized in gold.

Rick - Is the stuff on the yellow-green background gold? Maybe its the picture, and maybe its the coating, but that material sure does not look like any Nevada gold I have ever seen before. Once they are cleaned up, I'd like to see them again.

In West Africa the ground in the regions were I was were flat to low rolling hills and the high density of population there means the people are everywhere farming and trying to eek out a living. We found iron trash everywhere some may have been as old as 200 years from looking at the workmanship. In the harsh desert regions of Sudan, etc. that are void of people, yes there is little trash, but in places where the population is spread all over the place, there is plenty of trash. However I did see the recycling of everything - even empty water bottles we were finished with were highly desirable to many folks. but aluminum foil, rusty old iron scraps, etc - stuff that had no real use were dropped wherever and littered the ground.

It really is a fascinating place and the people are nice. I will be returning in roughly a month. I will post about my experiences here when I can as often as I have internet access.

I hope this does lead to something new, but I just cant get excited by vague rumors anymore all too often nothing comes of it. When things are more imminent and substantial, I'll get a lot more interested. Good to keep an eye on things in the meantime though.

I do think in the long run that increasing wealth in China and India will do a lot to support gold.

I have family who run citrus ranches in Ventura County. Its terrible for them. But I cant control the weather, and so I will make use of whatever low water situations we have in the summer.

I've seen single crystals of less than 2 grams (a bit more than a pennyweight) sell for 2 grand. I have a photo somewhere of a piece from Olinghouse that probably does not contain 10 grams of gold that sold for $45,000. Crystal stuff sells at a real premium. Gus, that's one really beautiful specimen.

Interesting the non-verbal switches. Pictures only means no translation to another language for those who do not speak English. Also, 5.3 pounds without batteries means it will be roughly 6 pounds in operable field-ready condition.

They are two different worlds, West Africa and WA, but there is a fair chance I'll be back there and Mali is one of the places they are looking at.

Steve and I saw this video at a Minelab meeting a few months back. Its really interesting and different, and I am sure they paid a pretty penny to make it. We were told that other than a drum track in the music, there is nothing in the music other than sounds from the detector (though I an sure they have been heavily processed and synthesized). Not fully sure what the point is, but its different. Perhaps they will use it as a Superbowl ad.

As Steve says, there are no such maps. If you think about it, they would require constant updating. Plus the government does not want to help miners, they want to make it more difficult. Its work to do claims research, but as Steve says, the place you want to start is LR-2000, the BLM's on line mining claims data base. its not a map, but you can still make use of it.

In Nevada, where heavy vegetation is nearly unheard of, you can see pretty much everything with Google Earth. In the heavily forested sierra gold country, Lidar would be amazing.

It just proves control of the detecting population is far more important than getting historical items out of the ground before they are destroyed water, rust and other elements.

Congrats JP! Glad to hear you are having some success on those days when the weather cools a bit.