Glenn in CO

Congrats to your brother on finding his first gold coin, hopefully many more to come. I and my Dad (96 years young) have yet to find our first gold coin. My wife found a 1899S $5.00 gold coin on a club outing to a ghost town several years ago, maybe this year it will happen.

No problem, I understand. Thanks for sharing anyway!

I saw this post late last evening and now it's disappeared. Anyway that was unbelievable intricate made dagger and appreciate the related info. Thanks for the update and will update when I receive information from Heritage.

Congrats! on the gold pocket, you don't happen upon those to often. Nice total haul for the year. I like your homemade rock crusher, looks like you used a little bit of everything to build it (square tubing, threaded rod, pipe and part of a horseshoe?)👍

Thanks again for the info! Very cool story about George Taylor, but it's nice to know the real story when some one buys an item and then sells it. If anyone reading that article would say "wow" that person got a lot of money for an autograph, not a very good investment for a eight year period. I will contact Heritage Auction and submit a few gold specimens for appraisal and compare them to the retail appraisal I received from a well know mineral dealer and see if the auction route may be the better way to go. Appreciate the help.

Thanks for you feedback, it seems that if you sell your gold through a mineral or gold dealer they only want to pay you half or a little more than retail pricing on unique gold specimens that can range in pricing based on 2x to 10x or more on gold spot price. I know dealers have to make profit, but at that pricing maybe the auction house is the better way to go. Thanks again for the feedback!

I'm very interested in your opinion and feedback on Heritage Auction when you hear back from them. I've never consider selling any gold specimens through an auction house before and would value anyone's experience in selling or consigning to a auction house good or bad. Gerry in Idaho also expressed interest in Heritage Auction in Mitchel's thread. Gerry's Post

I agree with you it's about the adventure, if you hit big gold that's a bonus. Thanks! for sharing.

Awesome SC Button WTG!

Very Nice Find! Great condition for as old as that coin is. WTG!

I hear ya Chuck! I wrote a few articles on detecting and nuggethunting for Western & Eastern in the 90's. I and my wife were in the first White's infomercial with our nuggets also in the 90's, but as time went on it was more about going out and doing more on what you were writing about. I wish I had all the energy and ambition I had back then. You have a great day also! Glenn Snapshot of us from the White's infomercial.

Chuck I agree, doesn't do any good to have just set in the bank. Might as well have some fun while you can. Compared to the ones I have received from White's, this one looks well made and useful. XP at least put some thought in designing the backpack compared to other detector manufacturers.

Very nice find! That's on my bucket list. WTG!

When using our VLF detectors the depth it they would achieve was limited. When using our cultivator type rakes we could get more depth in the area we were searching, but the steep angle of the tailing piles would eventually have the over burden from above slide down into the area we were searching. So my Dad came up with an idea to use a "slip scraper" and use the winch on a ATV to move over burden in areas that were no longer producing . We would dig a trench and detect the sides and then rake the dirt that was created from the trench. Doing that technique we were back on the gold again. This was on private property and the altitude, extreme steep terrain didn't allow any heavy type of equipment to be used. Here are some pictures of gold we found with the dirt and mud washed off. The large one in the center of the picture is a 85+ gram crystalline gold specimen. Here are some more pictures of specimens up close after being cleaned.

Here are a few pictures of the area we hunt. The area is large in size and the different types of wire and leaf gold specimens are found on specific tailing piles and hydraulic areas. The area is at 11,000+ft. in altitude and the terrain is extremely steep in most areas. The following picture is my wife (lower left) and one our friends detecting tailing piles. We use a cultivator type rake with a strong magnet for our digger tool. The area has moderate mineralization with some areas that have abundance of hot rocks. A Vlf type of detector is used mostly because of the number of ferrous targets that are encountered. We also find pieces of blasting caps, sometimes ones that had not exploded and bird shot from people target practicing. This a picture of a nugget that was found on a tailing pile and you can see some of the gold peeking through. This next picture is an area that was hydraulic and I found a 22.3 gram nugget. This is another area that was hydraulic and where I found my very first nugget metal detecting. The nugget didn't have the wow factor as others we have found, but it was a special moment for me finding that first elusive nugget. More to come..........

I talked to Reg's brother at the club meeting last Thursday and Reg is not doing too well. Reg had one his leg's amputated last year and now is in the hospital with possible cancer tumor on the liver. Any prayers for a good outcome would be appreciated.

You can find at Walmart in the hardware/plumbing section.

It's amazing that some of these wire gold specimens stay intact with no host rock to hold them together. You wonder sometimes if the specimen was a part of a larger piece.

If you are talking about the last picture in your post, no I would not clean that one., The first picture I would use some Whink if you want to brighten the gold up a little bit or leave as is. The second picture is not focus enough to determine if cleaning any of the specimens would be a good idea.

Very nice course gold specimens DigsAlot. Be careful if you decide to clean the gold quartz specimen, it may fall apart on you. Myself I like it the way it is.

I and my wife have found different types of crystalline wire gold specimens and here are a couple unique ones: Notice the diamond shape crystal with gold wire coming out each end.

Very nice specimen Gerry, did you find as is or did you clean it? Thanks! for sharing.

If your specimen has quartz I would try Whink that has a small concentration of hydrofluoric acid for somewhat more aggressive cleaning of the gold, removing iron oxides and dissolving some of the quartz. If you use these two methods it will take time to see any satisfactory results, so be patience. If you have some hydrofluoric acid in a higher concentration (48% strength or more) you will have faster results and would need to monitor closely so you don't destroy the specimen. But be extremely careful when using any type of hydrofluoric acid in any form, the acid is deadly and I mean deadly, you better know what you are doing! Finally soak the specimen in baking soda if you use any of the cleaning methods above. There are other methods that can be used to also give a wow look, but I would need to studying the specimen first hand on what would be the best course of action to take. The specimens that we find has shale as the host rock and I can use other types of acids to clean them.

JW, That is very nice specimen. Big or small specimens like that have a lot of character. If you found that panning maybe you were close to the source. Thanks! for sharing.