Glenn in CO

Hi Steve, Apparently the embedded Facebook video does not work for me, I see your text but nothing else. I'll try using a different browser later on.

Steve I'm not that up on the workings of the current or past Minelabs. Is it the weight of the battery, electronics or search coil that causes a PI to weigh over 4lbs or the combination of all three? I know with the TDI the weight of the battery and 12" search coil make the detector on the heavy side, but if the smaller coils are used the detector is manageable for all day use. If it is the battery that causes a PI to be on the heavy side, is there technology out there to power a PI today that would make it lighter?

I bet if you polled the guys that are consistent in finding nuggets, coins, relics or jewelry on a regular basis that audio id would be first and visual id, if available would be a secondary confirmation. In my opinion when nugget hunting learning the nuances of the audio responses of your detector is key to a person being successful.

Maybe the established detector industry will look more closely as how Nokta communicates to customers when introducing new products or resolving issues as they arise. But that maybe wishful thinking.

Very informative report, great photos and good finds. Interesting the detector has no threshold, it would take me a little while to get use to that. Looks like Minelab has a winner!

I agree with you Steve, it sounds like a faulty search coil. I've had search coils that would do the same thing where the gain turned up with the search coil in the air would have the same results. Switch out search coil with a new or existing good search coil and the problem goes away.

Thanks! for the info Steve, but now I have another question. With technology moving towards wireless, is wireless be it headphones or a detector more or less effected by EMI?

Question Steve: How does EMI effect a PI detector at the frequency they operate at? If you could put in layman terms, the Minelab info is over my head.

Very nice specimen gold, Congrats! on a great find.

My first detector was a Compass Yukon that I bought from my brother-in-law in 1976. Still have it, why? Maybe a antique! Own different brands of detectors like A.H. Pro, Compass, Minelab and was a White's Dealer for over 25 years.

The Friends of the Colorado School of Mines Geology Museum, the Denver Region Exploration Geologists’ Society (DREGS), and the Colorado School of Mines Geology Museum, invite paper submissions for oral or poster presentations for the “Gold and Silver Deposits in Colorado” Symposium 2017. The symposium will be held on the Colorado School of Mines campus in Berthoud Hall, Golden, Colorado, and will include two full days of talks (July 22 & 23) and two days of field trips (July 21 & 24). The Symposium’s objectives include… • To focus on important gold and silver deposits in Colorado using a multi-disciplinary approach emphasizing geoscientific, economic, environmental, historical, and social perspectives. (The primary geographic focus will be on the northern half of the Colorado Mineral Belt (CMB), from Boulder County southwest to Leadville and Aspen, including Cripple Creek.) To bring together a diversified audience ranging from geoscience professionals, academics, mineral collectors and prospectors, historians, and laymen interested in precious metal and associated mineral occurrences, their exploration and development, and the impact of associated activities on Colorado. • To inspire scientific curiosity, encourage appreciation of the Earth and responsibility for its mineral and historic mining treasures, and to promote the exchange of current scientific thought and technology as it applies to exploration and ore deposits. ABSTRACT SUBMISSION Oral and poster presentations are being solicited on topics of gold and silver deposits in Colorado, including: • Geology and Mineralogy • Metallogeny • Geochemistry • Structure and Crystallography • Recent research on ore deposits in Colorado • Economics of gold and silver • Mineral collecting • Exploration: prospects and methodologies • Mining and milling technologies • Mining law and environmental regulations • Mining histories of Colorado (e.g., Alma/South Park, Aspen, Boulder County, Breckenridge, Cripple Creek, Central City/Idaho Springs/Georgetown, Leadville, and Montezuma). he primary geographic focus will be on the northern half of the Colorado Mineral Belt (CMB), from Boulder County southwest to Leadville and Aspen, including Cripple Creek.) We invite oral presentations for 30 minute time slots (25 minute presentation + 5 minute question and answer session). PowerPoint presentations are preferred but 35-millimeter slide carousel presentations can also be accommodated. Posters shall adhere to the Geological Society of America standards (4 ft. x 8 ft. or 46-1/8 in. high by 94-3/4 in. wide or 117 cm x 240 cm). Format requirements for abstract submission are provided in “Style Guide for Abstract Submission” in Appendix 1. The technical level of the presentations is encouraged to appeal to a broad audience of geoscience professionals, academics, mineral collectors, and interested laymen. The Symposium will be providing the sound system and both wireless (lapel, hand-held or headset) and wired microphone as well as a wireless computer slide advancer. SUBMISSION DEADLINES Proposed presentations and poster titles, with preliminary one-page abstracts meeting format style requirements, must be submitted for consideration via e-mail to Pete Modreski (pmodreski@usgs.gov) by March 15, 2017. Authors should indicate if oral or poster presentation is preferred. Questions concerning submittals can be sent to Pete Modreski. Final or extended abstracts (maximum five pages), including figures, tables, references, and author biography (maximum 100 words), meeting format style requirements, must be submitted via e-mail to the Pete Modreski (pmodreski@usgs.gov) by May 15, 2017. The Symposium’s Program Committee will make the final selection of presentations and poster titles based on quality of abstracts, number of submissions and available time slots, with applicants being notified accordingly. SYMPOSIUM REGISTRATION The registration fee of $100.00 includes a Friday night reception, two days of presentations, a black and white hardcopy proceedings volume, and color digital proceedings volume. Field trips may be subject to additional fees, as will be announced at a later date. Registration for full-time University (Student ID required) or high school students is $50.00. Registration fees are waived for invited speakers and field trip leaders. Speakers, poster presenters, and field trip leaders will be provided with a free one-year (2017-2018) membership in both the Friends of the Colorado School of Mines Geology Museum and Denver Region Exploration Geologists’ Society (DREGS). Registration forms and fee schedule for optional services and field trips will be posted on the Friends’ Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/LikeCSMGeoMuseum/ Housing Accommodations Housing will be available in motels-hotels in Golden and the surrounding area. Symposium participants and registrants are responsible for securing their own accommodations. FIELD TRIPS Field trips may be subject to additional fees and the number of attendees scheduled for selected trips may be limited. Pre-registration is required for each field trip and all participants must sign a liability release. For third party liability insurance, participants will also need to belong to either an American Federation Mineral Club that provides that insurance, Friends of the Colorado School of Mines Geology Museum, or Denver Region Exploration Geologists’ Society (DREGS). Transportation is not provided, but we will try to organize carpools. Some field trips may require four-wheel drive vehicles, as will be announced at a later date. Field trip details are still in the planning stages for a number of interesting Colorado localities. Below is a preliminary list of field trips that may be included in the Symposium. (Some trips are still tentative depending on: access permission; enlistment of suitable trip leaders; and, once a list of field trips is circulated to registrants, on sufficient signup interest among registrants to schedule each trip.) • Caribou and Cross Mines in Boulder County • Gold Hill and Jamestown areas in Boulder County • Smuggler Mine at Aspen, Pitkin County • Central City/Blackhawk/Idaho Springs • CCV/Newmont Open Pit at Cripple Creek, Teller County • Leadville, Lake County (including some collecting) • Alma/Fairplay/South Park, Park County (New London Mine, placers) *************************************************************************** Appendix 1: Style Guide For Abstract Submission Title: Bolded, 18-point type, centered Author name(s): Bolded, 12-point type, centered Author(s) affiliation and full address, Author(s) e-mail address: Bolded, 10-point type, centered 1. Style guide and page layout. Since there will be limited typesetting or copy-editing of summaries, the use of this style guide is important to provide a consistent appearance. Use 8.5 in. x 11 in. paper with 1 in. margins on all sides and use 11-point Times New Roman. The lines of the each paragraph of a section or subsection should be flush left. 2. Figures and tables. Figures and tables should be centered and located inside paper margins. Text should not wrap around figures or tables. Table captions should be centered above tables and figure captions should be centered below figures. 3. References. References, if cited, should appear at the end of the paper in alphabetical order, in a style similar to that used in publications of the Geological Society of America; for example (Hitzman et al., 1992). Hitzman, M.W., Oreskes, N., and Einaudi, M.T., 1992, Geological characteristics and tectonic setting of Proterozoic iron oxide (Cu-U-Au-REE) deposits: Precambrian Research, v. 58, p. 241-287.

Without the larger zoom versions feature for photos, picking out the meteorite would have been impossible. I use it all the time when viewing photographs on the forum. Great feature!

Thanks! Lunk, hopefully I will do better out in field. I edit my post so someone else can try.

Here's my guess:

Here's my two cent worth, if a technology existed where a detector could detect deeper than a PI and identify a target with decent accuracy under any severe type ground and trash conditions a manufacturer could probably sell it in the $5000-$7500 range. They are many people out there that have existing or potential sites they could hunt and recoup the cost of the detector in a short time depending on type of "treasure" they going after. In the quote above the example of people buying a $10,000 detector shows that there are people out that will buy a detector in that price range just because they can without the worry or consideration if they ever recoup the cost of the detector. If you enjoy what you are doing and you have the money the price isn't going to be a problem. People with tighter budgets, any detector I believe over the $ 2500 range will be somewhat cautious in making that purchase. People causally involved in the past time probably wouldn't purchase a detector over the $700 range and that's why the market share of detector production is I believe is focus on. It would be very interesting to know how may people who have purchase a GPZ since its introduction and have at least recoup the cost of the detector. I believe many out there that have purchase a GPZ and have productive areas to hunt you probably or will recoup the cost of the detector. I guess the question is how much will that detector will cost, can the serious detectorists be able to afford it or not. In my case if the number of detectors I and my wife have now and in the past, we weren't really considering the cost of enjoying our past time.

I have four external hard drives and use them to store different data and some duplicate data. I take enormous amounts of photos and that takes up a lot of hard drive space. Plus I get delete happy once in awhile and accidently erase of file I shouldn't have. Plus a hard drive can go at any time, thus the reason for more than one hard drive. Today's prices on external hard is very low cost, especially around the Christmas holidays. There is some free software available to monitor the health of your hard drives if one is concern about the status on them. I also use a free software called Cobian Backup 11 Gravity for a backup software and it gives a person several different ways of backing up data either manually or automatically. Cobian Backup supports 4 types of tasks: Full backups: Every single file in the source will be copied or compressed. If you are overwriting, every file will be replaced. If Overwrite is unchecked, you will have several copies of the same source. Incremental - The program will check if the source has been changed from the last backup. If there is no need to copy the file, it will be skipped, saving backup time. The incremental procedure checks the Archive bit attribute of the file. You may want to manually reset the attribute to force a full backup: use the "Set the archive attributes" on the Task menu. Differential: The program will check if the source has been changed from the last FULL backup. If there is no need to copy the file, it will be skipped, saving backup time. The differential procedure checks the Archive bit attribute of the file. You may want to manually reset the attribute to force a full backup: use the "Set the archive attributes" on the Task menu. Dummy task: This backup doesn't need a source or a destination. It is useful to use the task just as an scheduler to execute applications, close services, reboot the computer, etc. When we take a trip we leave all photos on the storage cards and backup that data on a laptop when needed, then when we get home transfer that data to the desktop and external hard drives. I'm not comfortable yet backing up anything I believe is important to me on the cloud.

Thanks! Steve for the additional information. When I found the specimens I thought for sure I had meteorites and reading through the information you provided I wasn't the only out thinking they had the real thing. Unfortunately in the area where I live I will probably find more. The best thing that came out of this is the knowledge that a person gains through the process of finding the answer to the question. The help from people on this forum makes this forum one of the best out there whether they are a novice or seasoned detectorists.

I took both specimens yesterday to the Colorado School of Mines and had Bruce Geller who is the Museum Director for identification and you were both correct, they were not meteorites. The specimens were identified as ferromanganese. Ferromanganese is used as a deoxidizer for steel production. Thanks again for your help!

Both, my wife have been together 45+ years coin, relic, nugget hunt most of the time. When she wants to take a break I will go alone and keep in contact either by 2-way radios or cell phone. Nugget or relic hunting I'm also carry a gun just in case of any trouble that may arise. No problem hunting alone as long as some type of communication is available when you need to summon help if needed. I know this wasn't asked, but if I had trouble and died for some health condition I figure I went doing what I enjoyed one of things the most.

I will take both specimens to the Colorado School of Mines and see what they say, Thank you Lunk and Dave for your advise and help. I will keep you updated.

I ground off the pointed end, what do you experts think? I found another one and it is three times as large and reads between a nickel and a zinc penny.

How much should I file off? Say a area about the size of a fingernail. Open to any suggestions.

Here are some new pictures and Fred I tried the super magnet and there was no attraction to it. I didn't put the magnet on a string though. Try Steve's "How to Enlarge Photos's" for a better look see.

Weighs 69 Grams, reads below nickel on Metal Detector, does not stick to a magnet. Thanks for any help!

For I and my wife the answer would be " Yes", whether it is nugget hunting, relic, beach or coin hunting we enjoy the thrill of the hunt and being outdoors. We have been at this hobby or sport whatever you want to call it for over thirty plus years and still get excited when we find a nice nugget, coin or relic. It's not what the item we find is how much it is worth, but the experience, enjoyment and sometimes heartbreak you encounter while detecting. I could care less if gold was $16.00 an oz., when you find a nugget or gold specimen to me that's unique. Percentage of people that are successful in finding gold by any means is not that great, but the challenge and reward are well worth it. It brings a smile to my face every time I find a nugget big or small. The reward is looking back and cherishing and sharing the memories and saying " Yep, I did That!"