GotAU?

Curious- other than procurement from other melted down gold items, what region of England may the native gold (if the coin has any) have come from in the 1200’s?

Aw, that’s just a penny- I’d be targeting the quarters and half pounds! Amazing find, and really interesting designs. And being gold, it really was able to hold up well for all those years!

Hi Billy, was it “Diggers” by National Geographic? I haven’t seen it, but it sounds interesting from the online description.

Simon, That looks like a good demo of what I found during my recent trip, I am still learning the nuances of my 24k but feel that it will help a lot in our areas too. @Jim McCullochwas very helpful and took a lot of time getting me started out with mine. Have you tried using tracking then temporarily locking it when you get a target to help id it? It seems to be a good technique.

Maureen G. Johnson made similar reports for USGS in Arizona, Utah and i believe there’s one for California as well. If you go to the USGS site you can download the map that accompanies the report, there are also other vendors selling the book with maps included. It’s a great resource!

Thanks Jim, shall do! I had an interesting visit there after we got together, no color or dogs sighted but it made for a good scouting trip. The Joshua tree forest in that canyon is amazing, those really large ones back there look more like old oak trees. May the nuggets I ever do find there get the same treatment as whatever helped the Joshuas! 😉

It’s all downhill from the rose mine area, first class miners have a claim near the base, and it’s wilderness area now starting uphill next to their claim.

Nice! I mean, wow! I can’t imagine how that must look in person, what an amazing collection! And thank you for also sharing information about your techniques and settings details too, what a inspiration and help for us newbies!

Thanks for the heads up Jim, I was planning to go soon. We used to hike there but never knew of that issue. So now that I will be detecting there, I will definitely look up and around more often.

Some other great input here though- as a prospecting detector, Gold Catcher makes some very good points why one may want a GM over a Nox. In my case, I bought the GM first and really liked it for looking for gold and meteorites. I even used it at a dry salt lake and it did well there. I then bought the Nox to do some relic hunting and as a second gold detector to share with my wife and other family members. But some of the areas that I wanted to prospect have a lot of ironstone and other hot rocks, and I also ran into a lot of the basalt hot rocks out in Franconia, Az while looking for meteorites. It was a bit harder there to find stuff with the GM. After that, I started reading about the positive reviews the 24k was getting, and got to try one out with Jim McCulloch for a day- that sold me on keeping the 24k over the GM, especially after using it in areas with lots of gravel sized hot rocks and layers of black sand. I also decided to keep the more versatile Nox as I also want a relic/coin detector. I guess what it comes down to is if you are only going to be prospecting for gold, the gold monster is probably a good choice for you, but if you think you might want to try some other types of detecting, especially if you don’t live close to a good prospecting area, you may find yourself wanting to go swing for other things besides shiny stuff and will be more happy with something like the multipurpose Nox.

True Value hardware has a good selection of handles, did you try your local one? (If you have one…) Edit: …Besides Ace as WesD said above!

I’m still a newby at this, but personally, if you are using a GB 2 and do well with handling it, I’d think the NOX would be a good partner for it over the GM for the adaptability it has to be a good multi-frequency gold and relic/coin machine with lots of coil selections. The GM is great for gold, but can’t do everything else a Nox can do and it only has the two coils (that isnt as important though as most use the 5” puck for it over the other one anyways). I now use a Nox and 24k myself, went that route after using a GM for awhile but found the 24k a more adaptable gold detector than the GM, especially for all the hot rock areas we have.

The early bird gets the… nugget. Next time for sure, right?! Love that place, my first too!

As an answer to a previous question in this topic, I used my new 24k in a area of the Mojave with a lot of hot rocks and was able to adjust for them pretty well (as compared to with my Nox 800 and GM). As with other VLF’s, turning down the sensitivity helps, but it turns down sensitivity to everything as well. I tried a couple different ways to work the areas and found these suggestions worked: one suggestion (from a post by Steve) that I tried was to ground balance directly on a hot rock while in locked mode. This worked well, and allowed my detector to pick up gold when I put my test card on the rock, but there were other types of hot rocks in the area that continued to sound off with it as well. I also tried combining different VSAT speed settings along with sensitivity. Jim McCulloch mentioned how faster VSAT speeds work better along with lower sensitivity with more mineralized ground. I tried doing this and it seems to also work well when they were many small hot rocks mixed in with the gravels I was detecting. It was the only way I was able to detect over the gravel without it sounding off or even overloading constantly. I’m really new at this, so I’m still learning how to do it correctly, and have to thank both Steve and Jim for their help! In his guide “Advanced Nuggetshooting with the 24k”, Jim also recommends some other detecting techniques that also help with differentiating hot rocks from true targets. I think they are available if you contact him here directly.

I use a low latency Avantree Torus wireless Bluetooth collar headphone with my Equinox and wanted the same option for my Garrett 24k. This Bluetooth transmitter works well with my 24k and is also rated as low latency, so there’s very little lag time between swinging over a target and hearing the target tones. Use stick-on Velcro to hold it onto the back side of the arm cuff and run the cable into the audio input/output port on the detector. You will need a 1/8” female to 1/4” male plug adapter to connect the two. A right angle adapter helps make for a lower cord profile into the detector’s audio output plug. The manufacturer says it lasts up to 14 hours, mine is new and I haven’t used it over eight hours yet. It seems to work well, causes no interference and delivers nice audio. I’ll post a better review after a few days of harder field testing. It may be a good option to use for wireless Bluetooth audio with other detectors as well. Edits: not water proof so use a baggie cover. A right-angle adapter makes it nicer as the cord won’t stick out the back so far (as shown in new photos) Giveet Bluetooth 5.0 Transmitter... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07198BBZN?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share CERRXIAN Right Angle 1/4 Male to 1/8 Female Adapter: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N5LWJWQ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_i_QP59Q3BYB1T42CSRZGGV

Nice finds! Oh you live in some beautiful country, Steens Mountain and the desert below? Heaven on Earth! Have a great 2022, Hope to go back this spring.

Never understood why up the creek without a paddle was so bad, seems like down the creek without a paddle would be a lot worse…. Oh well! Merry Christmas!

That’s pretty good advice to wipe those hot rocks, wonder if the flake came off the hot rock to begin with? Another good reason to clean them up before tossing them is you may have a specimen or maybe even a meteorite. I’m hoping to use my 24k in some other areas that are also notorious for hot rocks as well. When I purchased it from Jim McCulloch, he covered how to handle hot and cold rocks with it. I can’t wait to have at it!

I am planning to do just that! 😉

Those investors often hold onto the claims and sell stock in them to unsuspecting investors here in the US and also to foreigners. Then they claim bankruptcy or sell everything for a profit and disappear. When I used to do consulting work, we did a environmental analysis for a mining venture out ‘there’ that was funded by foreign investors. The LLC running it closed their operation and tried to walk away from their bills and investors. We put a lien on the claims for our bill and were finally paid when someone else wanted to buy their claims. Corporations with no intention of actually using their claims are merely speculating real estate salesmen. They can legally snatch up many claims and large tracts of open public land and hold them, essentially using them for other types of profit not originally intended by the mining law of 1872.

Would you leave some of that for the rest of us? Nice finds, beautiful photos, and nice writeup. Thanks for sharing!

Cant wait for that Minelab GPXRF- 10000 model to hit the market!😁

Those uniform cuff buttons are special, quite a few lost too. Do you think it a camp or a place with action? What did you find out about their ID? Some interesting finds!

If it’s a real one, that bird button may be very special, especially to the original owner - it looks like the same item being sold on eBay labeled as “World War II ruptured duck honorable service medal” It’s funny why they called it a ruptured duck -https://www.medalsofamerica.com/blog/ruptured-duck-honorable-discharge-lapel-pin/ I found this rather easily using Google lens, it’s an app that lets you look online using an image. Try it out sometime, it works really well for identifying things like that, but it couldn’t identify that Y-shaped tool. The closest it could get was a meter key of some sort.

Great write up, your posts have international acclaim!