1515Art

14 hours ago, Glenn in CO said:

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’ve sold a few things at auction it’s time consuming the last item I auctioned it took at least 6mos before I saw any money, expensive the commissions are stiff, you pay extra for pictures and the larger add space although sometimes auctions are the best/only way. I did get an appraisal a couple years ago from Heritage and although I wasn’t ready to sell the auction company was helpful. This was a WW2 relic and I found the complete story about my piece in a book researching google, making it difficult to put a price on but Heritage did the best job out of the handful of auction houses I contacted.

I sent them the 3 rocks and another thing to look over, they apologize it may take a few days due to the number of requests but I expect they are first rate and will get back soon.

5 hours ago, DDancer said:

To me it looks real.  As to your link on pricing its pretty close to the mark depending on how its graded.  I like the coloration however it's lighter blue than top grade turquoises, Bisbee Blue is one of them, but should it prove real it looks like very good quality.

Well, recon I’ll find a different wheel chock for the Jeep until all this sorts out🤞  

This is the most informative guide I found grading although some of the the values seem unrealistic?

https://tskies.com/value-turquoise/

Ahhh, some good meme material here... when life is a paper weight.

Couple more we picked up and while I’m at it sent them over to the auction house to see if their worth anything? The amber chunk weighs 4lbs 3oz and is 11.5”x4”x7.5” 

the fluorite weighs in at 4lbs 13.2oz measuring 6.5”x3”x4.25” also from China 

see what heritage has to say and if we made a good buy?

22 minutes ago, kac said:

Looks real, did you find that?

No, bought it from a friend of a friend we only paid $500 for it the guy we got it from got it years ago from his friend that’s what he paid at the time he got it. I don’t remember the whole story but supposedly the friend owned the mine or factory both possibly and it was friend price. The guy we got it from was just showing it off and my wife talked him into selling it to us plus we’d given him a good price on some other stuff so he just passed it on for what he was into it for. Just as you know sometime stories are just stories?

anyone want to guess?

I never really thought to much about this chunk of blue rock until Mitchel posted the link for the natural science auction and I spotted the Chinese turquoise in the catalog. Holding the stone it feels hard enough my biggest concern is it looks too good? Doing some research died Howlite is often substituted for turquoise, the test that was recommended was to rub an area with cotton soaked in nail polish remover looking for any transfer of dye to the cotton or color change in the stone, doing this test the color was stable and no blue transferred to the cotton. Running a finger nail over the spider webbing another test I can feel a slight ridge as I am supposed to and the color under magnification looks natural. The close-up is using 10x on my phone looking through a 10x loop under magnification the matrix looks less black and more of a rust brown and a mat finish. Anyone have any guess? I sent an inquiry to Heritage auctions so we’ll see what they have to say. Total weight of this stone is 8lbs 9.2oz I think if my math is correct converts to 19,208ct. Be nice if it not treated stabilized color enhanced and of course actually turquoise?

Seems like somewhere around $2400 An ounce plus the auction commissions for Australian non crystallized specimens sold late 2019 in the 4oz range.

Beautiful gold Mitchel thanks for posting, I’m tempted to put in a couple bids on a some of the smaller nuggets just to see how low they might go. I’m also surprised how high the auction estimates are on the turquoise 10k to 15k for the large piece is much more than I thought it would sell for, a few years ago a friend sold us a chunk somewhat larger from the same area measuring roughly 8”x7”x4.5” he got from another friend who owns some factory in China that handles a large volume of the stuff for $500 the amount his friend charged him for the piece. I don’t know much about the fine points on grading turquoise (that would be nothing) or if there’s something special about the piece in the auction?

Great opportunity for a savvy investor potential 9,000,000.00 profit be the lucky owner of 100,000. Shares value $100. each in the Arizona Peer Mining Company established in December 14th 1883 that’s a long history of dreaming dreams. Offered at 10% of the bonds face value the token sum of $1,000,000.00 paid in cash or cashiers check at the time of transfer all funds fully refundable local pick-up Wuhan Financial center business office 3rd floor unit 1 AAABBBAABlongtimenoC. disclaimer: may not be in business, likely worthless production unknown and dollars lost who knows Brookline bridge offer soon to follow check back frequently all offers are at the assumed risk of the investor and no warranty is expressed or intended, any claim or grievance subject to binding arbitration by an impartial third party family pet arbitration board might only be 100 shares but 100,000 sounds better! 
 

kind of a cool old mining bond, i was going through some files and papers and wondered if this ever paid off?

20 hours ago, nugget hunter nz said:

So I couldn't resist having a crack at my own adapter soon as my x-coil turned up today. 

I was pooping my undies on the enitial turn on but all in all wasn't to bad to do it you take your time I started with number 3 blue wire at bottom first as hardest to get to to solder then worked my way up to 2 and 1 the 4 and 5 spent a good 20 mins thoroughly checking for any shorts or anything when I was happy I hot glued all wires and invetween stopping them from being able to move or that in future then heat shrink followed by lots isolation tape I then put the female plug back on the std 14 and works like charm  I also waterproofed the xcoil by adding marine silicone in and around the plug and a thin layer along the joining lip were skid plate goes

all and all thought for a first attempt wasn't to bad and I didn't make it go boom so that a bonus 

With the fine look of your work might we have our North American adaptor solution?  Seems like it wouldn’t be difficult for someone who can solder making a simple test socket for plug shorts or crossed wire if doing enough of them if that’s the only risk? In the long run easier on the shorts😀🩳🤭.

solder... I had one of those moments typing this spelling the word solder just didn’t look right to my dyslexic eye... went back and reread the initial post to double check my doubt and you managed to tell the whole story without ever writing solder, god I love spell check, Wikipedia and thank you Rob for the tips.

second thought risk is in the chip too I guess, oh well we can dream.

18 hours ago, Lacky said:

If it's an area silver has been found silver ore is possible.  All I really know though is watching meminer vids on youtube. They rub the silver ore samples hard on their pants or something and the silver will show in some of the rubbed areas. 

Lacky,  thanks for the info whatever it is it’s nothing of any consequence but guess I learn a little with every question and it makes the dry spells more fun.

1 hour ago, fredmason said:

I am not smart enough to be geological...except I feel like a rock some days...

maybe Chris Ralph or other smart person can guess....

best wishes

Fred, Thanks anyway and sorry I rely on you like Google but your service is better, to my knowledge you don’t read all my email and then fill my in basket with spam. And your score getting it right is in the high 99.999% range even Ken Jennings swings a whiff now and then and Ha, if your not smart enough I’ve by comparison no hope. Also, sometimes my logic is more caveman peering skyward seeing many eyes starring back, sorry no disrespect intended to cavemen I’d likely fare significantly worse at their endeavor than I do at this one 😂.

thanks Fred, great advise I’ll try more of that. No I didn’t think these were space related, I brought them home because they hit hard on the deus and I just wanted to have a look at the structure under a loop. I used a tiny lighted microscope and was surprised the rock was covered in little mercury like dots,  some of the globules looked crusted tarnished black most looked silvery under high magnification. I was just wondering at first if this had any relation to mercury ore of somehow was contaminated, or not being familiar with silver ores could it be something like that. My observation was the silvery dots were more obvious  on first inspection could the heat over time in my pocket factor in? The silver dots were nearly impossible to capture a they look to my eye, a little bit shows in the edge in the picture holding a magnifying glass to my iPad camera.

Mitchel, that’s what’s wrong I’m hunting the wrong 20 acres, lol, but I just need that first piece. Eventually if I don’t give up I’ll find something there, I’ve also brought home a few buckets of dirt from a couple of the washes but nothing there so far not even a flake, keep trying different spots until something begins to show. Think next I’ll head back out to gold basin again try a new spot out there and spend a little time where I found that little bit see if I can squeak out a touch more. Think if luck holds my other house might be sold in California, if so life will get a lot easier and hunting more frequent, maybe even Australia if any thing is left after all the horrible fires, wish everyone there luck. My wife’s got cousins someplace have not heard anything if they’ve had any issues hop they and everyone else is safe now and comes out of this OK.

Steve, flak and Jeff, This last Monday I started swinging the 7000 at around 7AM confident today was going to be the day by around 2PM feeling tired my pants were riding low and it Was taking all I had not to skip digging the iffy signals, switching over to the deus it was so easy to use and running so nicely I felt refreshed and although lacking the power of the 7000 I kept at it until the last light faded I would have kept at it longer except the coyotes were making such a ruckus it was a bit unnerving.

this claim is twenty acres I’d guess and I have only vague idea where to look and have hit several different areas including several of the washes, areas around dry wash piles, the piles them selves, off on the edges and at the end several hours in the trashy spots mostly with the deus the multitude of targets is overwhelming the 7000 in the trash. I’ve been running zed both with Steve’s insane type settings and also with lunks quiet set-up, I prefer running hot but have been trying both listening for faint tones.  There’s a lot of ground I’ve missed but I know it’s there, time will tell if it’s in me. 

jw, I would or will depending on the nugget finder coils the proof is hard to ignore and if my time was not so spread out on selling and moving all this last year I’d have one already your success is inspiring😀.

I’ve been hopefully searching a club claim in Southern Nevada and although I know gold must be there the 3 trips out have been blanks, I’m finding all kinds of trash, old lead and tacks that say although no doubt pounded, not cleaned out by a long shot. Most of this junk found has been shallow but still there has to be some deeper gold hiding amongst all the trash someplace just haven’t found any out there yet. The other day I was burned out swinging the 7000 and grabbed the deus with the high frequency round coil to try something different, I hardly ever hunt nuggets for more than a few minutes with the little Frenchy trusting the power of the zed for gold. The light little deus was a pleasure, detector in one hand pick in the other and the pinpointing accuracy of the deus and target recovery improved 10 fold and I was finding almost exactly the same targets just a bit fewer (probably the gold ones). I ran the gold program against the hot program both at factory settings 50khz and switching between the two programs gave me really good idea of what I was going to find, the gold field being more sensitive and the xy screen of the hot program with full tones providing a more full picture. I was also pleased the deus seemed to handle the ground also with no problems, there were only 3 Little Rock’s in the upper right of the picture that hit hard on the deus and after taking them home for closer inspection they show tiny particles of silvery metal under high magnification that was almost impossible to photograph, its blacker in spots and silvery like mercury droplets (very tiny) in other areas with a metamorphic (I think) host rock that I’m not certain of, any ideas what this is?

anyway, I’ve got to spend a week back in Calif working on an offer on my other place, and cleaning it up when I get back then try a few new spots in Arizona after a break before hitting my southern Nevada spot again.

my modified Ukrainian army trench tool also worked great paired with the deus I added a longer handle, cut the blade square and embedded a super magnet into the end of the handle was a real back saver,lol.

No, no and hmmm, so you mean I’ve got a chance👍, no regrets Even if I never break even financially as the adventure has been worth every cent. Being late in the game starting nugget hunting with the release of the 7000 without clue 1 on the location of any placer makes for a slow uphill start , but each and every piece found a treasure. 

Whites SST.         Almost

7000.                    I hope (no)

Deus.                    No, I need to hit the park more and they were supposed to make that treasure coil thing

At the least Minelab should consider if the rumors of a new and improved gpz should ever come to fruition, for a brief period of time consider offering those loyal customers whom trusted in the 40% mantra and believed in them enough to shell out 10K for the new technology only to a certain extent then to have the placer rug pulled out from under us when the price was dropped.

As Was pointed out patch cleaning is drying up and as I’m reading here price has a lot to do with quantity sold and those  of us that paid full price only to have an equal powered lower priced detector kind of speed up the process, I remember reading in one of Steve’s comments and pardon me if I’m misrepresenting he was both surprised and disappointed in how many would she’ll out 10K, add to that even more at 8K. Plinking down 10K only to have it depreciate like my car, cell phone and everything else these days is kind of the path we’ll paved, but of all the things I could pass on buying... new detectors then seem to fall pretty close to the top of my list. 

Another absurdly priced detector would need an olive branch as a shaft, or do things only dreamed of otherwise I’m just fine with the old heavyweight I’m into now, just need to fix the broken swing arm, bungee, get a new skid plate and hmmm, I really believed it when they sort of promised that little coil. 

2 hours ago, Jim in Idaho said:

Hey Clark, we got over there in that area I've been looking at, and you know. That's where I found the copper nuggets, and old cartridge, but farther up the canyon. We'll be going back next year, for sure. We found some diggings that are well-hidden, and looked like nobody had found them in a while. The other locale, below the tailings, had been hit lately...many uncovered dig holes, so we looked elsewhere. Went all the way over to Patterson poking around.

Jim

The spot farther up the canyon sounds like very interesting ground indeed, if you camp out up there for the night with the big cats roaming around don’t forget to bring the dog and gun for under your pillow😀.

3 hours ago, Jim in Idaho said:

My old friend, Dave , and I spent 8 days in Nevada last 2 weeks. Found no gold, but did find a new area to explore. Gives us a decent place to Iook forward to this winter. I found a .44 Henry rimfire cartridge, my first, and two copper nuggets, my second and third. Dave found several round balls of various calibers, and of course, many spent bullets. We also found some really fresh lion tracks well out from the mountains on the valley floor about 40 miles west of Winnemucca. That was pretty interesting, as the tracks were made in dust, and were nearly perfect. Had to be made the night before. Probably a young cat trying to locate a decent place to set up a territory. Not much big game around, but lots of wild horses.
Jim

Cool about seeing fresh cat tracks I was mountain biking in the Santa Cruz mountains in Northern California one afternoon I just finished a long climb and cresting the top of the hill found myself face to face with a big cat just standing in the middle of the trail. As soon as I spotted him I got off my bike a made myself look a big as possible as we stood there eyeing each other he was at a distance of roughly 50 feet from where I stopped my bike. Eventually after 15 - 20 seconds that seemed much longer he just slinked off into the brush, i on the other hand decided to end my ride and quickly turned my bike around for a hasty retreat downhill.

17 hours ago, GB_Amateur said:

Clark, IMO you're approaching this the right way.  Nobody here (worth paying any attention to) is going to rip you for posting your results and questions.  You are making good decisions and you should keep it up.  Reality is that even though rare finds are just that - rare, they do happen and the worst thing anyone can do is assume finds are worthless and throw them in the trash.  Please continue to post and ask questions.  We all will learn from them.

 

Thanks, you are absolutely right it’s all about the learning, I get a wealth of information from every little mystery I find. Being new learning the geology, reading maps... and I believe I’m in good company I read frequently similar questions and concerns,  I can look through the pages and pictures in my mineral guide and some of it translates for me in the field, but like anything else the devil is in the details and years of practical hands and eyes on experience or good and patient teachers are essential to read and understand the story to the right ending when comparing what I find vs my books. Thankfully the help here plays a big roll in filling that gap in knowledge with access to so many great teachers making it possible for someone new like me to have a chance at finding some success in a reasonable amount of time.

so, the last mystery didn’t need XRF the experts were right as always😀 this is metal trash from mining. Before taking it any further testing by cleaning off the rust revealed an earth like man made curve not found in debris from space at least none that I know of in Pahrump, NV. My guess is they were both little chunks from the same axle or shaft that exploded under the load of mining by the shape and curve. 

4 hours ago, fredmason said:

Your nails only prove you’re  not sitting around looking pretty!

Irons are a whole another ball game... if you have free access to an Xrf, nothing lost by using it...otherwise I would not waste any money.

save these suspect rocks for an Outing or to show an Expert, I am not!

fre

Thanks Mitchel and Fred, it’s probably chunks of iron from some old mining equipment the last one I found out at rye patch tested as an alloy earth like and modern. There is a pawn shop in Santa Clara that will test things anywhere from free to $15 depending on who’s there doing it for you, I’ll be back for a couple weeks an take it in and have them solve the mystery. The only mystery really I’d expect to find a chunk of old iron in the tailing pile curious finding the other buried some distance away looking related, safe money bet is old chunks of iron equipment? Thanks for the feed back and help, see you out there soon.

clark

P.S. Second thought probably the real mystery is how long it’s going to take me to figure this all out, lol and quit bringing home leaverite.

Well one thing for sure looking at the pictures, I’m not taking very good care of my nails, lol. Grinding off a little edge on one shows nothing but metal and I’m surprised as they looked more mineral? They were found somewhere around 1/4 mile from each other and appear to be of identical material and unique from everything else recovered in the 8 hours detecting the 2 pieces one an inch or 2 down in the middle of nothing far above a wash and the other dug out of a tailing pile several inches down. They are to small to acid etch so guess I’ll XRF one and see what the percentage of Nickel is?

On 11/1/2019 at 10:25 PM, mn90403 said:

Well, much gold has been found on that GPAA set of claims.  With your skills I'm sure you will find more.

Another group to consider (I am right now) is MPA out of Kingman.  They are the 'forgotten' big claim holders of the basin.  I don't know how many people jump them but I don't see people on their claims when I'm there.

A big thanks, I’ll be joining them too.

i probably need a new thread for these but my success ratio on meteor finds has been 0% so first I’ll post my latest mineral pocket hitch hikers from Pahrump area here, no quartz that I can see and they stick like glue to a magnet, not iron scrap but I have no idea...???