Placer Gold

7 hours ago, cudamark said:

I have and have used a TM808 White's two box. It will find deep targets if the targets are big enough. It will lock onto the biggest individual target, not the combination of all the targets unless they're physically attached to one another. For a gold item 4" X 8" and solid, 4' should be no problem with a two box, or, even a good PI machine with a large coil. 6' would be unlikely with either. Smaller items will reduce the amount of detection depth you will get. As mentioned, I would be skeptical of it being that deep. The initial hole might be a foot or two deep at most if he was digging with hand tools. Did the new owners REALLY add 2 feet of top soil? A few inches I would believe, but, 2 feet? If it actually has two feet of added soil, using a bottle probe might be a bit difficult. It's going to be relatively soft everywhere until you get 2 feet down. At that point, it may be hard to determine hard vs. soft ground further down. I would start with the easiest/cheapest method first. A good detector and some thought about where it would likely be buried. That would usually be within view of a frequently used window or garage/workshop area where he could keep an eye on the site. For sure, try GPR or a magnetometer if you have access to one, if the detector doesn't get results. 

Good advice thanks.  I referred them to a reputable GPR company as I don't have a GPR system.  We're trying to find someone with a two box detector or a good PI one with a big coil.  It's worth a shot.

Lots of good tips guys.  Bottle probes seem like a good idea.  I'll try to find a detector club nearby where someone has a two box detector.  We'll also try to use GPR from a local contractor.

13 hours ago, Valens Legacy said:

Check out some of the local detector clubs and ask for local help to find it. They will probably have every type of detector made to locate it.

Good luck.

Yeah that's a good idea.  The client has already gone over the area with a cheap detector.  She has no experience but if it was shallow she probably would have found it.  We should see if we can find a local detector club.

21 hours ago, Kostas 13 said:

If the place you want to search does not have metal fences and large ferromagnetic metals nearby, the best solution is to use a proton magnetometer that will not detect small metal debris and can see deep inside an iron box. If the treasure is not in an iron box, the proton magnetometer will be able to read the digging done to place the treasure. below I give you two examples.. Iron magnetic target 70 cm at a depth of 3.3 meters. and digging out of an underground structure.

 

 

I'm a geophysicist, I have a lot of experience with magnetometers for mineral exploration.  We're looking at using one for this.

There are some buried utilities and we don't know what the gold bars are encased in, it would be nice if it was a ferrous metal container.  They seem to think it's a suitcase or something like that but we don't know.

The utilities and proximity to power lines, septic and other things will probably make the mag difficult to use in this case.  I have a proton mag and we will try it but I have have doubts due to the potential interference.

Regarding 2 box detectors, I have no experience with those.  Does anyone on here have experience with them?  Can they detect gold bars (the size of a Hershey bar) at 4-6 feet?  I'd like to know before I drop $2k on a machine.

3 minutes ago, Doc Bach said:

First off follow JSONGS advice and look for any depressions which would be easy to spot depending of course on the amount of vegetation ground cover or if any grading has takin place or fill added and if the person who burried the items took the time to compact the backfill which is doubtful.Also as mentioned a good P.I.with larger coil or two box detector could locate it at 4 ft but 6 would be a stretch depending what the said items were buried in which would most likely a plastic bucket? Another option would be to contact your nearest Antique Bottle club and hire one or two experts with 5 0r 6 ft bottle probes to grid and probe the lot they can easily locate any holes that size and in most cases feel any sort of container good luck with your endeavors.

That's a neat idea.  I'll look into that.  I don't know if it would be feasible to probe the whole yard but as another person posted we can narrow it down by avoiding the septic, etc.

12 hours ago, Quicksilver said:

I can’t help but to call B.S. on the 4 to 6 feet deep part of this story. Unless the guy owned a hoe or some type of equipment.

That's what they told me.  Apparently the property has a new owner and they did some landscaping which added 2 feet to the whole yard.  It was originally about 2 feet deep.

2 hours ago, jasong said:

Should be able to see the disturbance by eye if the hole was really 4-6ft deep. If it isn't that deep, then it may be within detecting depth of a metal detector with a large coil.

Having dug and repaired a lot of sewers to houses around 4-8ft deep, one thing I can say is that even if you refill the hole/trench, it'll sink in (this is visible by eye as a depression) unless you really get in there and jet out the cavities/voids with water and then stack more dirt on top. Or, preemptively stack about 6-12" of dirt on top of the disturbed area (also, visible) so that it levels out once the disturbed dirt starts compacting. This is a long process up to years, depending on dirt type/moisture, and is definitely visible by eye both in the dirt levels as well as vegetation until things flatten out again.

So yeah, I'd just take a good look by eye first to look for large disturbances. But I doubt someone would have dug a hole that deep to bury some hershey sized gold bars, it'd probably take equipment to dig, and equipment to recover. The point of burying something I'd guess would be to discreetly hide it, not bring attention to it. So, it may be shallower than they think and within reach of a detector.

 

Good tips.  Apparently after the treasure was buried the new owners of the property did some landscaping and added about 2 feet of soil on top of the whole place.

It's a 1/4 acre on a residential yard so we're not going to rip up the whole place with heavy equipment.  If it was vacant land in the bush we'd definitely do that.  This will need to be detected somehow.  

I am considering GPR but I'm not sure if it would pick up something of this size.  I own seismic sensors but they don't have the resolution for this.  We also have a survey grade magnetometer but that won't sense the gold, if we're lucky and there's a lot of ferrous metal in there too the mag will pick it up.  There are possible utilities and a septic system so that will probably throw off the mag.

I'm looking for a deep metal detecting option, possible a micro-IP or resistivity system.  I don't have experience using that equipment for this application though.  I am a mining exploration professional not a treasure hunter but this is a cool story and I want help them out.

 

Hey guys, I was recently contacted by a local person with a personal treasure story.

Apparently this woman's ex-boyfriend buried a box with several gold bars in their back yard. It was meant to be a surprise for her but he tragically died in a car crash and didn't get the opportunity to present her with it. She learned of this recently after his death.

She knows which property it's located on but the area is 1/4 acre in size and she figures it's buried 4-6 feet deep. There are apparently several gold bars the sized of Hershey bars. There is supposed to be other treasures but she doesn't know what those are. She doesn't know what kind of container this stuff is buried in. If it was metal we could find it pretty easily with a magnetometer but she's not sure.

What technologies are available to detect at that depth? I'm not aware of any detectors that can reliably go that deep.