Gold Seeker

I did a little reading on silver and mercury, silver and mercury will form an amalgam, just like it will with gold, the mercury will dissolve the gold until it reaches a saturation point and it's does the same with silver, so when he put mercury on the SL quarter it dissolved a bit of the surface silver which left the quarter shiny. Here's video where the guy does the same with a 1953 silver quarter, you can see the amalgam forming as he rubs it off and eventually he cleans the quarter with a cloth and it looks pretty close to a new quarter albeit with some loss of surface silver. I wouldn't recommend doing this with a silver coin especially if it's a rare date that you may want to get graded because it will lower the grade from the loss of silver and the grading service may very will be able to tell what was done to the coin...or maybe they won't be able to tell but I wouldn't risk it with a rare date. And also as mentioned and as we all know or should know breathing the mercury fumes is not good!!

First I've heard of using mercury to cleanup a silver coin, please post a photo of how it looks now.

25 cent a day in 1930 was federal minimum wage, the average starting wage for a common laborer in 1930 was 43 cents a day, skilled laborers and or professionals would make much more.

That's great and I would get one..BUT I don't live in California and it wouldn't work in my state with California written on it. Maybe another version that is more generic with no state mentioned, maybe a federal/national agency, like "National Lead Abatement Collective"

It's very possible, if there's one there could be more!

Some nice finds you got, good job, love the gold coin...but it's odd that the "51" is so well defined but the "18" is almost worn away!

The tapered bars are "casted" bars poured into a one piece mold, there are also bars that aren't tapered but they are from either 2 piece molds, or gold that has been ran through a press into uniformed thickness and width and then cut into uniform bars.

In 1906 the United States government passed the "National Gold and Silver Stamping Act.", however there isn't a law that actually requires that gold/silver to have a purity/quality mark..but the law does require that any gold/silver that does have a purity/quality mark MUST be fairly accurate and even more accurate since an update in 1981, and any marked gold/silver must also have a "Hallmark/Makers mark" accompanying the purity mark or the purity mark is mute and may not be accurate. Here's a little more info... https://www.stuller.com/articles/view/national-gold-and-silver-marking-act/

I knew how this process works already...but I thoroughly enjoyed the video! There is one bit that is untrue....the reason the gold bars are tapered, he said it was so a man couldn't grip it easily to pick it up.....why would anyone be worried about someone picking it up, it had to be picked up to move it around, the true reason was so that the bar would drop out of the mold easily after the bar was poured and cooled.

Well that explains how the knife got in the field, it's got drunk on it's birthday and passed out in the field!!

Nice half-dime, I think that's a type 3, I think type 2s are "No Drapery"

It was on the Discovery Channel.

You have indeed found an epic place to detect, amazing to find so many gold coins!! If you don't mind saying what country are you finding these coins?

It's a slag ladle, used in steel/metal foundries to haul away the molten slag from steel/metal production, they haul it out of the foundry to dump the slag.

I wonder how big these buckets actually are, 5 gallons or smaller, I don't recall him saying how big they are?

Many of the southeastern states that have gold have gold in saprolite, especially Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama and as mentioned the Carolinas.

Not your traditional pick but it's a great pick none the less, see one in person before buying, just so you know what it looks and feels like. https://www.bing.com/search?pc=CBHS&ptag=N3132D041519A9DFA1A1FF2&form=CONBDF&conlogo=CT3210127&q=estwing+paleo+pick

Gold with a high silver content (usually at least 20%) is called "electrum". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrum

I live in South Carolina and all can sodas I have looked at have both imperial and metric on the cans. I was hoping the nugget came from here..but doing a search there doesn't appear to be a Arizona in South Carolina...dang it!!

From my understanding, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but if several coins or historic items were found together it's considered a "hoard" then the rest of the coins/treasure if any at the site would excavated, researched, etc. and then be appraised and then museums would bid on them and the finder would get the money, if found on private land and the finder had permission the then the finder and land owner split the money, if no permission was granted then the landowner gets all the money, if found on public land the finder gets all the money. When only one coin or historic item is found it isn't considered a hoard and the finder can sell it themselves and to whomever they please for however much they can get for it.

I'd like to say it was your skill that got rid of the skunk but I think it was the coyote that ate the skunk is why you were successful!

It's definitely an old gyroscope toy, they were very popular from the 1950s and into the 1970s, that one is a earlier one and in the same time frame as the Tootsie Toy car.

Merry Christmas to everyone, stay safe!!

I guess Gary wasn't looking for "Top pocket" finds since he didn't have a top pocket that day! LOLs

If you're good at panning micro-fine gold some of it can be panned out, but there are other ways to capture the gold lost when cutting but it would require smelting the dust or using chemicals, mercury, etc., etc.