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An ignorant question: for small gold nuggets, is their value strictly the value of the gold they contain or do they carry some premium for being a natural nugget or having a rare shape/composition or perhaps something else?

Found a nice 15 g silver necklace. It is a bit delicate so I'm surprised it came out in one piece. Before cleaning After several cycles of baking soda, salt, thick aluminum min-pie tin.

Hey guys, newer coin shooter here. Dabbling from nugget shooting. I found a mining camp I know no metal detector has ever be swung over and I found this beaut! Wondering if I should clean it?

We all know if and when we buy anything it’s a loss to us because the dealer took a profit. That automatic lowers the value of the item we just bought. The problem for me starts when the price is lowered by the company on the detector I just bought . I just trying to combat this problem of taking of a large loss to a small one. Right now I have a detector with extra two small coils was 1200.00 but if I was to sale I could take a 50 % loss . Now what I’m thinking is if I start buying a lower end detector that offering as much as the high end one. One of the ones I’m talking about is about 600.00 . Even if I take a hit like the high end detector my loss is lots less . I don’t plan on taking a loss to buy another of less price but I will put my thinking cap on before making my next buy . Chuck

Hit local park before the blistering cold comes and came across this ring I thought was kiddie bling as you can see the plating on it but I saw a 925MO and it rang in like a silver. Acid test was bit off on Silver and Platinum test passed but I doubt it was platinum as it rang in up in the silver range. Turns out it was platinum plated silver with moissanite stones. Large one is 8mm and retails just under $800. Not bad for what I thought was junk.

I just uploaded a video detailing Hydro-Shocking the gold/quartz specimen from my last video. If you have any questions either drop them here or on the comments in the video and I will answer them. The next video will be showcasing the specimen after Hydro-Shocking and conducting a continuity test on the specimen to determine what visible gold is connected throughout the specimen.

Hi Everyone, New to detecting 🙂 hope you are all doing well. What's the best/most lucrative way to sell jewelry? - Gold rings - Diamond rings - Silver? Do you sell to a jeweler or privately? Just curious. Thanks for the tips and good luck out there.

I've been hoping for a situation like this to come by, and I finally had the chance to do this. If you have the room for this, I find it's the best way to store and also display finds. This unit was used by surveyors to store their diagrams and maps. I happen to ask one of them while in their office if they had any old or extra cabinets. They had one that was blocking an isle and the guy said "you want that one.... I'll help you load it right now". I declined on the "right now" part because of the size and weight, but returned with an appliance hand truck and a very sturdy ramp. Popped it up on the truck, brought it in the house, almost killed myself trying to get it down the cellar stairs 😄 and here it is.!!!! I've never had a good way of displaying my Riker display cases, since they take up so much desk surface area, but here they are hidden in narrow drawers, but also very accessible. So it's worth a try and approach surveyors. You probably won't get lucky and get them for free, but maybe at a reduced price. Now, I just have to take the time and fill more relics in my cases. 🙄

The weather the last couple weeks where I live in Colorado has decided to remain cold and snowing leaving very little opportunities to go detecting even though spring is just around corner. I usually take this idle time to catch up on cataloging and photographing gold specimens that I’ve cleaned. Here are some recent examples of mother nature great works:

Neglected to clean them. Placed them in motor oil and let sit a month. Maybe a hundred or so.

Here are a few fine jewelers making some natural gold into some high class pieces. https://www.townandcountrymag.com/style/jewelry-and-watches/a38660539/contemporary-goldsmith-jewelers/ You could make a few of these yourself or you could contact some of your local jewelers (or distant ones) and offer some of your nuggets with character and spirit. It could be very profitable.

I've learned the hard way that using water with any type of abrasive process (even rubbing with your fingers and water) to clean copper/bronze coins and relics is often a mistake as it tends to destroy the natural patina and you often end up with an orang'ish pitted/splotchy relic or coin. For things like buttons, I no longer use water, if there's gilt left I'll try lemon juice, but if it has crud, I'll use Naval Jelly. Has anyone tried any of the Andre Le Crayon products? Please by all means share any successful processes your found to restore your dug relics and coins 🤠

When I find a gold specimen like this, I usually don't get too excited about cleaning it. One of the main reasons is this type of gold specimen when going through the cleaning process will lose some or all its shape and character resulting in a disappointing specimen and reducing the value which in most cases it would be better to leave the specimen in its originally state. I decided to gamble and see what it's true potential might be for aesthetic and value. This gold specimen before going through the cleaning process weighed in at 55.1 grams. You can see the gold has permeated throughout the host rock and no visual indication if the specimen will hold its shape and character. In the final cleaning process, I did leave some of the host rock for stability as the specimen would have become too fragile by removing all of it. The gold specimen after going the cleaning process lost 5.57 grams of gold resulting in the specimen now weighing 28.43 grams. Sometimes you must gamble.

In the latest Miners Den News letter. It might not be suitable for most countries ( partially NZ Simon 😅) as it only goes down to 0.1 grams it could be used with the 6000 if you get a heap of little bits 😁. My only fault is it's upper limit is just over 96 troy ounces which in Australia means it can't not weigh any found above 100 ounces. 😭

Sold our gold bug 2 in one day on craigslist yesterday....got 3/4 what we paid originally. Was going to sell the Zed...could have sold it as well on the first day but then I chickened out...there are hardly any new or used detectors available right now on the internet...out of stock is what I'm seeing. even the small coil for the nox is hard to come by. Am I missing something here? Strick

Here are the results on the four gold specimens from the post "Cleaning Gold Specimens - Step By Step Methods". Specimen A: \ Specimen B: Close up photos of Specimen B front and back: Specimens C: Specimen: D

PART ONE: Pictured below are four gold specimens that I have found and I will discuss what methods I use to remove the host rock revealing mother nature's treasure. I gave each specimen a "letter" designation so you can follow the progress from start to finish on each specimen. Part Two I will discuss the chemicals and equipment I use to clean gold or mineral specimens.

By using $1800 for gold and $28 for silver as a base a common dime would have a value of 2.02 and a .6 grain (not gram) nugget would have a value of 2.02 if it was at 90% purity.If you want to know the silver amount of a common dime multiply .07234 times the spot price of silver.A .6 grain nugget is tiny. I would rather find a nugget then a silver dime any day unless it is a very rare silver coin.I imagine you nugget hunters stumble on to a nice coin now and then.I heard Tom Massie found a $20 gold piece when he was nugget hunting.I hope I did my math right.Even with copper surging to $4.06 today a common dime only has .27 cents of copper in it.

What is, if we should, get the dark crust from an old liberty dime to determine date and other details. No scrubbing with steel wool? Acids? Thank you in advance here at this forum for any help you can give.

So I was killing time eye shopping gold nuggets, I like looking but never buy any until now when I saw what I thought was a really beautiful 29.32g gold nugget pendant. This one was full of character and had a variety of color and texture, the simple silver wire mount cleverly wrapped to hold it securely without solder or permanent attachment the perfect gift for my wife’s birthday. Well, it came in the mail today and for reasons beyond comprehension he decided to clean it. The silver mount I guess melted in the acid, it looks I think much less interesting and the weight is down to 26.2g from it’s natural state at 29.32 a little of that lost fine gold. I’m sure I could return it the seller is very reputable but still like it just not nearly as much, what do you think am I wrong thinking it was much prettier before it was cleaned...should the seller have even done this after posting the pictures in his add? before cleaning after cleaning

I have 3 batches like this. I just listed one on CL for 175.00. Almost all iron items with some brass, ceramic etc. Priced too low? Too high? Going to be getting rid of all my old finds soon. Any ideas, opinions are good to hear. Thanks.

Hi Folks Yep it's old kiwigold back again. (Trev from New Zealand) some of you may remember me from days gone by. 73 years old now. Had a dose of throat cancer diagnosed late last year, 30 treatments of radiation seems to have sorted that out. And my prognosis is good. After a long absence from chasing gold have decided to get back into it. Ha ha one last fling lol. Before the body gets to tired or my back craps out. Small scale I must admit. No more underwater dredging for me. I will be working the banks for mainly fine gold. Have put together a system utilizing a mid western prospectors dry land suction nozzle. Now down to a two and a half inch suction nozzle. Guess I won't be shifting much eh. But at least everything is a lot lighter than what I used to use. And I don't expect to make a fortune. More of a paying hobby if I am lucky. Will flick some pics up, when I get on the river and everything running. Now back to the Subject heading. A guy here in NZ got hold of me, wanting two ounces of as pure as he can get beach gold, not pure as in purity,but not contaminated with to much black sand. Now I don't do beach mining any more, that was years ago. Like about 20. But I have a mate who still does. And maybe able to help. But we all amalgamate our concentrate. End up with a blob of gold sponge, which we then melt. Now somewhere years back on one of the gold forums. I recall seeing a mention of how to convert gold sponge back into free running gold. It may have been, soak in lemon juice or vinegar for a while. But not sure on that. My memory ain't what it used to be. So can anybody assist who knows of the method or knows someone that does. I have attached a pic of some gold sponge I had. Sadly I turned that into a little blob of melted gold. A whole .58 of a gram. Yahoo I'm rich. So I can't experiment with it. Good to be back. Although I do read the forum from time to time, haven't posted for several years. Cheers Trev in New Zealand.

I was wondering if it could be a good idea store corroded metal detecting finds in a container of oil? I have old bits and pieces made of copper etc. and it probably isn't good for them in the long term to be out in the air for oxidation reasons. What I was thinking of doing was filling a container with vegetable oil and putting them all into it for long term storage, until I can find a better place to store them, think this is a good idea or could it damage them? Maybe there is another type of preservation liquid?

In this video this lawyer claims that this person who found a 9 cwt diamond in Arkansas is responsible for paying taxes whether he sells it or not. Then he goes on and claims anything a person would find, they would pay tax on it if they sell or not. My understanding when it comes to gold (nuggets, specimens, coins, etc.) it is not taxable until you sell it. I'm not sure about other items one might find that are valuable. What's you opinion?