Search the Community

It's been a good week all around. Dennis really got on the gold today, 15 nuggets total including a 3.4 gram piece. I'm going to rest up tomorrow, our flight leaves out of PHX on Sunday afternoon. We'll arrive in Perth on Tue, then meet up with Paul and Trent on Friday. We're just hoping our good luck hasn't run out. Tally Ho!

Paul ... where are you? This one is worth a bit less than $100,000. That won't change your lifestyle much. https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/aussie-man-hits-the-jackpot-finds-100000-gold-nugget-004212339.html

I got this piece yesterday down about 6" and until I cleaned it I was 99% sure it was another bird shot. Over the years I have been surprised how many of my bird shot have turned out to be gold. ?

We've been out every morning for a few hours since Sunday practicing for the summer of Aussie Gold. Today was my day on the big gold. I was detecting a desert wash bench zone, and got what the Aussies call a Zed Warble. Down here in Sunny Yuma the Zed Warble usually means an old rusty bent nail. A bit of digging down to the hard pack maybe 15 or 16 inches. I switched detector down to Sens 1 to try and pinpoint, bit it was still overloading with the warble tone. Dennis and I took turns breaking up the hardpack and scooping out the hole till this nugget rolled on out. The small stuff I found over the past 2 mornings, I think I'm going to throw them back for seed on the big ones.

So I titled this as such because when it gets especially hot (here in Arizona) I start my hunts at midnight and go thru until the morning until about 8am. For me, this offers multiple benefits. There is more time with the family on weekends, which for me is #1; I cherish this more than gold. And secondly, if it is hot out, I cannot keep my ground balanced, as some put it. When it starts getting hot, I would tend not to look as hard and rush through areas. Anyways, back to the gold. I was in a wash last week when I ran into some pretty good gold. I found 11 small pcs adding up to almost 4 grams. Now, for my night hunts, I won’t go every weekend, I usually skip 1 or two so that I get my sleep cycle working again. But then there is Mother’s Day coming up and so my wife briefly mentioned that I should go this weekend, too. An hour later I am charging batteries. She walks by and says, “wow, you really have the fever don’t you”. I just laughed. She knows me. She has seen me prospecting for 5 years and put up with it for 5 years. One of the best decisions I made was marrying her. I explain all of this because it was nice to come home and show her the source of the fever. So I went back to this area with my GPZ and started walking through more washes I had marked out on my gps. Nothing for the first one, but the second one, I got a nice strangely shaped 2.75 grammer. Now, I can kinda see a patten on my gps when I look at my finds. I finish the wash and go to a wash that is in the direction of the gold distribution. Good topography … I am in. First couple of minutes of slow hunting in this wash yields, nothing. And then I start focusing on a bench that is maybe a foot higher than the rest of the wash… and I get a signal. A clear, still loud, but smooth signal. My heart jumps as I begin to dig. The dirt just fell away until 15-16” I hit gravel. By now the target was booming. I scrape the gavel back with my pick and I see a large piece of gold flip out! It replays in my mind over and over. Needless to say, you may have heard my scream at 2:15 in the morning (Arizona time). LOL. From there the gold kept coming. I got a couple more pieces farther up the wash and then came back and placered the area for a couple more little ones missed by depth. Wide range of sizes. THAT is why I love the GPZ. And it was nice to see my wifes face change to a smile when she felt the .86oz chunk fall into her hand. Priceless. All in all, my findings came to just over 1oz. Who needs sleep ... Andyy

My summer season consists of a lot of VLF detecting at some old tertiary channels with quiet ground and exposed bedrock. I’ve been using a Gold Bug 2 with a 6” coil for years and found thousands of nugglets with it for quite a few ounces. It decided to crap out on me and I thought it was time for a change after seeing a Gold Monster squeeze out some good gold from old ground. After researching I decided to go with an Equinox 800 I picked up from Chris Gholson. I can say it exceeded expectations with the 6” coil. I only had an hour to spend at an old patch that was hammered with GPZs, Gold Bugs and Gold Monsters. FIRST SWING popped out a gold bug caliber speck. In a half hour 4 more popped out and I decided to give it a try at a cabin site where I found some great relics and bottles and an 1872 seated dime and 1911 nickel. It was a wooded cabin with foundation intact and long period of occupation so the trash density is as high as you’d expect. I’ve hit it hard with an XP Deus but thought this 6” coil might have an advantage. The ground is incredibly hot, as in hot with a GPX and GPZ, it drove the Deus nuts and definitely was a chore with the Equinox but with patience I was able to get new and impressive targets. The cabin was built on gold ground and sure enough a foot away from where the nickel was found I picked up the biggest flake in the photo. It’s a flake at only 1.8 grains. I don’t know how this thing picked it up in that ground with that much trash. I also picked up a handful of birdshot lead and small copper sheet scraps amidst everything in the heart of the site. Needless to say this thing rocks. And yes it can find gold as well as a gold dedicated machine. It’s the first dual purpose detector I’ve ever seen that can perform at the top of the spectrum with both. No coins or relics this day but I only had a half hour to look and it found unbelievable targets in the most difficult of sites. I think it could excel on half dimes and $1 or fractional gold coins if they’re around. So many of my patches have cabin or town sites around them and now I don’t have to hike in two machines or spend the full day with only one. Can’t wait to see what more time will produce with this thing.

Published on Apr 21, 2015 - Found this 3.8oz beauty in the goldfields of Victoria using the GPZ 7000. It was nearly dark but I couldn't resist a few more minutes detecting. It gave off a strange signal because I believe it was standing upright. Pay close attention at the 7:45 mark, you can actually see and hear the nugget as its dropped inches from the coil!!!

Hey Everyone... Myself and Chris (Chris Ben) got out for some Nugget hunting , and want to share a video we put together... much more to come later... Dave

My Baja detecting partner Dennis and I went out this AM for a little practice before we hit the Aussie Shores next week. I found one little rice grain sized nugget, Dennis went hog wild on me. I hope he doesn't use up all his luck before we get to OZ.

Thought I'd do we show and tell these are from summer 2018 mainly bedrock hunting in upper creek heads .. using my gpx4500 and goldmonster 1000 all the fines in the left container were from the monster apart from a couple that were gpx or nox800 the two in the centre are 1.7 and 1.6 grams still yet to break the 2 gram yet hopfuly this year .. I'll be pulling alot of you tube videos up if you want to follow my channel its nugget hunter new zealand ... I have a modded gpx4500 but I also modded the shaft to a 3 piece gold big 2 shaft it makes it very portable and easy to carry into hills

Just poking around on Whites website and someone hit it big with a 67.4 gram 2.166 ozt Nugget with an old XLT. https://www.whiteselectronics.com/find/monster-nugget/

Ok, let's see a few of the forums members recent finds. Be sure to include detector settings and GPS coordinates. ?

This past weekend me and a buddy got out and did some prospecting, on saturday we both dredged with 4 inch dredges, I did ok got 2 small pickers and a bunch of fines. My buddy killed it and got three nuggets and some pickers. He has basically located our next paystreak that we will hit hard in the coming days. The second day i decided not to dredge due to an old injury that was acting up, so i packed my dredge up and went down stream and decided to pull out the GM 1000 and detect around where my buddy was finding nuggets with the dredge. Just up stream from where he was dredging there was a nice large area of exposed bedrock in the creek that was pretty soft and decomposed, so i fired up the the monster and started detecting. Low and behold the first hit i get is a little picker, second hit another little picker, and so it went. During the course of about 1.5 hours, i got 13 little pickers in about 5 square feet of bedrock. I was stoked, this is basically the first gold patch i have found with a detector. Ill be taking the equinox back there later this week to see what it can find. Once i clean it up with detectors we will dredge it to get all the fine gold that is hiding there. Should be the start of a pretty rich paystreak/patch. All in all a fantastic weekend and i cant wait to detect that spot more as well as dredge that whole section of creek bank to bank. Should eventually get a video together of the weekends events.

46 ozs!

Had fun and it's a start!!!! No ticks this trip unlike last trip and weather was GREAT!!!!!

I`m still not getting out for a great deal of hours and it is ages since I got a nice piece at depth but I went out for about 1½ hours yesterday and got one similar to the last one I got. The bottom one is yesterdays piece. It was only 1" down and a very iffy signal with the 7000. These two came from 2 different spots maybe 5 miles apart.

New PB for me 35 grams, bit over a foot deep, very happy! ??

goldEn is back in town for a couple of weeks and managed to get out my place for a couple of days. Today we went to a Ironbark forest where there was a little bit of surfacing so goldEn could use the 2300 and I detected in the forrest with the 7000. I got one of those really iffy signals that I thought was ground noise and when I approached it at 90º I couldn`t hear it at all.I scraped a bit of dirt and same thing, could hear it one way but not the other. As the hole got deeper the signal seemed to move in the hole. First it was in one spot, then in another spot and it never sounded like a real target. When I finally got it out of the hole I couldn`t hear it at all, but I move a bit a bit of dirt and I can hear something, move a bit more dirt and I couldn`t hear it again. From when I first detected it to holding it in my fingers was about 15 minutes and it goes a whopping 0.12 gram and is about ¼" long. Good to see you again goldEn ?

One Guy and myself went on the first detecting trip of the year this past Thursday and we were gone til Sunday. I got to the location and headed up the road only to find the road was snowed in for the last 2 miles and was unpassable. I turned around and drove back to the highway to wait for One Guy to show up. When he did, I told him we were out of luck and too early so we decided to go in thru the lower road. We got close to the placer working and knocked on a door of a house closeby to ask who owns the property the tailings were on and low and behold this was the lucky house. We got permission to hunt and camp on 130 acres of dry land dredged ground on a hillside and the next day the nice gentleman got us permission on another landowners property bordering his. So now we had 1030 acres of gold placer ground to hunt on. It was tuff ground to find any nuggets on as I believed it was too far down the drainage to find many nuggets but on Saturday at 1:00 I found the first one of the year and it was the second one with my new 5000. I was using the Sadie coil. I love that little coil. I got plenty of shots for the cover of my book. I did not find any more nuggets the rest of the trip and One Guy got skunked. We even had to detect thru a couple snow squalls and the night time temps got down to 19 and 20 degrees which made for cold sleeping conditions in the back of our trucks. All in all it was a good trip that started out bad but turned out good for the first trip of the year.

Recirculating Sluice - Testing a Recirculating Sluice and the April Update on what we have going on . Sneak peek at our next video !!!! Hope you enjoy the video, Jeff

I really enjoy this site. This discussion board has been very helpful with this new found hobby of mine. I played around with metal detectors briefly back in the 80's when my dad was into looking for relics around old home sites. However back then I was a lot younger and I preferred chasing critters that were able to run or swim away from me. So for the past 30 years my primary interests have been fishing and hunting and I have not picked up a metal detector since I was a kid hanging out with my dad. I have my wife to thank for giving me gold fever. I have no interest in panning or sluicing for gold. So whenever she would go out panning and sluicing, I went fishing. One day I was helping her look for tiny microscopic pieces of gold that she was recovering from a 5 gallon bucket of dirt she had trucked all the way back from Sonora. Along with the dirt she had also brought back a Garrett metal detector brochure with a picture of an ATX on the cover of it. The rugged look of the ATX got my attention right away and I decided that metal detecting for gold would be a great way for us to spend some time together. I bought her a AT gold and I got the ATX. As soon as I got the ATX in my hands I decided to try it out on my property. I turned it on and walked out to the dirt, started sweeping....and about got my ear drums blown out! The ATX was sounding off like a full symphony orchestra due to all the trash in the ground. This was when I decided that I had better read up a little more on the subject of metal detecting. I quickly learned the differences between a PI detector and a VLF detector. Being the stubborn type I carried on with the ATX for a while and started hunting the parks and a few old home sites. The day soon came when I decided that I dug enough old rusty pipes and bottle caps that were 3 feet deep. I went out and bought a ctx 3030 and life got much easier! About 6 months have went by since I bought my first detector and Lisa and I own a total of 5 detectors. The line up consists of AT Gold, SDC 2300, CTX 3030, and two XP Deus's. We have been having so much fun digging up old coins and artifacts. But we have not had much time to go searching for gold. Last weekend I had the opportunity to meet some very nice folks at Rye Patch. Gerry from "Gerry's Detectors" had a three day training session on a private claim. There were 11 of us there not counting Gerry and his helpers. I was using the SDC 2300. There was one Fisher Gold bug, two ATX's and 7 GPX 5000's I had to leave by noon on Sunday so I could get back to work in California so I dont know what happened after I left but the nugget count at my departure was SDC 2300 - 11 nuggets, Fisher Gold Bug - 1 nugget, ATX's - 0 nuggets and GPX 5000's - 0 nuggets. I am very happy with my machine. This was my first time in an actual known nugget producing area and since I know absolutly nothing about about gold or how to find it, it may be some time before I get to post nugget photos again! Once I learned the language of my machine it seemed that I was digging one nugget after another....this is VERY ADDICTIVE. Thanks to Gerry, Lunk, Ron, Spencer, Largo and a few other fellas that I cannot remember their names. strick

Because of heat waves, vehicle trouble and well, almost a complete lack of motivation, I have done very little detecting this year. In the early days of the 5000 I got the bigger speci at Moliagul and it`s got about half a gram of gold in it. Since then I have gone over and over and over that area with the 5000, 2300 and 7000 for no result. Yesterday I was out there again and about 15 feet from the first specimen, I got the smaller one with the 7000. Very faint signal that just broke the threshold and about 6" deep. The bottom picture is the only bit of gold visible in it and is almost impossible to see with the naked eye, but the signal it`s giving off says there`s maybe a half a gram to a gram of gold in it. Once the better half has seen it I`m going to bust it open to see what`s inside but I think with this one I`m going to end up with a heap of small bits of quartz with a little bit of gold in them. Dave

Busting bedrock hasn't panned out that well, so I decided to heed Bill Southern's advice. I broke down the crust on the first pile, and started swinging the EQX 800. 15 minutes into it, and "bingo", nice little 3.2 grain nug, all rough and course like it hasn't traveled far? "This is going to be an EZ day" I'm pretty sure ran through my mind, since there were plenty of tailings' around? I guess the penny is somebody's idea of a "cruel joke"? At least it was shallow. Brett

Welcome everyone This is my first topic in this wonderful forum It was found a few days ago in Saudi Arabia Weight 2653 grams

I guess this was posted or released by Minelab. https://www.prweb.com/releases/minelab_gpz_7000_unearths_gold_nugget_worth_nearly_27_000_usd/prweb16125282.htm