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What's Your View Of Detecting's Future??


Joe D.

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This thread has turned into mostly about finding gold which is a part of the future of detecting but certainly not everything.  But following along that theme here is a guy that I respect that has helped me find gold in the past and if I follow his advice I'll find more in the future with my sons.

Bill Southern has been saying the same thing for many, many years and it still has to be 'our future' when you are hunting for nuggets.  New machines have come along to make it easier and yes the gold previously found is not replaced but it can be a good place to start and learn as many of us know.

 

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It's been discussed in prior threads, but "hunted out" in 1980 with VLF's that go maybe 6" on your typical 1 gram type gold wasn't as strong of a statement as it is today with ZVT and PI machines that butt heads with the immutable, physical depth limitations of exponential EM field decay in dirt. Like, you can keep making a faster spaceship - until you hit the speed of light and then it's game over. 

There is only so much more than can be improved upon, tech wise, and I think the improvements will come mostly with dealing with bad/salty soils better and getting closer to normal depth in those, and not with finding deeper nuggets in normal soils. I'd love to be wrong there though. But there are also geologic limitations which are relevant today since many places simply don't have nuggets beyond a certain depth which we are already scanning with modern tech.

There are places that aren't hunted out here (yet) but they aren't the places you usually read about on the forums - for good reason! And many of these are located within (or on) patchworks of private land that really require living locally in order to spend the time and make the connections to get access to.

The population here in the USA also doesn't help. Phoenix metro area = entire NZ popluation. There is roughly the entire Australian population living within a day trip of most Arizona goldfields.

And that's a clue where the really unhunted places are left still here in the USA. :laugh: 

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On 11/16/2020 at 12:08 PM, phrunt said:

Sounds like a book from the early 80's ?

 

23 hours ago, Norvic said:

Total guess 30 years back GB,...

 

1 hour ago, jasong said:

..."Hunted out" in 1980 with VLF's that go maybe 6" on your typical 1 gram type gold...

Very good answers.  I was a bit sneaky in leaving out 'coin detecting' in the quote.  In fact the quote is from a 1982 book by H. Glenn Carson titled COINSHOOTING II:  Digging Deeper Coins.  (I think his earlier work on the subject was from 1973.)  Also he states on the copyright page that the book contents are taken from articles written for treasure magazines so the quote was probably in print earlier than 1982.  You can do the math, but we're talking 38+ years ago!

I don't have any 1982 magzines in my collection.  I previously listed 10 metal detector companies that advertised in a 1964 magazine.  20 years later the big ads were down to six familar names:  Compass, Fisher, Garrett, Teknetics, Tesoro, and White's.  (A retail distributor's ad, however, mentions Bounty Hnter, D-Tex, Dayton, Aqua Pro, Gold Mountain, and Triple D.)  Here are a couple colorful ads from the Winter 1984 issues of Treasure Found.

Compass.thumb.jpg.054668a6d2a375269397f008102b7f14.jpg

Whites.thumb.jpg.efc7bba97b8a82aecd6391abea2ff7ae.jpg

Fisher.thumb.jpg.33eb353ed0f903e9eaaf2f1372ac6a15.jpg

Garrett's ad had the Freedom 2 (coin detector) for $500 and Teknetics the MARK III (also a coin detector) at $700.  Tesoro's full page ad highlighted their catalog, not any particular detector.  I think the White's 6000 Di (shown in photo selling for $680) was state-of-the-art for coin detectors at that time, but I don't know if it strikes fear in the hearts of today's detetorists as it might have back then for the "hunted-out" Chicken Littles.

As a final sidelight, that 1984 magazine had a full page ad for an electronic dowsing instrument -- what are now called "long range locators (LRL)".  But at least then it was *only* $375.

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Well, in my case it's more about my future than the future of detecting. The old body is going to wear out before I run out of gold nuggets, coins, and jewelry to dig. I do think we have hit a sort of "peak detecting" phase, but I am sure there will be no lack of detecting opportunities in the future. It will probably be a smaller, more hard core group than we have now, however, as easy finds will deplete to the point that only the truly dedicated will stick with it.

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In the non-prospecting segment of our hobby (ie: coin and jewelry hunting), That segment will remain strong as that is a renewable research. Now, if you're talking about old coins and relics, that's going to get tougher as the years go by. Good luck trying to find a virgin 60+ year old public area that hasn't been hunted extensively. The future in old coins and relics is going to be private land......and even that diminishes every year as they get detected, or, ruined by development or  re-landscaping. I don't see it getting bad in my lifetime, but, those starting out now will be in for some rough times sooner or later if old targets are what they want to find. One aspect that I'm more concerned about is the loss of detecting areas by overzealous bureaucrats and politicians who close down good detecting sites. 

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48 minutes ago, Steve Herschbach said:

It will probably be a smaller, more hard core group than we have now, however, as easy finds will deplete to the point that only the truly dedicated will stick with it.

Or, metal detecting transforms itself more and more into an outdoor adventure, way past the original sole purpose of finding gold. I could imagine that this will be a very good marketing strategy for the future, and it probably already is. After all, the desire for outdoor activities is strongly increasing and could attract large crowds who are just seeking a new high tech thrill, pared with adventure and perhaps with the thought of striking it rich. However, I think that it would not even really matter if gold would indeed be found or not. Super expensive equipment would be de-coupled from the actual gold/treasure value they will bring in return.

But hey, isn't the outdoor adventure and the high tech thrill not a worthy return by itself? I think it would be for many more than we think, even without finding any gold...

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One thing to remember that using the same Detector,Coil and Earphones to double the depth there has to be 64 times more power travelling through the Coil. My view is that the coils have to be more  stable and sensitive, the feedback signal has to be amplified with a more stable and more powerful electronics.  There is two main types of finding gold Fossicking (looking for tiny missed nuggets) on flogged ground, and prospecting for new ground for easy detectable nuggets and then grid,grid grid so you only leave the really hard ones for the fossickers to get.

The future (well for gold anyway) is a detector that can get tiny nuggets deep and another that can cover a large area quickly and get shallow gold first with out wearing you out by carrying a heavy beast of a machine.

I made my first pulse induction detector before 1985 that was before Eric Fisher detector hit the ground in Victoria Aus. it had great depth capabilities and could go deeper than our Garrets and Whites VLF detectors. This was well before Minelab made the SD2000 The big problem was although I could change the frequency and the delay time. It was useless for prospecting as the audible was like a “Geiger Counter” with a clicking rate change. This was impossible to use and cover ground fast enough to be practical in the goldfields but I did find by replacing the components with the latest  technology parts I was able to improve its depth a bit.      

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I go gold detecting, dry washing, sluicing and panning because I get to go to areas that are beautiful and off the beaten path. I get to do research on gold areas and learn the history. I get to learn about amazing technologies used in detectors. Best of all I get to meet great people and have fun. An occasional nugget is fantastic but just icing on the cake.

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  • 1 month later...

I have been metal detecting since 2016, only one or two weeks each year due to my work. Retired last December planning to spend all of my time, full time, detecting. Many many miles to travel to get to good gold grounds. Didn't get to fulfil my hopes this year due to what's going on. As soon as things get better, I will be out there looking to find good gold, but I just love to be out there no matter how big or little the nuggets are. Merry Christmas to all.   

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