The Gpx6000 Adventure Begins!

[phrunt]

I knew you'd do it Aureous, well done and you did it so quickly.   Unfortunately for me it will take a few years to pay for mine but probably a decade if I ever do pay for it by using it as I'll be using my GPZ a lot more than the GPX so I'll be using my GPZ to pay off my GPX ?

 

[dig4gold]

Well done Aureous. Do you have to travel very far to get to your gold grounds. Fuel costs these days are another large cost in chasing gold that many seem to not mention but becomes part of the equation when talking about gold finds paying the way.

 

Phrunt, just out of interest have you made your GPZ pay for itself before thinking of gold finds paying for your 6000?

 

D4G

[phrunt]

56 minutes ago, dig4gold said:

Well done Aureous. Do you have to travel very far to get to your gold grounds. Fuel costs these days are another large cost in chasing gold that many seem to not mention but becomes part of the equation when talking about gold finds paying the way.

Phrunt, just out of interest have you made your GPZ pay for itself before thinking of gold finds paying for your 6000?

D4G

Nope, I've got a long way to go to pay for either of them ?  Although I've broken the two ounce mark, If I was to take into account fuel costs I'd likely be in the negatives again ?

This is with the plastic bottle zero'd out. 64 grams, I put the little guys on there too that are not in the bottle as I've been using them experimenting but they didn't change it at all from the 64, these scales aren't accurate enough but my little accurate scales can't weigh in the ounces.   Don't know how many hundreds of nuggets that is, a bulk of them are very small.

The Equinox was the only detector to pay for itself, and it did it easily four times over and that was with ring finds more so than gold although it's done pretty well on the nuggets I think.  One ring it found was worth $5630 NZD, a Lord of the Rings Elf 18k Elfish ring which my wife claimed.  If I wanted it to I'd say the Equinox would be the one to pay for the detectors by using it for coins and jewellery as that's a lot easier than gold nuggets!

My best week with the Nox for modern money, even found a note flapping in the wind stuck in a fence that week ?

That rings probably worth near my total gold nugget finds, fortunately for me it's not about the money, I like having my collection of nuggets but they're more about the memories and the finds themselves than their value, they'll never be sold. 

I would say for someone with my skill level and time spent gold detecting that coin and jewellery would be where the easy money is, even my silvers add up to some decent money, a few rare ones among them and this is only about half of them now, never took a recent photo of my coins or jewellery finds but I've broken 6 kilo's of coins now and haven't even checked through most of them to see if there is any rare ones except the silvers.

That gold sovereign I gave away to a friend, not sure it was a real one but pretty sure it's a fake, it wasn't the right weight.

So I guess if I wanted to pay down detectors I should start looking for coins and jewellery far more and less for gold, however I enjoy looking for gold a lot more and don't care about the money side of it.

[Cal_Cobra]

That's about $25/hour.  Is that good for gold detecting? Or just good for having gone over it with other detectors in the past?

 

 

[phrunt]

5 minutes ago, Cal_Cobra said:

That's about $25/hour.  Is that good for gold detecting? Or just good for having gone over it with other detectors in the past?

Depends where you live, a guy that used to use this forum Davsgold is in Western Australia at the moment for example with his GPZ, he's getting many grams a day and only doing a few hours detecting most days and will come home with many ounces for a month or two away and he's always got the possibility of a multi ounce nugget so for someone in that situation they'd be disappointed getting the smaller amounts, for me however the amount Aureous has done is a great achievement, and I wouldn't be able to do the same in the hours he's spent doing it here with my skill level and places I go to.   I think in many places to enjoy gold hunting you've got to expect you may not make a profit and you do it for the fun of it and the thrill of the finds, Australia in some areas is likely the main exception to that rule.  Coin and jewellery hunting is the one where the finds are easier, without a doubt.

[Cal_Cobra]

1 minute ago, phrunt said:

Depends where you live, a guy that used to use this forum Davsgold is in Western Australia at the moment for example with his GPZ, he's getting many grams a day and only doing a few hours detecting most days and will come home with many ounces for a month or two away and he's always got the possibility of a multi ounce nugget so for someone in that situation they'd be disappointed getting the smaller amounts, for me however the amount Aureous has done is a great achievement, and I wouldn't be able to do the same in the hours he's spent doing it here with my skill level and places I go to.   I think in many places to enjoy gold hunting you've got to expect you may not make a profit and you do it for the fun of it and the thrill of the finds, Australia in some areas is likely the main exception to that rule.  Coin and jewellery hunting is the one where the finds are easier, without a doubt.

Thanks for the reply Simon.  I've never gold prospected, so I'm just trying to wrap my head around what one considers successful. Everyone's after the whoppers out there, they do get found, but I guess that's mostly a bonus when it occurs for most hunters ?  Kind of like when we find a gold coin or rare date/mint silver coin at an old site, but plenty of other relic finds keep us content, and coming back for more. 

[phrunt]

There is a reason most gold prospectors are weirdo's ?

 

[geof_junk]

You will earn more as a council worker for the year than detecting except for short bonuses with a good nugget. It takes a lot of skunk days finding a patch, than even with a dozen nuggets at 0.4 grams (not 0.04) each day, you just beat the ounce a week and how long does the the patch last. Let face it, it's a far more enjoyable than working for a boss those. 

[Aureous]

Costs for me are low, even with the high price of fuel at the moment. I spend maybe $10 most days to get to my local Goldfields each time, thats all. Then, once a week or two, I'll travel an hour at most to get a change of scenery and reminisce about my old spots from decades ago. Ive gotten gold on every spot with the 6000. In fact, Ive never had a dud day with the 6K since Ive owned it.