MX Sport Nuggets - 2.25 Dwt - Holy Smokes!

[tboykin]

What a weekend! I had the opportunity to head out to Idaho for an event put on by Spud Diggers/Ultimate Metal Detectors and meet some members of this forum who attended. Great group of guys on an old Chinese gold mine with an old townsite. Many layers of history going back from the 1870s to the 1930s, and lots of tin - yuck!

I followed the Oregon Trail out there, and planned to represent the White's factory at the event since we were sponsoring the event. My fingers were crossed for relics, but I knew that since it was an active mine years ago there was a chance at finding some other types metal. So I brought it all - TDI SL, GMT, V3i, TreasurePro, and of course my go-to the MX Sport. Pretty quickly after running the TDI and GMT I realized that I would need a good discriminator and a strong magnet to get through the tin.

The first thrill I got was seeing a newbie (Maddie) dig her first signal with an MX Sport - a 1940 Merc on the side of the road by camp. She was shaking when I caught up with her after hearing her holler out loud! Oregon Gregg was hitting IHP's and everyone was finding relics left and right with a few coins thrown in.

Even I was finding some buttons, bullets, and a nice little pewter teacup from a child's play set.

I found a flat area that looked like a prime spot where two creeks met. The area had been hydraulic mined, as well as dredged, with hard-rock mines in the area. I got a bunch of strange lower-conducting signals with the MX Sport and decided to dig one. They were about 6-7 inches down and rang up in the foil/nickel range on the MX Sport. My newly purchased HoeDag made quick work and the TRX helped me out since the targets were pretty small.

What came out looked like a crusty booger. Underneath the crust it had a dull yellow shine. 

The mining report I read mentioned several different types of processes the miners used throughout the 80 years of active work, so I kept three pieces I dug from the same hole for examination later. There were other signals in that area to investigate but I had high hopes for a Chinese coin so I moved on. The rest of the hunt was awesome - lots of miles on my boots, awesome company, great food, and memories to last!

After I got home I was too curious to wait, so I broke out the peroxide and a brush and got to work. Somewhere I lost the small BB-sized piece in the field photo between my fingers. But the bigger pieces made it home. Here's the finished product:

I will admit I got a little shaky when I saw them start to shine in the peroxide. 

I got to meet Gerry from Boise on my trip, great guy and I figured I owed him this shot with the 2.5 grammer.

Every time I find something new I get more and more hooked by this hobby. Thanks to forums like this, Ultimate Metal Detector, and of course WHITE'S ELECTRONICS, I can mark this off my bucket list. It took me over a year... but it was totally worth it! I was getting pretty frustrated at all of the skunks, and to find this much gold with the MX Sport, well, I feel pretty damn lucky!

I need to do a little more digging to see what the crud on the outside was, but there was a lot of sulphide-bearing quartz in the area. I would guess that these nuggets were a result of some kind of refinement and processing and they were just missed by the old-timers. But I know where I'm going the next time I'm in Idaho...

[IdahoPeg]

Wow...some nice finds! Way to go if those bigger ones are gold.....I've been tricked when detecting in hard rock gravels/sulfides, ended up being weird copper mix byproducts in my case.  Hope yours are the real deal! :-)

[tboykin]

19 minutes ago, IdahoPeg said:

Wow...some nice finds! Way to go if those bigger ones are gold.....I've been tricked when detecting in hard rock gravels/sulfides, ended up being weird copper mix byproducts in my case.  Hope yours are the real deal! :-)

Thanks - I plan on having these checked by a local shop to make sure they are legit. These were down on a flat bench right above the confluence of two rivers. I won't know for sure they are gold until I have them professionally tested.

[strick]

Way to go sounds like you guys had fun...Gerry's a great guy who will bend over backwards for his clients. 

strick

[OregonGregg]

tboykin, congrats on the nuggets. Hope they pan out to be the real deal. It also showed me that I guess I had better stick to finding old coins. The only gold I may ever find will be round and have a date stamped on it. When you stopped and showed them to me......I would have never guessed them as gold. 

And yes it was fun seeing that girl find her 1st silver coin with the MX Sport. She was so excited , she was shaking. Also, there are a few post/pics over at Monte's site about that weekend.

 

https://www.ahrps.org/forums/read.php?4,6636,6636#msg-6636 

[tboykin]

10 hours ago, OregonGregg said:

tboykin, congrats on the nuggets. Hope they pan out to be the real deal. It also showed me that I guess I had better stick to finding old coins. The only gold I may ever find will be round and have a date stamped on it. When you stopped and showed them to me......I would have never guessed them as gold. 

And yes it was fun seeing that girl find her 1st silver coin with the MX Sport. She was so excited , she was shaking. Also, there are a few post/pics over at Monte's site about that weekend.

 

https://www.ahrps.org/forums/read.php?4,6636,6636#msg-6636 

Same here. Your coin collection was amazing to see. Something I will never match! Nice meeting you and when you stop by the factory next please don't be a stranger.

[GB_Amateur]

17 hours ago, tboykin said:

It's either gold or copper. Brass is not a good conductor and I tested the resistance using an Ohm-meter.

I can't weigh in on what you have, but in my experience, an ohm-meter isn't a good discriminator for metals.  I looked up some electrical resistivities (mostly pure metals) and then did some measurements with my (admittedly cheapo) multimeter.  To put things in perspecdtive, at room temp, gold is quite low in resistivity (not as much as copper or silver, but close).  'Brass' (don't know which alloy) is 3 times higher ( = worse conductor).  'Bronze' is a factor of 2 worse than brass.  Lead is another factor of 3 times brass.  Titanium is again a factor of more than 2 worse than lead.  Yet I have pieces of all of these (exept gold ) and they all measure resistance (not resistivity, though) at 0 on the meter. The meter's precision is 0.1 ohms, so I conclude that these pieces all have the same resistance within about 0.05 ohms.

A clean sample of uniform composition should read pretty reliably on an fluorescence X-ray spectrometer ("XRF analysis").  The poor man's method (which includes me) is to use Archimedes Principle to find the density and then use that to rule things in or out.  Gold has such a high density ('specific gravity') that unless alloyed <~50% it's distinguishable from most metals, and all the metals in its density ballpark (from what I know) are quite valuable except for tungsten.

I've read here that some coin shops have XRF spectrometers and the nice ones will analyze a sample for free.  You strike me as a sweet talker -- I bet one of them will do it for you!    There is a company in California that advertises in the ICMJ that will do it for $25 per sample.  (Read their fine print, though, if you decide to go that route.)

 

 

[tboykin]

21 minutes ago, GB_Amateur said:

I can't weigh in on what you have, but in my experience, an ohm-meter isn't a good discriminator for metals.  I looked up some electrical resistivities (mostly pure metals) and then did some measurements with my (admittedly cheapo) multimeter.  To put things in perspecdtive, at room temp, gold is quite low in resistivity (not as much as copper or silver, but close).  'Brass' (don't know which alloy) is 3 times higher ( = worse conductor).  'Bronze' is a factor of 2 worse than brass.  Lead is another factor of 3 times brass.  Titanium is again a factor of more than 2 worse than lead.  Yet I have pieces of all of these (exept gold ) and they all measure resistance (not resistivity, though) at 0 on the meter. The meter's precision is 0.1 ohms, so I conclude that these pieces all have the same resistance within about 0.05 ohms.

A clean sample of uniform composition should read pretty reliably on an fluorescence X-ray spectrometer ("XRF analysis").  The poor man's method (which includes me) is to use Archimedes Principle to find the density and then use that to rule things in or out.  Gold has such a high density ('specific gravity') that unless alloyed <~50% it's distinguishable from most metals, and all the metals in its density ballpark (from what I know) are quite valuable except for tungsten.

I've read here that some coin shops have XRF spectrometers and the nice ones will analyze a sample for free.  You strike me as a sweet talker -- I bet one of them will do it for you!    There is a company in California that advertises in the ICMJ that will do it for $25 per sample.  (Read their fine print, though, if you decide to go that route.)

 

 

Awesome info, thank you. There's a coin shop here I can take it to. My plan is to slam the nuggies on the table and say "I'll sell ya this gold for $100!" At which point the shop owner will scoff and say "That's not gold!" Then I will say "PROVE IT BUDDY!" Free test achieved.

[Steve Herschbach]

The discoloration you had to clean off is discouraging. Gold does not tarnish and 99% of the nuggets I find pop out looking like gold except for attached dirt or caliche.

From https://portlandgoldbuyers.com/gold-testing-nitric-acid/