How much gold do you think we all miss?

I some of the really trashy parks, I could dig a thousand pull tabs so I focus on the high tones. Some of the cleaner parks I will dig more mid and low tones hoping for gold. Probably a lot of it out there in parks still for those willing to dig a ton of trash.

Jamflicker said:

I some of the really trashy parks, I could dig a thousand pull tabs so I focus on the high tones. Some of the cleaner parks I will dig more mid and low tones hoping for gold. Probably a lot of it out there in parks still for those willing to dig a ton of trash.

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Correct. And you have fun silver counts to show for it And you have the best of both worlds in your So. CA area: If you care to go to the beach , to angle for gold rings, you're close to the beach.

Do we miss gold... sure but I'm willing to bet if its there more often than not we find it.

As to the rarity of gold, gold is actually rather common as metals go. Its only rare at the Earth's surface. After the Earth formed it was molten and the liquid gold sank to the Earth's core. We can estimate that there's enough gold in the core of the Earth to carpet the entire Earth's surface to a depth of about 1 meter. Getting to that gold is the hard part.

Numil said:

Do we miss gold... sure but I'm willing to bet if its there more often than not we find it.

As to the rarity of gold, gold is actually rather common as metals go. Its only rare at the Earth's surface. After the Earth formed it was molten and the liquid gold sank to the Earth's core. We can estimate that there's enough gold in the core of the Earth to carpet the entire Earth's surface to a depth of about 1 meter. Getting to that gold is the hard part.

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So all we need now is a bigger digger!!!

Tom_in_CA said:

Correct. And you have fun silver counts to show for it And you have the best of both worlds in your So. CA area: If you care to go to the beach , to angle for gold rings, you're close to the beach.

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I am about the same distance from the beach as most of the old parks I hunt. There is something enjoyable about trying to sniff out silver in trashy hunted parks which I prefer. I will never complain about the occasional gold though.

Jamflicker said:

I some of the really trashy parks, I could dig a thousand pull tabs so I focus on the high tones. Some of the cleaner parks I will dig more mid and low tones hoping for gold. Probably a lot of it out there in parks still for those willing to dig a ton of trash.

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I agree with you about the trashy parks , too much digging involved.

I spent a summer with a f2 a dug one gold target because it gave me a strange signal on my machine. Now with my CTX 3030 I've dug no gold and trying to dig gold after I became comfortable with it. To the people who can find dirt gold, way to go. I hope to get as good as you. Funny how I found gold with a $100 garage sale machine and haven't with a $2000 machine. And I've tried

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I don't believe there is any way to tell gold from aluminum or other trash. A ring and pull tab with the same ID number will sound the same and look the same to the detector. Anybody who thinks otherwise is tricking themselves into thinking they have done special technique, imho anyway.

The only things you can do to find gold is 1) hunt where the gold is, i.e. Beaches, sports fields, etc, and 2)dig everything from foil up to zincs.

I hunt heavily used parks and when I have the time, I will did every foil and tab signal. It's good exercise! In a leisurely day of hunting, I'll dig about 100 tabs and bits of foil and canslaw. I find gold about once every 20 outings or so, which for me, means I dig gold 2-3 times per year. Doing the math, that means 1 gold item for every 2,000 pieces of foil or aluminum. I don't hunt specifically for gold, I mostly just head to the park and wander around for the fresh air and exercise, so probably I could improve my ratio a little by focusing strictly on likely gold producing areas.

So back to the original question. We're all passing up gold if we don't dig every foil to zinc signal. It's a numbers game. To find the gold, you have to dig lots and lots of junk. Try to cherry pick and you will miss gold.

I used and still own a Whites 6000 DI Pro-Plus. Believe I bought it in 1990 or so, before that I used a Bounty Hunter, don't recall the model.

The Whites had a hard time finding nickels and Gold, no problems with silver and copper. Was amazing and would locate a copper penny or silver coin at 7+ inches. But nickel and gold were just not showing up.

I know that I passed over plenty because of the flaw in the discrimination sensitivity. I would plant a few targets of gold, nickles silver etc and would pass right over them unless directly on the surface. I sent it back to whites at least twice and they adjusted and tested it.

I used that detector for many years and just used the no discrimination mode. Had to dig allot of trash, but began to find allot of nickles and a few minor gold items.

Nickel Quest! A few years back on another Forum there was a guy named Dancer that decided one year to do a Nickel Quest...In the parks he had hunted for years...Instead of keying in on the nice high pings like usual, He focused hard on hearing the nickel tones...Sure he still went after the high pings, but he FOCUSED on HEARING the lower nickel tones...He got over 500 nickels that year and some gold along the way ...It made his usual parks fun to hunt again, and we all learned a lot by following along with his posts...

Anyway, thats a big part of Dirt Gold Hunting...Water hunters know this instinctively...Leaving the house thinking GOLD and focusing on the right signals. If you have some parks you have hammered for silver/clad...You might want to give this a go? Its amazing how many nickels are out there that you passed over... if you focus on finding them, they will lead you to the gold eventually..on account of you are thinking about it and hunting in the right tone neighborhood where it hides....
Mud

Umpteen pull tabs for me and still waiting for my first gold since 2009.

amc rulz said:

Umpteen pull tabs for me and still waiting for my first gold since 2009.

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In old timey fishermans lingo, "You are not holding your mouth right!"...

I kid..but yeah, AMC.... Dirt Gold is a whole nother critter to hunt than beach gold...The waterbabies simply love to hear a pulltab or nickel tone!..The focus on that tone and would rather dig a tab tone than a dime! The dirtys, not so much....If a guy can learn from the one, and convert those skills over to the other...that seems to work...
Mud

Mud-puppy said:

In old timey fishermans lingo, "You are not holding your mouth right!"...

I kid..but yeah, AMC.... Dirt Gold is a whole nother critter to hunt than beach gold...The waterbabies simply love to hear a pulltab or nickel tone!..The focus on that tone and would rather dig a tab tone than a dime! The dirtys, not so much....If a guy can learn from the one, and convert those skills over to the other...that seems to work...
Mud

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Agreed! Been saying I'll get a water machine for years now -

I am absolutely confident I am missing gold. In my not too old city there are mainly 4 places I hunt regularly. 2 old soccer pitches, a very trashy huge old park and a trashy large center town square. The old park and town square are filled with pull tabs and square tabs not to mention foil. Using the Racer 2 I usually hunt in 3-tone looking for old coins which are mostly bronze and silver here but will not hesitate to dig mid-tones. But there are so many mid-tone targets here that after a while of machine gun mid-tones, your ear seems to filter out the mid-tones and you find yourself going after only the high tones. And my finds reflect that; higher ratio of old coins vs. modern clad (nickel) and little gold. I have even tried to designate a small area where I tell myself I will recover all midtones just to see. Been doing that for nearly 2 years and the pull tabs still keep coming out the the ground in this one area! Keeping in mind the midtone fatigue that will strike after about and hour plus detecting.

The two soccer pitches are fairly deep with some areas that I know targets are beyond my present stock coil. Here the targets are many but not so dense. Here I dig all signals mid-foil and up until I tire out. And my finds reflect that. Many old coins plus modern clad and 12 gold rings. I have taken all the gold I have found and experimented with them in 2-tone, 3-tone and all metal mode and pitted them up with the regular pull tabs, clad coins and I can honestly say it's darn almost impossible to discern between gold and pull tabs due to the sheer variety of shapes and sizes of gold. Some rings I had gave a rounded nickle coin sound. Others gave a sharper note like a square tab. Even using the "gold does not give a bouncy VDI reading so dig steady signals" belief is not true. My chunkiest heaviest solid gold ring bounced from a nickle to high zinc signal due to the way it was constructed. If I followed the GOLD= steady VDI reading I would not have dug it. If this ring was found at the old trashy park or town square, it would have taken me MUCH more time finding it. Instead it was found in one of the soccer pitches where I dig all signals mid-foil and up.

So my advice to myself, dig all signals that show itself as a solid repeatable small hit from multiple angles. And remember, digging up a pull tab is not a failure! You found and retrieved a target. It's not the target you want but it's one less target to be found in your trashy park.

Wayfarer said:

I don't believe there is any way to tell gold from aluminum or other trash. A ring and pull tab with the same ID number will sound the same and look the same to the detector. Anybody who thinks otherwise is tricking themselves into thinking they have done special technique, imho anyway.

The only things you can do to find gold is 1) hunt where the gold is, i.e. Beaches, sports fields, etc, and 2)dig everything from foil up to zincs.

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I agree with you on this point. There's no way to "tell" for sure. That being said, some aluminum signals are crappy, and can pretty much be ruled out. Some signals sound JUST like gold, and those are the ones we all say, "Oooh, that's a good signal!" and dig it HOPING it's not a pop-tab. When it IS gold, we get excited, and say, "YEAH! I knew that signal was good!"

It's rare for me to come across a gold signal I'm SURE is trash. I've had some I was thinking were just a nickle, but was pleasantly surprised, but that's more rare. Good signals are just good signals, and one in 1000 is a great bit of gold.

That being said, I remember a few gold finds that were in the middle of can slaw, and they were EXACTLY the same as the slaw... I was totally shocked. Love those ones. (I was cleaning up the slaw so I didn't have to detect it the next time I was in the park).

Skippy

Also, I believe you can WILL gold into existence. LOL

We all miss a LOT but not necessarily by cherry picking. Masking or blending is the number one reason why , especially with mid range targets like gold. Usually because of nearby objects but minerals in the soil can even be the cause. Even with the most sophisticated detectors out there , if a gold ring is near iron....maybe a nail or something .....and you don't approach it from just the right angle you will never know the gold was there. A certain percentage of the time you may not even know silver was there , and some of the time you may not know the iron was there. There are some detectors that are better at overcoming this than others , but even they get " blinded " to a lot of the good targets we pass right over without a second thought. Digging everything , or most everything can help avoid this but its still not 100%. The technology just cant account for every possible variable out there.