Metal Detector’s Blog

It was a beautiful day in Paradise, Alaska. Where the sun goes around you 24 hours a day. Mick and Cece Mann, the owners, have 4,000 acres of mining claims for prospectors to go up and have a wonderful time gold hunting and fishing. On the second day of our two week trip, Mick was digging and stockpiling for the prospectors.  Later we would check out his diggings for gold nuggets. My brother and I asked Mick if we could go on top of the mountain by the waterfalls.  Looking for gold nuggets with his Minelab SD-2200D, my brother was going fast and furious and went clear beyond the waterfalls where the stream started.  “Dale you are going to fast you better slow down you need to concentrate” I told him.  I went slow and took my time, checked every crevice and rock.  My brother came down and said it is time to get off the hill.  I can’t find anything and I have looked everywhere. He wanted me to follow him back down the hill but,  I had another reading with my Minelab Explorer XS.  He helped me dig the reading.  He wanted to know what I had found.  “Put your hand out” I said as I dropped an 8 ounce nugget into his hand. “Oh my God, where did you get that?” he asked.  “See, you should look a little closer, it was up by the waterfall.”  I checked all those areas, you have to dig. We dug up another target which ended up being a diver’s lead weight belt.“Show me where and how you found it!” my brother asked. We walked up there and I showed him.  I didn’t get any readings.  I saw all the over burn above me.  I looked down and saw a bedrock, there was a little cavity between two rocks.  If there is a gold nugget anywhere it would be right here.  I dug a foot didn’t get any reading with my metal detector so I kept digging and was getting discouraged.  I dug another foot and got a faint reading, I dug one more foot and lost the reading.  I pulled my metal detector upwards and heard my reading again and dug another foot off to the side.  I ran into another boulder and dug about 6 inches and there it was it was lodged in a groove. I pulled out a gold nugget half as big as my hand from the groove and said “OH MY GOD!” I held it up and thanked God.

“Metal detecting started out as something for me and my wife to do with our children when they were little. Living in Florida, we would take the family to the parks and beaches. I would detect while they played, and often they would help dig. Now that they’re older my wife and I have more time to treasure hunt and we truly enjoy the hobby.

This article is about finding gold with a metal detector in the hydraulic mines of the Sierra Nevada mountains, California. The methods described are for the Fisher gold bug (GB) and Gold Bug 2 (GB 2) and the Whites Gold Master II (GM II) and Gold Master V/SAT (GM V/SAT).This information may or may not be applicable to other detectors and other areas such as stream beds or the desert areas of the south west.

Somewhere in Tennessee police searched a muddy city parking lot where workmen discovered a (container-pot) of gold coins that may have been buried during the Civil War. The U.S. gold pieces are worth (conservatively) up to $3,000 each but it’s unclear how many were found since the workmen made off with most of them. “We have accounted for 177 and that’s just by talking to people who said that they had possessed some,” said the Mayor. “There may be a good bit more than that.”