Larger Nuggets

Hi everyone,
After using this site for the past few months I have found the advise and information outstanding, so everyone give yourselves a big pat on the back. One thing I have noticed is that there are many many report of late of small golds from around Vic. What my question to you all is, where are the bigger nuggets?????? I'm not talking about big nuggets like in WA, but nuggets from 5g to 10g or more.

If I can, I would like to run my ideas past you all for comment
1. No one reports on the bigger nuggets found in Vic as they like to keep it quiet?
2. All the bigger nuggets are gone from Vic?
3. Due to all the rain lately it has removed the top layers of soil allowing our detectors to get down that little bit more to find these small bit?
4. The ML5000 is just one great detector on small nuggets?
5. Is it coil development that has allowed us to hear the small bit?

Really looking forward to your comments

Pete

G'day Pete.

I'll try to answer your questions and keep it as simple as possible.Remember this is my view only,and I'm sure others on this forum will probably elaborate in more detail.
Q1.Answer-Legalities,Safety,Tax man etc,could be some of the reasons why people prefer to keep it quiet.
Q2.*****-If people think that all the big nuggets are gone from "The whole of Victoria",I say think again.
Q3.*****-Ask yourself why the old timers would go specking straight after the rains settled?
Q4.*****-The GPX5000 is quote "one of the most versatile,all ground type,detector,ever designed,for locating gold",and because it can accept a variety of aftermarket coils,makes it not only a great detector for locating small nuggets at depth but larger gold nuggets as well. If people would only be prepared to get off the most easiest accessible ground,(which is most likely to be the most hammered to death ground) and get onto ground which is harder to accesses (by car or foot) maybe then,the chance of a larger slug or a good patch of nuggets will be found.
Q5.*****-It takes two to tango.Both coil winding and detector electronics contribute to target depth and response.

Cheers kon61.

G'day, I posted these in a thread a couple of weeks ago, but will post them again.

These were found recently on Vic 'flogged' goldfields that many of you post about and were found right beside other detector holes.

These nuggets were found by forum member barryf and his wife and were emailed to me by him to post.

Well done Baz!!




The bigger ones in the range that mariner mentioned are still out there, and I'm sure that another big find will happen yet in Vic.

Cheers

Replica of the Welcome Stranger Nugget - found in Victoria, 9 miles West of the disctrict of Dunolly in 1869

I'm in NSW but I know what you mean because the same subject arises here regularly. I think you'll find that there are several reasons why larger nuggets are not commonly reported as found - in any state. But it's an interesting subject to discuss and I often find myself talking with other prospectors about what it is they feel is the reason for less larger nuggets being reported. I have little doubt that larger nuggets are found by mining companies and are either retained or sold on to others. Most would be damaged by mining equipment and would be consigned to the melting process. Remember they announced finding 700 million ounces of gold at a depth of 2km below the surface in Victoria last year. I understand the mining companies are still tunneling down to get to it.

Larger nuggets are certainly rarer than smaller ones. Nuggets over 5 grams are considered rarer by people who trade in nuggets and those over 10 grams are usually attracting a small premium. Nuggets over an ounce tend to be rarer again and those in the kilo+ range are exceptionally rare. Most of the easily accessible goldfields have been hammered aggressively and flogged day in and day out by a relentless sea of detectors so anything larger near the surface is long-gone in most cases. When I visit the bullion companies and ask them if they receive alluvial gold for smelting they tell me they regularly get large amounts from prospectors in return for cash or smelted bars of refined gold (which is more easily traded than a nugget). It's harder to sell a larger nugget on Ebay than it is to sell it to a nugget dealer or broker. There are ALWAYS people waiting to buy large nuggets though you'll need to contact someone who does this for a living. Most of the big dollars can be obtained via overseas buyers. About 6 million dollars in gold nuggets (found with metal detectors) are sent from Australia to American buyers every year and those are the ones we can track. Many more are sent between the brokers and private buyers that are not on the record books.

Then there's the modern GPX detector... people using them are taking advantage of the Monoloop coils which now can be used on these newer machines to find gold missed by noisier, older detectors. Since these small-to-medium monoloops do well finding a lot of gold and larger coils are actually a bit more difficult to pinpoint with (plus they can, and do, miss the smaller nuggets), there's fewer people using big coils than perhaps there could be. So the larger, deeper nuggets are not being dug as often. Don't forget that many of the bigger ones that are convenient are already dug by now in the commonly visited places. I believe that the older detectors were less sensitive to smaller targets (especially at depth) and this resulted in less junk being dug but more, larger targets being found. It's also possible that these older detectors have already been used effectively to pick off many of the larger bits years ago. If you think about it, people are still visiting the very same goldfields since the 1800s. When you hear about a NEW goldfield being found, it's often AFTER reports of people carrying out obscene amounts of gold have filtered out first. So the bigger bits are found and sold even before word gets around and of course many finders of these rare areas are quick to register a claim once they've cleaned it out - and then sell it on to a mining company. Occasionally they will work it themselves. Most detectorists are simply picking the ground over for what has been missed before. I have heard that there are a LOT OF PEOPLE using 18" coils and up in Victoria - just to find larger, deeper nuggets. They are doing it here in Hill End as well... a place where many of the detectorists in NSW are carrying the largest coils they can use.

There are other factors involved - one being the fact that people are inherently lazy and do not read their instruction manuals. The modern detectors can be fairly complicated to use for the novice. And the number of people detecting for gold that have never been shown how to use their detector properly might surprise you. Most of the people buying detectors do so because they know of someone else using one that has found gold but couldn't be bothered to get their head around the subject of geology (to find gold in the right places), to explore the nature of coils or they simply couldn't be bothered to dig a deeper hole. They use a standard 11" coil and have it set to find all types of nuggets without being particularly deep settings.



Replica of the Hand Of Faith nugget - I think perhaps that it's still the largest nugget to be detected and recovered with a metal detector. Found in Victoria in the district of Kingower in 1980.

I know one very well known prospector who has bought his home and his car with gold won with an SD detector and he uses a a GPX 4500 now. His best weekend saw him pull up 540 ounces on a single patch. His attitude is a little bizarre but these days he won't take the time to dig a nugget under an ounce. He can determine the approximate size by the sharpness of the target and by the faintness of the signal and the duration of the signal under his coil. He certainly can't tell the difference between lead and gold but he claims to have a good rate of discrimination simply by detecting areas in WA that have no signs of habitation and few shallow targets that are man-made. I won't go into his methods but to add to this, he lives on a very well known goldfield and has never detected on it once ... because he believes it's probably not worth his time. Go figure.

I think the reason we are seeing less deep targets and larger nuggets being dug is for some of the reasons above. Most people I know that have found a substantial amount of gold or a larger nugget (up to say 140 ounces in one piece) do NOT post online about it for security reasons. If I come across a large nugget myself I will no longer post about it, even here. But I will forward material and photographs to friends online (and on this forum) on the proviso that it is kept to themselves. I have recently been the target for a robbery by several people who detect together and were skint of cash recently and the police have become involved. It appears they were attracted solely by photographs that I have posted online. As a result, I do not discuss larger pieces or volumes of gold that I find and rarely carry nuggets on me to avoid the temptation of robbery by people who can't seem to help themselves. I have little doubt that others follow the same mantra. I sell much of the gold that I find these days and the few pieces that I keep are interesting to me for various reasons. I imagine that if I found a monster nugget that it would be more beneficial for me to sell it than to keep it. Again, most people seem to have the same attitude in this respect.

When it comes to people digging up larger nuggets, I'd love to read more stories outside of Gold, gem & Treasure magazine. I see and hear about them quite often but rarely in public discussion. I note that many people finding larger nuggets in the West often arrange to sell them before returning to the Eastern states... either to the Mint or an Assayer or a private buyer. These people range from 25 years old to 70 years of age so there's no barrier to finding big nuggets. And the failure to find large nuggets is blamed on everything from settings to coils to machines and (quite rightly) operator technique. The biggest complaints about 'faulty equipment' is almost always put down to operator inexperience. That too is a contributing factor. The use of an external speaker over headphones is often cited by professionals as a reason why people miss nuggets - especially those deeper ones with fainter, broader signals. Some of the largest multi-ounce nuggets being found are found with older detectors by old-timers out on their property and sometimes they go into town and trade their gold or sell it. Many people believe that gold will go higher in value shortly and are keeping their nuggets in storage for a future date of sale. I have a friend in Melbourne who just purchased several nuggets over ten ounces each for an investment. These were all recently dug.



The new 22" Round Monoloop from Coiltek's Goldstalker range of coils on the new Minelab GPX-5000. Designed for deeper gold in WA & Vic.

There's a lot of different opinions on coils and what speed or technique should be used to operate them. I see people who wouldn't use anything less than a specific model and brand of coil due to the number of windings inside the coil. Others will only use a coil that they have read about on websites like this one without considering if that coil is the best suited to their specific detector. I've seen some people choose coils that their friend uses because their friend is the source of all their detecting knowledge. But with SO MANY choices of coil sizes, shapes and types... it's no wonder there's so much confusion. Each coil will benefit from different settings. Using one person's settings on a particular detector will be near-useless with a different coil or a different model of detector in different regions with different soil. I'm seeing a lot of large coils being used in Victoria and NSW now. Elliptical coils are probably going to be more popular here than the round coils of the same range (which will go deeper at the expense of sensitivity to smaller nuggets) and this is mostly due to the geology and surface composition compared to Western Australia where the larger nuggets are deeper and more prolific but under a large FLAT expanse. Those huge coils are harder to maneuver in rocky, scrubby or hilly terrain.

But in the end, if you set your detector to finding large, deep nuggets in deep soil with a large coil and appropriate settings, you'll almost certainly miss the little nuggets under a couple of grams just a few inches from the surface. Since these smaller nuggets are the most prolific, then it makes sense not to set your detector for bigger nuggets but to concentrate on the smaller ones. I also note that people detect deep ground using small coils with shallow settings on their detector... or they will detect soil that is very deep with a large coil and miss both the smaller nugget and also the potential to find larger gold because these nuggets are probably below the depth range of the detector.

So many contributing factors. So many people unwilling to spend more time with their detectors. So many detectors using non-ideal settings. But the biggest nuggets are usually the easiest to find - unless they're too deep for the detector. So they are often the initial easy nuggets to be found by which ever detector gets to it first.

I guess there's no specific answer. Perhaps all of the above?

wow.

That is an interesting post that's fun to read.
Almost as rare as a large nugget.


Thank you.


Flak

Nero_design

Thankyou for an informative post and i think you are on the button with your answers too ..... well done and thankyou

hi
yes , i believe there are still probably lots of big nuggets to be found.
yesterday using a 14" round mono I got a pretty good signal on a deepish target that was somewhere between 24" and 30" down. the bloody dirt was like concrete and it was a bit of rubbish, but I think if there are still deep targets out there to be found, some of them are going to be gold.
my biggest piece of triangle gold (so far) is a 19 grammer i got about 4/5 yrs ago with a 3000
cheers
dave

there is still big gold in vic as i have seen some good size ones the last few months. i have some pictures but i'll have to find them.
these ones a smaller than the others i'v seen but still a nice size

this was still in the dirt and then the second shot is with it out




this was the 2nd 13 ounce a friend found in a few months... he got $20 grand for each one


cheers
stoppsy

Hi Nero_design

Thank you very much for taking the time to put finger to key and respond to my questions. I'm said to hear of your problems with some troublesome fellas, and again it disappoints me that a few ruin it for the rest of us as I really enjoy looking and reading about other peoples finds as it gives me inspiration to keep looking.

I will have to read your reply several times more for it all to sink in as their is a wealth of information within it.

If at some stage I can ask you more questions I would appreciate a reply as I really feel your passion coming through in the reply

Once again thanks

Peter

GoldstalkerGPX wrote:G'day, I posted these in a thread a couple of weeks ago, but will post them again.

These were found recently on Vic 'flogged' goldfields that many of you post about and were found right beside other detector holes.

These nuggets were found by forum member barryf and his wife and were emailed to me by him to post.

Well done Baz!!




The bigger ones in the range that mariner mentioned are still out there, and I'm sure that another big find will happen yet in Vic.

Cheers

Thanks Goldstalker GPX Its nice to see some bigger nuggets from Vic

Pete

Gday


I dont doubt that there are still going to be a few large nuggets surface in the future as there is a lot of ground out there thats still relatively untouched, but having said that, each year I hear of large pieces being found in well known and well worked locations???, the only thing you can put this down to is the "human factor" by saying that I mean that there were possibly several detectorist that have swung their coils over some of these targets and they have simply not recognised the signal for what it was and moved on leaving it behind.

Deep nuggets, and not necessarily large ones sometimes can give such a poor response that they are easily dismissed as ground noise, I know this as I have investigated some really odd responses only to be pleasantly surprised by it turning out to be a piece of gold, sometimes several inches of soil has to be removed first before the signal will develope in to a signal that will make you think "maybe" theres something there??, in some cases the pieces are not even that deep and its just the mineralisation of the ground that is masking it.

With the advances we have seen in the detectors electronics such as the enhance feature and with the quality of search coils improving its likely that many more deep large pieces are going to be found, but mainly I suspect by people who start to specialise in deep gold and who take the time to learn to use these new features to their full advantage.

cheers

stayyerAU

Hi All
Here in Victoria prior to the release of the GP3500 and the rise of the Mono coil larger nuggets at Depth where a regular occurence{approx every 3 Months}(the majority of the where found by DDs).The ground here hasnt changed.Its highly mineralised and variable.As mentioned by Stayyer ground noise can sound like a large deep target and there in lies the problem.In many areas here every step can give you that sound.
We have been spoilt by lightweight Monos and I think theres a reluctance to go back to large heavy DDs.The large deeper Nuggets are still out there but I feel you have run the right gear to have a chance of finding them.
Good Luck Cheers Dig

All right,its not a whopper,but it will have to do. A few days back,scored this 17.2gm in one of the gullies around the Castlemain/Fryerstown belt,sitting in loose wash,using my older 2200d with the tan 14 inch round dd coiltek elite pro coil.This nugget was only approx 8 inches down,where even a good VLF would have found it. How it was missed,Ill never know.

Cheers kon61.

Nice nugget kon61....got to ask, why were you using a 2200d?

G'day TheGoldenChild.

Recently acquired this new coil as a back up for my 2200d and couldn't wait to run it through its paces.

Cheers kon61.

Kon61, that's a REALLY pretty nugget. Very nice.

I think that because you were using a larger DD coil on a PI might be why you found it and others missed it.

Possibly Nero.The ground around this particular district is not only saturated but extremely noisy,in the gully or outside on the banks and flats.This particular area gives even the 4500 a run for its money with mono coils.

Cheers kon61.

Hi Kon61,

Very nice nugget, see I think people just are a bit gun shy in telling other.

Keep up the great work

Pete

Hello kon61,

Thanks for posting your find. Its a very nice nugget.. I'm impressed.

A

Great looking nugget you have there Kon61,it certainly must have brought a big smile to your face when you had that nugget in your hand Well done...I had that coil for a short time when i had the 3500 and it is a good coil,but i did not have it long enough as i sold it when i bought the 4500...BTW i got my first nugget with that coil,but it only went 0.1

Cheers Eureka Dreams

Thanks ARARAT,Mariner & Eureka Dreams.Like Stoppsy I search pretty much on the same belt,of ground.If i can persuade the guy i sold my other nugget,(that I found mid Jan this year), I'll have that posted on the forum too.

Cheers kon61.

very nice kon. well done

Thanks Phoenix.

Cheers kon61.

Hi Kon,

The nugget in my avatar was found in Fryerstown (Castlemaine, Vic. for those interstate) by my wife in 2008 with a GPX4000 in a sluiced gully. A nice little 110 grammer.
It was only 8" down on the edge of the gully. We've found lots of small pieces there but nothing to compare to that lump.
We were the yesterday for old time's sake but got nothing as the spot has been done over pretty well now. We couldn't believe the bloody spiders!!! Every second tree has a big, sticky web stretching across to the next tree. We gave it away early as they were driving us crazy.

Robert

Hi Robert

That size slug would have fairly screamed to be dug up,what a great find i`m sure your wife received some well deserved praise Out of interest what size coil was she using?

Cheers Eureka Dreams

Eureka Dreams wrote:Hi Robert

That size slug would have fairly screamed to be dug up,what a great find i`m sure your wife received some well deserved praise Out of interest what size coil was she using?

Cheers Eureka Dreams

Actually the signal was quite weak. She was using a Commander 11" dd back thenon basically factory settings.

Robert

Thanks Robert for the update,and the great thing with the signal response being weak is that the gold was still not missed...It was singing to be dug up,and was nice one.

Bill

51 oz ( not mine)

hi Murachu

is that the nugget that they called the golden goose or something like that as it looked like a goose head (on a certain angle) and
was found very deep with a 16" round nuggetfinder?
cheers

yep thats the one --910mm deep