A logical response to my question.......

[Old Katz]

Recently someone suggested when looking for gold rings I notch out everything, but .5cent, Alum, Pulltabs.
When he suggested I notch out everything he met all silver and clad as well. I wanted to know why
the silver and clad too. I got back what I think is a logical response from dahut:

Consider this:

Gold = $1,003/ounce
Silver $16.24/ ounce

Lets say you find a SILVER ring and a GOLD ring on the same day. With the above values in mind, which will be most worth your effort in the finding?

This is why I say eliminate all coins but nickels if you are serious about finding gold jewelry. Unless there is a known and serious opportunity to find numismatically significant silver coins, gold will reward you far more than anything else.

Chances are best that you will find only clad while notching in coins, while you waste time recovering them - time you could better use searching for gold jewelry.

As for "junk," gold jewelry hunters are really junk hunters. They delight in finding common trash, because they know one fact the rest choose to ignore:

High trash volumes mean more people... and more people mean increased chances at recovering financially rewarding gold jewelry.

Fortunately you have one of the best jewelry hunting detectors on the market - the ACE 250.
Simply notch in the mid range, from foil to screwcap, and exclude everything else. Then dig anything that beeps. Will you find a lot of trash? Yes. But you will spend your valuable time reacting to only those things that might be gold

It is all in your perspective, ya know?

 

[metalhead]

I couldn't agree more. Well said.Best of luck to ya'.Happy Hunting!

 

[Joel-Winnipeg]

Makes lots of sense in what you wrote.
I look at it another way.
I'd rather dig ever thing foil to silver and be rewarded with clad and other items for the trouble of detecting that field.
I'm in the process of hunting a park area with two baseball diamond and park area where a double band diamond ring was lost and reward offered
for its retrieval.
The reward for this effort is plenty of clad with more pull tabs and chewed up pop cans to try and find that ring.
The pull tabs are donated to the wheelchair for kid so its a lost cause.
As our season is almost over up here ,next year I plan to get the 10 by 14 Kelly co coil for the ace to speed up the search.
Limiting the range to the nickel to foil range is a good idea but I'd rather go the whole area above that and at least get the clad ,than having to go a second time around to re hunt the area.

 

[dahut]

- and he was wildly successful. His name was Ralph Bryant. He used to post an amazing number of gold rings with his Ace 250 right here on findmall.
Each week we were stunned by his finds, so I asked how he did it... hell, I 'aint bashful.

He said he dug no clad and just went for the gold. Oh, sometimes he would notch in the coins, but mostly, no.

I manage $150-175 worth of clad most years. If I had more time, I might double that and feel good about myself.
"Ol Ralphie would find that in a month of gold rings, easy.

It is radical, I know, to leave the coins behind. But it pays off for those who can discipline themselves to it.

 

[Joel-Winnipeg]

You maybe on to something dahunt.
Next season I'll give that a try for the middle of the big field area and see what will come of it.
I can always go back over it with less disc. and see what will come up.
This would defenately speed up the hunting process and I may get lucky and find that ring sooner

 

[marcomo]

I guess it depends on if you are doing this for fun as a hobby or if you are trying to make a living off it.

I enjoy finding old coins too much to ever even consider notching out coins.

 

[dahut]

I guess it depends on if you are doing this for fun as a hobby or if you are trying to make a living off it.

I enjoy finding old coins too much to ever even consider notching out coins.

I don't know about you, but old coins have been pretty sparse around my neck of the woods, lately...

What if one got fun from his hobby - by finding gold jewelry? Wouldn't that count?

 

[John-Edmonton]

Gold, depending what it is mixed with, how high/low the karat is and its relative size ie fat band vs. a small tiny thin band can show up at various places. Notching out coins and notching out foil can also make you miss rings. The best way to increase your gold finds is to hunt areas where it is more likely to be lost. Why would you not want to dig coins while searching for gold?

 

[Uncle Willy]

As I've always stated to folks looking for gold, " If you ain't digging trash you ain't digging much else either." Unfortunately gold falls into the same conductive range as many trash items, especially foil which has the same conductivity as gold. So if one is specifically hunting for gold items then Dahut's advice is worth it's weight in gold.

Bill

 

[Uncle Willy]

Don't notch out foil.

Bill

 

[Uncle Willy]

Have you been to Ralphies forum? I haven't buzzed him in a long time or been over to his forum where all the prospectors and nuggetshooters hang out, including my bud Jim Straight.. We used to rattle on to each other all the time. Ralph done a lot of testing on Troy Galloway's detectors. Ralphie can find the goodies.

Bill

 

[lazyaussie]

some great advice dahut you can also elimanate some junk by sizing targets with the ACE in pinpoint as most gold is small & gives a nice crisp signal.
lazyaussie

 

[dahut]

Gold, depending what it is mixed with, how high/low the karat is and its relative size ie fat band vs. a small tiny thin band can show up at various places. Notching out coins and notching out foil can also make you miss rings. The best way to increase your gold finds is to hunt areas where it is more likely to be lost. Why would you not want to dig coins while searching for gold?

That is the other side of the equation, one also mentioned many times over. I included it in my own comments, those that started this discussion.
Personally, I have never been disciplined enough to ignore good coin readings. Occassionally, I will leave solid zinc hits in the ground - but even then not often. I simply wanted to offer an alternative point of view to what is really a dead simple function.

In the end, I think the one thing we can all take away from this is that coins are the easy part of this detecting business... well in the US anyway!
Rather, it is the vast mid-range that we should focus more of our attention on.

 

[dahut]

Have you been to Ralphies forum? I haven't buzzed him in a long time or been over to his forum where all the prospectors and nuggetshooters hang out, including my bud Jim Straight.. We used to rattle on to each other all the time. Ralph done a lot of testing on Troy Galloway's detectors. Ralphie can find the goodies.

Bill

I didn't know he had a forum of his own. Where does one find it?

 

[Uncle Willy]

I'll dig it up and post it or send it to you. It's a prospecting forum.


Bill

 

[Mick in Dubbo]

All our modern coins are in the foil to screw cap range, which just happens to be the same as gold, So unless we don't want to recover the lower denominations, then we're going to recover gold coins as a by product of hunting for coins as they pinpoint just like coins.
It'd be nice if our coins hit as high as your coins as life would be heaps easier,:sad: but we'll just have to put up with recovering the gold coins instead.
Mick Evans.

 

[dahut]

All our modern coins are in the foil to screw cap range, which just happens to be the same as gold, So unless we don't want to recover the lower denominations, then we're going to recover gold coins as a by product of hunting for coins as they pinpoint just like coins.
It'd be nice if our coins hit as high as your coins as life would be heaps easier,:sad: but we'll just have to put up with recovering the gold coins instead.
Mick Evans.

Actually, Mick, life sounds pretty easy as is. You don't have two separate ranges to concern yourself with, only one.

 

[Furious T]

Detecting life in Aus. is pretty good. Although it costs us more, dollar for dollar, to buy our detectors, having so many $1 and $2 coins being lost we seem to have a better opportunity to come home from a hunt with more dollars, even though we might find less coins. As Mick said, our 5c to 50c (almost to $2) range falls smack dab in the gold ring range, so we do have the best of both worlds. What a fun hobby this is!

 

[upnorth]

I bought an ACE 250 two years ago. I started out only in coin mode because I got a blast out of finding clad I experimented with other settings but tended to stay in jewelry mode because I was lazy and didn't really understand the nuances of the different tones. I started to clue in to the signals at the end of last year and I found many interesting relics/old silver/copper coins. In my second year I bought the largest factory coil and rain cover. I still tended to stay in jewelry mode. And you know what? I've found ONE gold and ONE silver ring in these two years (I constantly ignored many signals that I thought were trash). I may be one hell of a slow learner but I finally clued in to going all metal and digging anything that sounds non ferrous. I have found more cool relics this year and probably doubled my old silver count over last year. But I only got the one silver ring this year (along with many junk kids rings). It took me this long to realise that my laziness/ignorance, and just plain ignoring anything that I thought was tin foil or a can tab etc., has likely cost me several rings. I nail old silver coins, old copper coins and old relics, but because 90% of the time I've ignored the "junk" signals I've lost out. Now I run my detector hot, have a big coil, go all metal and dig the scruffy signals also (I started this only recently). I don't know it all and still have much to learn, but I am tight with what the ACE tones say now (usually, lol). This is just my evolution and were I am at now. B.T.W., I would rather dig junk in a wide open mode and get the odd nice silver than notch it out. I was digging beer caps and pull tabs last week in all metal and out came a 1907 dime. Good luck to you all.

 

[Mick in Dubbo]

Actually, that is the reason I haven't recovered our larger pure silver coins. I've focused too much on the aforementioned range and neglected the silver range. I'm endeavouring to rectify that though.
Mick Evans.