I have dug about 3 dozen gold targets all but two in the dirt.
One was in the sand at a public beach, the other from a chip filled tot lot.
One had a zinc key attached to it, that was the thinnest gold chain I ever held and without that key it comes in at iron...but iron area gold is rare.
I rarely dug everything finding most of this...I used to dig a lot but about 2 years in I lost all patience for doing that, cut out digging about 80% of the amount if trash I used to dig and started finding way more gold from that point.
The only reason for this is I studied gold hard, how it behaved, where it might be found and learned my detectors as well as I could to reduce chances of missing it in the extremely trashy sites I hunt more often than not looking for that metal.
Except a few special sites like basketball or volleyball court perimeters where the chance for jewelry is high and masking trash volume can be intense so I dig more there, most sites I wander around looking for mostly solid signals wherever they may be.
On Fishers they seem to like gold and they all came in solid for me using all my detectors and were between shallow and about 5-6"...so far.
Most of the gold in the pics below were found with an F2 or an F70...mostly due to the fact I used them more hours than my Compadre or Vaq but I found several with those also and I dug them because gold came in solid on those and I was still avoiding most trashy jumpy signals using those tools when I did.
Except for that small chain and a large rolled gold pocket watch all the rest of mine came in between foil, 24 on a Fisher just a hair above where those round freshnessess seals or condiment packages come in, all the way up the line to lower zinc 48-52 where decent sized pieces of can slaw come in on 5 gold class rings.
It can go even higher.
A friend dug a very tiny ring that barely even fit the tip of my pinky but still came in at a solid dime because it was marked .999...24k.
Below is most of my gold I have found over the years with areas they came in most with Fisher VDI numbers added.
Probably 3/4's minimum came from public parks in Kansas, by the way.