Nice Specimen found with GPX 5000

[steve herschbach]

I am a Lower 48 newbie but off to a good start thanks to guidance from Chris Ralph, proving again that who you know is often more important than what you know when it comes to finding gold. Chris took me to a few places he was interested in. We had a great few days with some varied experiences, topped off with me finding this nice 0.82 ounce gold in quartz specimen. It was found in the northern Sierras of California with a Minelab GPX 5000 metal detector sporting a Nugget Finder 14" Advantage elliptical mono coil. There is a lot of gold showing so probably well over a half ounce of contained gold. The nugget was caked with mud and cemented material when found so was a bit of a surprise when it cleaned up so nice. Thanks Chris!

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[iron bark]

Good on you very nice
regards john

 

[godigit1]

WOW
Having a helping hand is very rare and your off to a great start here. Nice specimen! You are re-firing my fever not that it ever died but I've been feeding it park and tourist gold.
I have to get out more!!!

Have Fun

 

[bearkat4160]

Delicious gold! ...take your ATX back there and give her a whirl. I'll meet you there, I'm just 27 miles over the California border in Oregon.

 

[steve herschbach]

Yeah we will meet up sometime. But I am afraid that place is up in the snow now! Sadly, I do not think the ATX would have found this specimen. It was what I refer to as an "imaginary signal", in other words so faint I almost thought I imagined it. Most targets I find most of my detectors would hit on, it is just a matter of what I am running at the time. But this one was a Minelab find for sure.

 

[bearkat4160]

Ok, I see...if it was an iffy signal on the GPX then could have been just out of reach with the ATX. I'm finding that to be true. The only way I can get close is put it in non-motion mode just for that extra reach to get as close as possible to the GPX depth capabilities...it gets aweful close.

Guess what.......video of that soon, I know, I know...Lol

 

[steve herschbach]

What is it they say - close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades?

 

[bearkat4160]

Yep, close but no cigar...whatever that means.

 

[lytle78]

Sometimes close is good enough.

But enough nostalgia about the good old days in Strategic Air Command - although I did watch Dr. Strangelove in a SAC Alert facility with ready to launch aircraft waiting for us outside. As I recall, a lot of the guys weren't laughing.

I get the feeling that maybe a key thing about the ATX vs. the GPX 5000 is that it's kind of deterministic. One basic operating mode - mostly one coil and you can PERHAPS be confident that any gold you walk over from just above fly poop to bigger nuggets than 90% of us will ever find will be detected. With the GPX there's what coil should I use, what timings do I select and the nagging suspicion that you've missed something if you chose wrong.

Perhaps more data will show that this is not the case. I eagerly await more first hand reports.

I sure miss Slim Pickens.

 

[Will Penny]

Yep, close but no cigar...whatever that means.

...............Meaning

Fall just short of a successful outcome and get nothing for your efforts.
Origin

The phrase, and its variant 'nice try, but no cigar', are of US origin and date from the mid-20th century. Fairground stalls gave out cigars as prizes, and this is the most likely source, although there's no definitive evidence to prove that.

It is first recorded in print in Sayre and Twist's publishing of the script of the 1935 film version of Annie Oakley:

"Close, Colonel, but no cigar!"

It appears in U. S. newspapers widely from around 1949 onwards; for example, a story from The Lima News, Lima, Ohio, November 1949, where The Lima House Cigar and Sporting Goods Store narrowly avoided being burned down in a fire, was titled 'Close But No Cigar'.

See other phrases that were coined in the USA.
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