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Hi All, I posted on a thread over on DetectorProspectors forum when a person asked about where to look for gold nuggets? You could write a book on it, but here are some quick basics I mentioned - Hello all, This is always one of the first questions asked for new prospectors/detectorist. Where do I even start looking? I think you could write a book on this subject as it's very complex to be honest. You have to first understand gold, the basics of how it's formed and the processes of erosion or weathering to get the gold to it's first location, to it's final location and anywhere in-between depending on it's timeline. Once you have a idea of the basics of gold, say placer gold for example you can understand that due to it's specific gravity it will likely make it to the lowest point in given time (this could be hundreds or thousands of years). The lowest points in most areas is going to be wash bottoms (gullies, washes, rivers and any water water). This is normally why you will see some past placer activity in rich gold bearing areas. Normally, for metal detectorists, this is the first place many will start. Keep in mind, the old-timers did also by sampling and then trying to see if they could be lucky enough to track the traces of gold back to the original source that may/maybe be left. Many of the major gold mines were found by locating the placer first, but this is not the case all the time, many visible quartz veins can attract someone to them to sample and find out if there are any values. I'm sure many of the visible quartz vein in gold rich areas have been sampled from the beginning of mining history. Then the question comes to coarse gold, or nuggets. Many placers throughout the World are not noted for larger, coarse gold, like nuggets. You can do a lot of research and find extremely rich gold areas, but very little coarse gold was located due to the type of deposit. These area might not be very beneficial to electronic prospectors. I have always stated to seek out "Pocket type" deposits if you can find any info on them. These are the types of deposits that contribute to large, nugget gold. For beginners, just try to research areas that historically have produced gold nuggets, even very large ones. Worst case, if you can't find info on what the placers produced, just find the gold areas and work within and around them. This will at least give you a chance of potentially locating something at some point. All that being said, the subject can be simple or very complexed, depending how much you really want to know. To keep it simple, I have always stated, invest in good equipment (right tool for the job), do whatever research you can (knowledge is very helpful) & develop a plan of attack. This basically means finding a potential location, exploring and metal detecting likely locations. It all comes down to a process of elimination, searching here and there the best you can, eliminating spots and exploring new. At some point, you will be successful at finding a nugget or two. You can speed the process up by forming a small group of close friends, all being on the same page that allows you to have the comradery, safety and more ground be explored and sampled quicker. Final notes, don't allow Greed to get the best of you, Gold Fever as some will say. Enjoy the good times, don't get discouraged, stay positive, appreciate the creation around you and give praise to when you find your first, gleaming gold nugget! Wishing you all the best out there, Rob

Hello All, Was able to get out the last day of 2023 to see what I could end the year with. A partner and I discovered some coarse tailing piles that I believe have been overlooked for years. There were no digs, scraps or anything in them. One of the first targets was a nugget right on top for me. This was a great way to start the day knowing there were a lot of piles to scan still. Like all tailing piles, we both dug the typical iron rubbish, maybe a bullet fragment or two and some nuggets. We didn't discover anything super larger, the biggest nugget was around 2 Dwts, most of them smaller in size. We both were using the Minelab GPZ 7000's, one with a stock 14x13" Searchcoil and I had the Nugget Finder 12" Z Search on mine. The weather was good and we scored some gold! Here are the nuggets I scored on the final trip of 2023 - 5 Dwts total (Quarter ounce of gold). P.S. Sorry for the poor picture quality, this is what happens when you purchase a $1200 cell phone and drop it weeks after the purchase and break the camera lens .... Rob

Hello All, I have a lot of video footage and pictures from earlier this season, mostly around the Summer time. I'm just getting some free time to get some of the stuff uploaded and posted. I figured this would be a nice nugget to post and see right before the Thanksgiving weekend. This piece was found under about a foot of hardpack, caliche gravels. This particular gold nuggets, as seen in the video was wedged in a bedrock crack/crevice. Just makes you think how many years (hundreds, thousands?) this piece has been hiding there. The nugget was difficult to remove from hand tools as we didn't want to damage the piece not knowing the actual size or shape. We ended up using a Hammer Drill with a chisel bit to extract the gold nugget. The nugget ended up weighing right at 1/4 ounce solid. We also found another smaller one, about 1/2 Gram in the same crack prior to this piece. I dug the first smaller one out, but knew it was way too loud of a signal on the GPZ 7000 for it to be that small nugget. Low and behold, we scanned over the spot again and the signal was pretty much just as load as originally. Tool used were the Minelab GPZ 7000, Minelab GPX 6000, Garrett AT Pinpointer, hand tools, picks and the Hammer Drill. Here is a short video below of the gold nugget find and extraction. Wishing you all a Happy Thanksgiving. Thanks God we are able to enjoy such a wonderful hobby searching for gold. P.S. If you enjoy these video, Subscribe to our Nuggethunting channel to follow us. Thanks for watching. Any comments are appreciated.

Hey Rob -

Hey Guys, It's been awhile since I done a video, so here you go. I have a bunch more I need to upload, it just take time ..... The nugget actually weighted almost 4 Dwt's, just shy of 1/4 ounce. It was found with the Minelab GPZ 7000 metal detector.

Hello All, Well we just ended the 2018 season. I have to tell you, I'm blessed. The 2018 season wasn't the best for business, but at the same time it wasn't the worst. The overall economy is much stronger, so hopefully that means business will get better this new year. My wife lost her Mother earlier this year, so that was a very tragic turn of events. Right towards the end of the year, I lost a great prospector friend. You never know what might happen, so you really need to cherish all the time with family and friends. As for gold hunting, it seems like every year my time in the field becomes less and less. I was able to get out a bit towards the end of the year and even found a few decent pieces. I'm hoping I can really get out the first quarter of the year while the weather is still beautiful and do some exploring an maybe working some old patches that could be hiding some better gold at depth. I want to personally thank you all for supporting Rob's Detector Sales. We truly appreciate it and hope we can continue to help new prospectors get out and find their first piece of gold with a metal detector. God Bless you all and hope your 2019 season is Golden.

Hello All, Here is an old video I found back around 2014-15. I was using the Minelab GPZ 7000 metal detector, working a small ravine where I found many ounces of gold throughout the prior years. This was one ravine or wash where I always brought the next best detector to give it a whirl. For at least 10 years, I have been able to return back to this spot and find a few pieces deeper that were missed. It's a hard spot to work at least with larger coils, as the ravine or wash is loaded with large cobbles. This particular day using the GPZ 7000, I managed only a few targets, but this one happen to be gold. It was a faint whisper type target under a large cobble. I managed to remove the cobble and this is where the video pretty much starts. The nugget weighed right at 1/2 ounce and was probably 18-20 inches deep. The ravine or wash needs to be handstacked and then detected. There is no question, there is probably several ounces of larger nuggets still hiding at depth. I have dozens of older videos I haven't uploaded to Youtube. It's just a matter of time uploading these darn things. Hope you enjoyed. It's out there and "maybe even where you find it!"

Hello All, I haven't been doing a whole bunch of prospecting and exploring this year and now it's getting a bit warm. Here are some small batches of gold from 4 different locations. Biggest nugget is aprox. 3/4 of an ounce on the bottom left batch.

Hello All, Here is a great video on Metal Detecting in Australia. I think I might have posted it before, but it's a great video to watch if you enjoy metal detecting for gold nuggets.

Hello all! First post on this site and i look forward to hearing your thoughts on my puzzle. Im located on the east coast and at my site my partners and i have found some nice sized nuggets dredging a small section of creek. The largest being just under a half ounce, and total weight in a area of about 200 ft long by 12 ft wide was about 12 ounces of coarse crystalline gold with a number of them being quartz and gold specimens. The valley bottom is pretty much flat, about 150 ft wide and the overburden outside of the creek is about 6 ft deep. The hillsides of the valley are very steep possibly over a 45 degree slope and are about 100 ft tall. I know im close to if not on top of the source which i believe is primarily small quartz stringers that run in the bedrock pretty much perpendicular to the creek. I believe they produce gold in inconsistent pockets, since in the area we have dredged we have yet to see gold within an intact quartz stringer. From all this one would surmise that the steep valley slopes should hold nuggets as well. Well so far with my gpx 4800 and another member of this forums gpx 5000 (local digger) we have not found any gold in the surrounding hillsides. The hillsides being as steep as they are only have about 1 ft of loose overburden over bedrock. The ground is also fairly mild and the creek has very little black sand. The inability of us to find nuggets in the hills around our honey hole has perplexed and frustrated me. Within the creek we have found nuggets for almost a 3 mile length of the creek, yet nothing detecting the surrounding hills. The area was both hardrocked and placered in the past, with ounce nuggets being found in "alluvial sand beds". My new theory is that since the hillsides are so steep the big nuggets once they started to move ended up rolling all the way down to the flat valley bottom and have subsequently been buried by the alluvial overburden. I recently purchased a gold monster 1000 in the hopes that smaller pickers species may still be stuck on the steep hillslopes but are too small for the gpx's with 14" coils to hear. Do you guys think this theory could be the case? Any other theories or ideas? Help is appreciated! I will post some pics of the gold found in the creek this evening, once i get home from work.

Hello all, I always enjoy reading about the adventures and seeing all the great gold pictures. A fellow prospector invited me out to his claim to detect with him for a day. Perfect day to be out seeking the gold and the gold did come. Great day socializing over nuggets in a deep canyon in NorCal!! We banged on the chisels and hammered some gold out of the bedrock. Two Minelab detectors at work a GPZ and GPX5000 Great day out and hopefully more great days to come. Wishing you all much success getting those coils over some nice gold, happy hunting.

Hello All, I was browsing through some old pictures and came across this one. It's one of my largest nuggets found with the Minelab SDC 2300. It was actually down a bit in nasty clay, so was surprised when I dug it up. I don't think I measured the depth of the hole, but being in very nasty ground it was just a whisper at around 12-14 inches. I only found dinks around it, so was pretty surprised when this popped up. The piece was just shy of a solid ounce.

Hello All, You already seen a video I posted on the large, potato sized nuggets from the Liberty area. Here is a video of some amazing wire gold nuggets they found in the nearby area.

Hello All, Here is a neat article about a guy that found 150 ounces of nuggets in one crevice. You can click the article link below to read the entire store. The article is off of Western Mining Alliance's website, which I believe is Brandon Rinehart's. http://theminingalliance.com/articles/article_crack.html

Hello All, Here is an interesting video of the XP Deus working in Africa. Hard to tell in the video, but curious if that is shallow bedrock they are working, or the nuggets are just in the clay/mud near the surface.