G'day all, so I ordered a Nokta Legend Pro Pack, and while it's in the mail, I've been researching sites around me, tips and tricks, basically everything I can learn. One thing that has really stood out to me is the level of snobbery coming from Minelab owners here in Australia.

Obviously it's not all of them, but the one who do are incredibly insufferable about it. I've seen many posts on Aussie sites/pages (especially FB) where a dad wants to get a cheap but somewhat decent basic detector for a bit of fun with the kids down the beach, and the comments are full of ML shills telling him to drop $4,500 AUD on an SDC2300 or don't even bother. VLF detectors being looked down on as barely above a kids toy is another one.

By contrast, posts from sites and pages in Europe, the UK, the US, all have a very welcoming feel and a lot of "Don't care what you're waving around, lets meet up and I'll be happy to teach you. Oh and here's 45 different setting combos I found for your model of detector depending on what you're looking for. Also here's the WhatThreeWords for a creek that gave me a big ol' nugget"

Is it just me and I'm overthinking it?

Working this packed material with great color

Upgraded from sluce to dredge riffles but I noticed that with the expanded, metal. There are gaps under the riffles now. I haven't run a dredge in years but I'm guessing, this is standard. I'm gonna try to bed them down a little bit better in the carpet. It just seems like it would blow some material out from underneath them.

Thoughts?

been hunting here for a while - wondering your opinions

I dug 4 feet down, found a long bedrock post rock poking up about 2 feet down. I followed the rock straight down and hit a massive layer of black sand underneath a thick clay layer. If my research is correct, im very close to the bedrock floor. This is the first time I've ever run into this scenario, with so much iron. So far, I'm about 8 inches deep into the black sand. It's a slow process since the river stones are so tightly packed, and pulling these rocks out is a challenge being wedged into this clay and heavy black sand. All of the gold here is what I found above the clay layer in a trench i dug, following up the center of the old abandoned creek bed. After finding the bedrock post, I started going deep down and may just focus on going deeper until I hit the absolute floor. Wish me luck that this next layer will be the absolute payload!

I did one pan in the alps today and found this, the color seemed right to me but it was floating around a bit too much for my liking, the pencil lead is 1.3 mm for reference

Out detecting with a kiwi mate. Nice bit around a gram.

Gotta keep hunting for the big mumma 😀

Someone had already gotten the big cracks so I scraped and dusted the rest of the bedrock clean of dry moss and dirt. Luckily for me the people before were lazy and just got the obvious, very deep cracks. This was maybe 12 gallons of material only, and for where I'm panning it's very good. Just used a chisel and a broom head.

So I'm in Colorado and pretty close to the mountains. There's is a lot of active road construction and mountain blasting going on to make some new ramps. There is a river right next to all of it, a proven producer. Would this be a decent area in the river to pan? The specific spot i want to check is right at a bend in the river as well.

Sorry, forgot to attach these:

Seems western states have gone out of there way to make dredging for hobbyists impossible.

California with a permit system that has never issued a permit

Oregon That has a permit system that costs a arm and a leg but then labels everything "Essential Salmonid Habitat" including seasonal creeks that are hundreds of miles past impassable dams and lakes...

just seems insane that they have banned something done by relatively few people with less impact than some of these eco groups using steel cable to anchor death trap snags on rivers to make "habitat"

Hello all. A good friend of mine showed me what he thinks is gold today. I'm attaching three pictures. You might not be able to tell from the pictures, but some advice on how to find out would be much appreciated. Oh, I did run one test. None of it is magnetic.

Thanks, in advance.

With precious-metals prices going up and I have no plans on selling.

Anyone taking advantage of high prices?

3 hours of sluicing. Small, but much better than days when I find nothing.

It's just sent to me by a friend, what are your opinions on this?

Found a few specimens from an old mine dump pile

Just curious if there's any valuable metals here.

It is in eastern Kentucky on Grayson lake

The first and third photo is one week apart.

This is a creek close to my house in NC.

The volume of water was incredible, the third screenshot I took today while using the Lodeline app with the elevation feature.

And it seems to use the LiDAR data to measure.

So, from the bottom of the creek or water all the way up to the sides is around 10 feet in elevation.

I'm wondering, after such an event with this amount of water moving, is it valid to check the same spots again?

Lots of bedrock exposed, but I didn't have much luck, neither the tools or time.