Reno Chris

Congrats Adam - that looks like a great place for detecting and dry washing this summer - or at least when things dry out. Maybe an article later for the ICMJ or a video for you tube or both. Nuggets can be born smooth, but if you look at the surface closely with a jewelers loupe, you can tell the polished surface of the water worn nugget from the etched surface of the naturally round nugget that was just formed that way. On Brownnugget's "molded" gold - yep, it can happen that way. I have a spot that gives sparkly shiny gold as its formed against the smooth sides if individual quartz crystals. We've all heard of the old saw that "all that glitters isn't gold" - well this stuff is the exception. Its gold and it sparkles like glitter. The quartz veins here are like gobs of little individual quartz crystals pressed together rather than the usual waxy massive quartz veins.

I find lead that old in the mother lode country with the same deep white coat - desert lead normally isnt so deeply coated. So your first guess of lead is correct. Could be some sort of poured babbit material which is mostly lead anyway. By the price from Kitco, your 9.4 grams of lead is worth almost two cents. I actually save all my lead and every couple years cast fresh bullets with it - a friend of mine has the set up to do that. No way is silver - silver tarnishes to black, not white. I've dug plenty of electrum as well, its not electrum either. Only stuff with a high percentage lead gives that white lead oxide-carbonate coating. Did you know way back in the dark ages when Doc was a boy they manufactured that white lead coating on purpose by the ton? That is what they used as pigment to make white paint from, hence the old lead based paint from the early 1950s and older. Now you know.......

That happens with the GPZ700 because of that big 14 inch coil with the double signal across it. Together those make it really tough to pinpoint tiny targets. You just end up chasing it around and around. Very careful pinpointing, patience and determination are required. That or another metal detector with a smaller coil.

Gold does not rust at all - but iron does, including pyrite, which is an iron sulfide. The rock is stained inside and out with rusty iron stain - with the most intense stain being right up against your "unknown" mineral. Sorry. Its pyrite, not gold.

Great results for such a small wash. I'd be looking up the slopes on either side for the source of that rough and pretty gold.

That's true. My Cardiologist told me that any part of the heart interior was capable for becoming a beat initiator. He tried to cauterize the spot inside my heart that was causing the problem (a common procedure cal ablation), but it turned out to be located in a dangerous spot, so that didn't work..

Thanks for all the kind wishes! Just to clarify, my heart problem is a non-standard one. Its not really related to weight, smoking or being out of shape - like most heart problems are. What I have is something you could get if you were an Olympic level athlete. What happened was another spot on my heart started telling the heart to beat - in addition to the normal one that tells the heart to beat. The two beat indicators sort of fought against each other. Initially, I never even knew I had it - it was discovered at a normal check up. I went to a cardiologist and he was not too worried about it, my blood oxygen levels were normal and I wasn't out of breath or anything like that. But he warned me that if the two beat indicators got into a full fight mode I could end up with a super fast beat and that would be more of a problem. Well, about six months later I was doing minor stuff in the backyard with my wife, and I suddenly went into this super fast heart beat mode. My heart was beating at 180 beats per minute (around 70 is normal). It would not go back to normal, so the ambulance was called. It did go back to normal after about 20 minutes, but they still took me to the hospital for a few days. I am now on a prescription and it seems to keep things normal and I have had no more tachycardia events. The Cardiologist has OK'ed me to prospect and hike and do any other normal outdoor activities.

These deals are structured to pay low the first few years to allow the company to explore the property. If a big find is made, then they will keep the property and pay the big balloon payment at the end. So I have only the first years payment, not the whole thing. Its sort of like selling a house with owner financing - but the buyer has the option to cancel the purchase at any time...

Amen and Amen!

Last year was not a banner prospecting year for me. I got out a number of times and did detect some gold and did some dry washing, but it was a year of other problems. I had two trips to the hospital, one emergency by ambulance, and one for surgery on my heart (not open heart, but the doctor put a probe up through a vein into the inside of my heart). My wife had two stays at the hospital as well. We also spent time moving my elderly mother in law from southern California where she has few remaining relatives, up to Reno. I did get some nice gold in my prospecting, but I made fewer trips and got less gold than I have in many years. I did however, do some serious hard rock prospecting in 2018 and made two deals with mining exploration companies to lease out properties that I own. One deal was made on a set of claims that I had staked years ago, while the other was on a large set of claims I staked in 2018 (along with two partners which I have in that claim group). We staked over 200 claims in that group and it took some time in getting all of those claims out and posted. The company that leased those claims from us flew a helicopter survey over them and made several exciting finds. The ore bodies likely found there are electrically conductive, and the coil and electronics used to “see” the ore bodies are of a pulse type design – just like the pulse detectors we use, but with a gigantic coil and a bit different electronics. So I can look at 2018 in a couple ways – for the direct gold I dug, it was a very poor year. Yet for the total money I made on my prospecting it was a different story. Counting the money I made on leasing out claims in 2018, if you calculated out the equivalent ounces of gold, would make it my best year ever, by far. The money was the bullion weight equivalent of several pounds. So in 2019 I hope to stay out of the hospital, and to take no rides in ambulances. I pray my wife stays out of the hospital too. I hope to spend more time in the hills prospecting, and do more detecting and more drywashing as well. I will stake some more claims and see if I can get those leased out as well, but I really want to do my own prospecting as I enjoy that so much. For those interested in more details on the story of the claims I staked and how I got them leased off to two different exploration companies, I have a story this month in the ICMJ – called Making a Big Discovery. In the February and March issues I will have a two part article on how these lease contracts are structured and what a small miner might expect in such a deal. Photos – A few of my detected nuggets; the helicopter surveying my claims, and some of the ground where the claims are located.

I'm sorry about that Ron. I did send a note to Scott, the editor. His website guy is just not up to snuff. Just call the office at (831) 479-1500, and they will process your order over the phone. As far as the $7.00 subscription, that's a new one on me. Morlock, where did you see that?

We decided to post a free issue of the prospecting and Mining Journal magazine on the internet for any new folks who are around to see what it is. (Also experienced prospectors who are wondering about the magazine). We have up to date articles about how to get more gold in your prospecting, legal issues and the best equipment out there for finding gold. If you have any interest in prospecting, this is the magazine you will the most learn from. I may be a little biased as I'm the assistant Editor, but on the other hand I've been getting this magazine since the late 1970s and its always been a lot of fun. Take a look, I think you'll be glad you did. I you want to subscribe, the subscription info is on the inside of the last page. Its worth not missing a single issue. https://www.icmj.com/resources/news-and-events/miners-news/free-online-sample-issue-392/

The other thing in addition to sunscreen, appropriate clothing and hats is to see a dermatologist regularly to be checked out. Small bits of skin cancer removed early have a good outlook. The larger things get and the longer they have to grow, the worse the likely outcome..I see mine every year and sometimes more frequently than that. I've only had little stuff removed but that's fine by me.

The truth is it varies from place to place and there is no "Universal" rule that is always correct. I've been in places with almost no quartz whatsoever and found gold, and places were nearly every rock on the surface is quartz and found no gold. Yet some other places with lots of quartz I have done well and gotten good gold. I've found gold in places with lots of hematite, and I've found no gold in other places with lots of hematite. I've found gold in places with pretty much zero hematite. I've been asked this sort of question many times. A lot of guys, especially new prospectors, want some set of simple, golden rules that always tell you where the gold will be. Sorry, I've prospected and found gold all over the western USA, including Alaska, as well as Australia and Western Africa and there are no simple, hard and fast rules that always work. You cant even take knowledge of what works in most of Arizona and take that into the Sierra Nevada goldfields of the mother lode. Some stuff will work, but other stuff wont apply. Its true that normally the gold in the big quartz veins (like more than 4 ft thick) is often fine as dust. The coarser gold that can be seen by a detector often comes from smaller veins and stringers nearby. This is why a lot of gold quartz mines that produced thousands of ounces of gold have no detectable gold in the dumps - the gold is tiny particles like dust that cannot be seen by a detector.

You guys have it backwards. This is the end of the good detecting season. The other day I went and got my trailer and brought it back to the house for winter.