Quick Gold Question.............

Years ago my brother purchased a tiny glass vial of Gold flakes on a popular internet auction. In the vial was a small paper and 10.5 g was written on it. He didn't pay much for it and just assumed it to be real gold and as I said has had it for many years.

Recently I purchased a new detector and was air testing lots of different things to try and learn what the detector was saying. He brought over the vial of "Gold Flakes" and we expected the detector to give some type of a tone, ................. it did not. Even in the "all metal" mode it did nothing.

I have a Fisher pinpointer and tried that on the vial, ................... nothing. We dumped the flakes out on a small piece of paper, thinking the glass may be interfering, ............................ if we piled up the flakes into a tiny pile we did get a beep from the pinpointer a couple of times, but that was with the pointer in direct contact with the flakes.

My question is, ..... is 10.5 g just too small an amount to detect, or ......... is this gold?  There aren't many flakes, and so there is not a lot of mass, but should 10.5 g of flakes register on a detector? It surely looks like gold, but I suspect it may not be. Any comments or ideas?

Gold flakes react much like a small gold chain, hard to detect. The detector only "See's" the largest piece of gold in the pile.   If the 10.5 g is grams, and the gold was a  solid nugget the detector would have no problem finding it. If the 10.5 g is grains, that is less than a DWT and a lot of detectors would have trouble with it, even if it were solid. A dedicated vlf nugget hunter detector would probably detect it

Most likely the 10.5 means  grains  a very small amount of weight, and also it is what is called gold leaf that means each piece is many times thinner than a piece of paper.  that is what is generally sold in those vials.  with the water added to it it looks BIG .  A gold specific detector may as auduke said detect it .
Common coin/ jewerly detectors don't have the sensitivity built into them to hunt and detect natural gold. Unless it is a large piece very close or on the surface of the soil.

Some times we refer to them as invisible nuggets.

Hey thanks so much for the responses guys, I really appreciate it.

That is kind of what I surmised, just not enough mass/weight even when in a tiny pile, to be detectable.

This is why I love visiting these forums, a great place to learn from people who have knowledge.

Thanks again guys.

John

Is it flakes or gold leaf? Check out this information from ebay:

http://reviews.ebay.com/Information-on-gold-flake-leaf-commonly-sold-in-vials_W0QQugidZ10000000001705952

Also, if it is real gold and weighed in at 10.5 grains, there is 480 grains to the troy ounce, which would make it worth about ($20.63) at the current price of 943.61 an ounce (8/26/09) from ( http://www.goldprice.org/gold-price.html ).




 

Just talked to my brother, he bought the vial of flakes about 7 years ago.

He said it was advertised as "Flakes", no mention of "Leaf".

Thanks for the information and ebay link, I sent that on to my brother. 

Hi,

There are very few detectors what will detect real small gold particles such as you described even if there is a bunch of it.  So, the fact is even though you may have a few grains of the fine gold, the detector doesn't or won't respond to a lot of real small stuff like it would if the gold were in one solid piece because of the fact the detector requires a certain size of material to allow the electrical signals (eddy currents) to be generated within the gold itself. 

So, to get a signal from a detector, it requires a certain continuous size, meaning it has to be a larger solid mass to be detected.  if the 10g is really 10 grains, then a solid 10 grain piece would probably sound off quite easily, but a bunch of extremely small pieces adding up to 10 grains will most likely not cause any response at all on most detectors.  Actually, a bunch of extremely small pieces adding up to a much larger quantity like maybe an ounce may not react at all either.

You might get one of the best VLF higher frequency gold machines to give you a very weak signal of one or more of the pieces are large enough, but I even doubt that if the pieces are really small.  About the only detector that might work with the gold you mentioned, would be the Falcon, which has a very small coil and is specifically designed to detect very small gold. 

So, most likely what you have is gold if it remains a gold color once it is out of the water.  Normally, the gold flakes will be have a gold flat color to maybe a little sheen to the small gold, but will be gold in color even in the shade. 

The point to this long winded answer is don't be discouraged because what you experienced when you tried to detect extremely small pieces of gold is normal.

One last point, glass or relatively clean water will not have an effect on whether you can detect the gold or not.  Now, if you were to use saltwater in a large enough vial, then you might detect the water, but regular water will not have any effect, nor will most glass or plastic. 

To verify this type of condition that it requires a certain size one might take a piece of brass (which obviously is easier and cheaper to obtain than gold) of a certain size and detect it.  Then take that same small piece of brass and file or grind it into extremely small pieces and try again.  A good test piece might be a brass shim.  Try a piece and then cut it into extremely small pieces.  The smaller the pieces the more difficult it will become to detect it.

Reg

Thank you for the information Reg, not long winded at all.

Good solid information, .... thanks.

John

I guarantee you that my MXT will sound off on it.....

I guarantee you that my MXT will sound off on it.....

Really, even when we piled the tiny flakes into a pile and placed a brand new Pinpointer 1/32" from the pile, ........ and got no detection? Did manage to get a couple short barks, ....... but had to physically touch the pile with the Pinpointer to get anything.

I guarantee you that my MXT will sound off on it.....

Really, even when we piled the tiny flakes into a pile and placed a brand new Pinpointer 1/32" from the pile, ........ and got no detection? Did manage to get a couple short barks, ....... but had to physically touch the pile with the Pinpointer to get anything.

[A dedicated  gold hunter such as a GMT or a GBII with a small  coil is way more senititive than a pin pointer. I have found many flakes of gold that weighed less than a grain.

I guarantee you that my MXT will sound off on it.....

Really, even when we piled the tiny flakes into a pile and placed a brand new Pinpointer 1/32" from the pile, ........ and got no detection? Did manage to get a couple short barks, ....... but had to physically touch the pile with the Pinpointer to get anything.

If you will refer to the previous posts.  A pile is no more detectable than the largest flake in the pile, it doesn't matter how large the pile is.

I guarantee you that my MXT will sound off on it.....

Really, even when we piled the tiny flakes into a pile and placed a brand new Pinpointer 1/32" from the pile, ........ and got no detection? Did manage to get a couple short barks, ....... but had to physically touch the pile with the Pinpointer to get anything.

[A dedicated  gold hunter such as a GMT or a GBII with a small  coil is way more senititive than a pin pointer. I have found many flakes of gold that weighed less than a grain.

Understood, I know dedicated Gold machines have greater capabilities to detect small gold, but your statement was regarding the MXT and unless I am wrong, the MXT is not a dedicated gold hunter, and hence my statement. I have heard the MXT is pretty good on gold jewelry, is it that good on gold flakes? I had a couple Lobo ST detectors years ago, wish I still had one and could see if it was capable of detecting these flakes, the Lobo has a good reputation as a gold machine.

IMO A MXT is almost as sensitive as a GMT and it may be a hair deeper than a GMT on a larger nugget

      Reg;  Great response.
  Thanks for chimeing in on the thread. Short answer for you. All though I do like it when you get long winded . 

   So much to reply to.  ( if I was better at typeing).
The one thing Iv'e noticed in this end of nugget shooting is that the people that are finding the very small stuff are using the higher end head phones.     They really do make a big differance.
 I wish that every one of could put a few weeks nugget shooting on each of the above mentioned detectors. 
Ok,,,, with that said, I am now thinking Reg will be back and hopefully be long winded.

A friend of mine bought the same type of thing via China.  It would burn with a cigarette lighter.  It reacted to a detector as yours did.
It was crap. They still sell it via ebay.  They called it gold flakes but it seems they were referring to the colour of it.

The Cat

A very gold wise man I believe from Alaska once said,"A MXT, if you know how to set it up right, is a very good Nugget Machine in AZ. and No. Nev." (and other places also ) I haven't tried my MXT at Nugget Hunting yet, but I have done some air testing with it with some Mighty Small Nuggets, and it blew me away. Turn the machine on in Prospecting Mode. Put Sens at Preset, SAT at preset,  Set Threshold to your liking. Put track on ground and balance the machine to Farite, then lock track. Now, crank up the Sens to the stop, and crank up the SAT to Max(HyperSat) There is going to be a holey racket coming from your machine. Turn down the Threshold until the noise is tollerable You now have the MXT tuned to be a killer on Nuggets. In real ground, you may have to do some adjusting, but you get the message. This was done in my shop with the standard 950 coil. The smallest test nugget I have is 1.3 grain.
Anything smaller, I really do not care about. The MXT set as outlined will give a nice medium Zip when I wave the 1.3 Grain Nugget accrost the coil at about two inches. I am using a normal 2 second sweep speed Left to Right. Four seconds both ways......I don't know yet how far off these settings, if at all you would have to come in the real world of mineralized Nugget Ground, but that is going to be where I start when I get to the Gold Fields. Wish me luck.                                                                                                              PS; I am not even going to tell you how far I could pick up a 13 grain Nugget.

The MXT was derived from the GMT 

I recently purchased my first good Gold detector, the MXT and have a few crumbs of gold from last summers panning. The gold don't cover the bottom of an once vial and in an air test, it sounds off just fine, prolly four to fives inches. Either relic mode or prospect, even in coin, but not as well.

  Just about any good gold detector will sound off in a worthless air test. Now plop that stuff down in the ground and cover with dirt--NOW YOU HAVE A REAL TEST. There is not a whole lot of difference in gold vs relic/coin EXCEPT op frequency and the RIGHTEOUS GROUND BALANCING CAPABILITY of good old AMERICAN VLF detectors. I've pounded miles with my GB2 & TLST and between the many coils,frequencies and disc I rock pretty much anywhere. There are ungodly areas where a pulse won't work and reverse too.  The machine is only as good as the man behind it--EVER-tons a au 2 u 2 -John 

If you take the cap off of the vial it won't detect as well . its the foil in the cap.

I think your unit is more apt to give you a signal on a coin shaped object rather than an irregular multiple layered pile of very thin gold. Since it highly unlikely you will ever encounter such an target in the field you should take a thin gold neclace chain, chop out a small piece and melt it into a small ball. Flaten the gold ball with a small hammer. Now you have a real simulated gold nugget. Test this with your detector and see what it can do with that.