I call gold the ninja of all metals because it is so adept at hiding and disguising itself as other things...trash more often than not.
The good thing is I found tons of gold with both my F2 and my F70, all were 5" or less in depth and so far every one was solid and repeating every time no matter where they came in.
By itself, solid, next to trash, solid thanks to the target separation and recovery speeds the Fishers possess.
This might not be true every time, however, in some situations gold can be jumpy and at depth near the limit of your coils scanning field especially although I have not dug any very deep as of yet using any detectors and all sorts of other things can and will affect gold signals and could fool you.
In dry sand gold can drop deep because it is so dense, my first ever gold ring was a child's ring and was very small, weighed very little and still dropped down to the 7-8" level in dry sand at a freshwater beach.
Where does it come in...everywhere from iron on the tiny stuff and very thin chains all the way up through low zinc on big 10k class rings and even higher on high karat pieces or larger gold coins.
I have dug 5 large 10k class rings, every one came in between 48-52 low zinc which is why I might skip the higher low 60's real zincoln signals from time to time but never ever solid low zinc numbers.
Most of those signals at these numbers were can slaw...5 times for me it wasn't.
Karat purity, size, ground conditions and the position it is laying in the ground will affect the signals you get among other things.
A very small 24k ring a club member found on a hunt was not a foil signal as it would have been if it was 10-14k but much higher at a solid dime signal because it was pure.
White gold is a whole different ball game, also, because it is alloyed with other metals to get that silver color it will come in at different places along the conductivity scale than normal compared to yellow gold of the same shape and size.
Higher if it is mixed with silver, way lower if it is mixed with nickel which I have found to be way more common.
To illustrate here are two similar rings I found both 10k.
The white gold on the left is two sizes larger than the yellow gold but came in at 24 foil vs. the smaller yellow gold ring which was a solid 35 nickel.
Here is some of the 36 gold targets I have found over the years and their VDI numbers and sections tested on my F2 to give you a good idea where gold might come in.
Most came in at these numbers but some were slightly different in the ground.
More than half were found with my F2 and the way I found them was by knocking out iron only and digging all other solid signals I came across.
As you can see I wasn't kidding when I said anywhere and everywhere.
Tabs is one area it can come in for sure but that would usually be the more rare larger types.
Look at the numbers...I have found way more in foil and nickels than anywhere else.
