New Zealand Gold Prospecting & Metal Detecting Forums Archive

That's an awesome find mate! there cant be many of those in the ground in NZ.

I rekon the vertical edge of the area under the 'tail' of the six looks very straight. Need to have a look with a loupe can be difficult to see. Your still a lucky bugger either way!

Hi there, West Coaster here, in regards to your West Coast hunt, one of the problems with hunting parks and domains in Greymouth and the wider West Coast area is that ground conditions mean that over the years alot of the Domain type parks have been resurfaced, meaning they have been completely dug out and redone, flipped over or something similar.

Take the Karoro domain for example, this includes the Marist Rugby Ground, the Suburbs Rugby League Ground and the domain area itself, all of that area has been dug out and redone over the last 5 years, many other 'sports' type surfaces have been dug out and resurfaced over the last 20 years or so.

I believe there are still some really really good places to hunt but likely takes some investigation.

PS. If anyone needs old survey plans of areas let me know hehe.... that includes in the canterbury area or anywhere in the country for that matter.

Hah just done a search of Bottle Lake that is a massive area of Public access land hehe, there is what looks like a really old town (no longer any buildings) to the south near the beach. Possibly a quarry there now?
I use the Landonline system to get plans and each plan costs $5 from LINZ so might want to be quite specific about the area you want to know about hehe, anyways the cool things about old plans is quite often they will show you where old buildings and even old reserve areas were 115 years ago (or however many years depending on the age of the plan) which is cool. It is even possible to calculate the coordinates of buildings etc but this does take a bit of work, eg plugging into cad and getting some coordinate connection somewhere and then converting to NZMG coords for use with a handheld GPS. But willing to help people out if able, I have a massive selection of West Coast plans and even a large selection of Hard copy aerial photos, it is possible to get from LINZ CDs/DVDs of survey plans from each district, well it least it used to be for the meagre cost of a few hundred dollars (all the old plans are digitised now) and then this could just be crossed referenced with say a Landonline Spatial printout to find the plans for a specific area.

Cheers Creamer, appreciate your comments.
Yes, it was a very special surprise to flip the 180 year old coin over and see a nice clear, sharp William IV profile. I'm still grinning from ear to ear..... Cheers man.😊

The internet overdate looks a bit dodgy haha, yeah the best place to see the 5 would be the flat top & I cant see anything in your pic so I guess ur right man. Now you'll have to go find another one to compare!

Quick hour hunt this arvo to a field that was used during WW2 as a training ground.....somewhere in mid Canterbury..😎
Was hard work locating the right spot but I think I might have got pretty close to it judging by the finds......

GL & HH.

Out on another country roadie again today. Scored a couple of sweet finds, both not far from one another and in a place you would just not expect......see the roadside pic.....yes, they were both from the right hand side grassy area beside the road!
The first is an 1860 Beath and Co drapery token in reasonable nic. The other is a circa 1864 Hobday and Jobbern's drapery token....hardly identifiable but for the shield motif which nailed the identity from a picture in a book I have.
The other cool find is quite modern and a long way from home.....a $1 New Mexico Casino token from another spot.

GL & HH.

Haha, knew you would. Didn't see any previous dig marks (well disguised...well done!), so thought maybe you hadn't done that bit.
Went across the road ( not the front house) and got a permission to hunt the field with the big old Oaks. Spent about an hour there with no significant finds. Apparently, that house at the front is on a seperate title and is an old converted school house!
I/we have permission to go back to that field again sometime if we want.

Haha...yep, more of the same I guess but won't be until late afternoon.