Do Metal Detectors Detect Gold and Silver?


The beach is one of the best places to search for gold with a metal detector because people often lose their gold jewelry or rings in the sand without even realizing that they have lost it while surfing or that the earring has fallen. when they bent down to collect the shells.

Metal detectors can detect gold and silver. However, most metal detectors are made to discover ferrous metals and neither gold nor silver. So it is difficult, although not impossible, for a metal detector to find them. Specialized detectors for finding gold and silver exist though.

People are constantly losing their jewelry, and sometimes they can be found buried in the sand of a beach, by a lake or even in a park. Many lost jewelries can be found here, from gold or platinum rings and necklaces to silver bracelets and diamond earrings. Silver rings and other jewelry are some of the most common finds you may come across.

The potential is limitless, and the discovery of jewelry is very suitable for collectors and hunters who want to sell their treasures and make money. Although there are many treasures waiting to be discovered, jewelry is one of the most profitable targets. For centuries, there have been thousands of items made of silver, and it is very profitable to find metals for them.

So, if you find metal for silver, chances are you will find it very often. Silver is one of my favorite metals to detect, and I bet it will be yours.

Silver Can Be Found More Easily than Gold

Don’t get me wrong, I also love looking for gold, but the chances of finding gold are rare compared to finding silver items. It is common to find a lot of old bottle caps or bits of film before finding any gold coins, so we insist on getting a metal detector with excellent discrimination as we don’t want you to always have bad lenses. So, if you are solely interested in finding gold jewelry, we recommend that you choose a detector made specifically for this purpose. For example, all metal detectors detect gold, but there are several types that are more sensitive and specific for gold.

Entry-level gold detectors often have a specific ground balance, target ID, depth indicators, localization capabilities, and some decent ferrous metal detection performance. Gold detectors can be calibrated to specifically search for targets within this “mid” range. To compensate for this, gold detectors can be recalibrated on the fly to look for a wider or narrower range of time constants.

Since each terrain condition brings new challenges, gold can be registered in different ways on your tracker at any time. The main problem with using metal detectors to find gold nuggets is that they are almost always found in highly mineralized soils, in soils that contain a high proportion of iron. This logically means that high-frequency metal detectors are better at detecting gold because they can locate finer materials more accurately.

Metal Detectors with Low Frequency Penetrate Farther

In fact, low frequency detectors have a longer wavelength and help you search deeper because of the longer waves that can easily penetrate the ground. Gold detectors (look here on Amazon) are also good for finding silver. In all fairness, most detectors are capable of finding silver as it is highly conductive. I feel like a trader who says this (and I don’t), but I’ve seen this detector in action and it finds gold nuggets in areas that were absolutely CARED by the prospectors using almost every other detector on this list.

Like all VLF metal detectors, working in high-salinity soils can be tricky, but under ideal conditions, it can detect even the smallest gold nuggets. Because it scans the ground at such a high frequency, it will slightly reduce the effective detection depth, but almost all metal detectors on the market today have this trade-off. In addition, AT Gold has an all-metal mode, which provides the detector with incredible depth and sensitivity.

Compared with searching for natural gold (such as small nuggets and gold pieces when searching for gold), traditional metal detectors can be used to find gold rings, jewelry, and coins that are considered larger. Before you start looking for jewelry, you need a detector suitable for the job. Any detector expert will recommend that you do some research before buying a detector that suits you.

Affirmation that Metal Detectors Can Find Silver

Yes, they are definitely capable of detecting silver, and they do so very efficiently due to the high electrical conductivity of silver. If you find natural silver when detecting metals, there must be a lot of it because small amounts of minue silver, such as flakes, will not be detected by the detector. Now when looking for silver, since its conductivity is quite high, you should use a fairly low frequency.

The long waves emitted by low frequency detectors make it easy to penetrate the ground so you can deeply locate your precious silver targets. Multipurpose detectors are very good at signaling jewelry in different areas. Another common type are fixed “foot” metal detectors (see SS Security Check below), used at the entrances to prisons, courthouses and airports to locate metal weapons hidden on the body.

If a different coil (which acts as a magnetometer) is used to measure the magnetic field, a change in the magnetic field due to a metal object can be detected.

Gold and Silver Have Signature Responses to Metal detectors

What allowed the detectors to distinguish between metals is the fact that each metal has a different phase response when exposed to alternating current; longer (lower frequency) waves penetrate deeper into the ground and target highly conductive targets such as silver and copper; compared to shorter waves (higher frequency), which, although less penetrating into the ground, select low conductivity targets such as iron.

This selectivity or discrimination has allowed the development of detectors capable of selectively detecting desired metals while ignoring unwanted ones.

It is important to note that sometimes overuse of the Discrimination feature can actually block the display of certain gold signals on the metal detector. As with metal detectors designed for gold prospecting, the Fisher Gold Bug offers a variety of ground balance options, giving you maximum control over your detector regardless of soil mineralization.

Personally, I like to use small coils that will still detect gold at incredible depths if you set up your detector correctly. And since detectors mostly react to electrically conductive elements, you can find them very easily. The larger the coil, the deeper it will be detected, but it will have less sensitivity to small targets.

Nicholas Finn

I've been the captain of a fishing boat for over 20 years, and I created Pirateering to share my knowledge of and interest in seafaring.

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