Many of you who have followed my posts over the last couple years know that I'm a bit of a treasure hunter. I caught the treasure bug living in the Caribbean, and would frequently dive along the reefs looking for old sunken treasure. Although I never found any, it was a lot of fun and got me hooked for life.
Once I moved back to the United States, I shifted treasure hunting from diving to prospecting for gold or other minerals. Most of the time you come back empty handed, but the adventure is the real reward. Although at times you find some shiny gold to bring home with you. Over the years I've had the most luck in the desert southwest and in California when it comes to gold.
I have a lot of prospector friends that I've met over the years. We've had some good times out in the deserts or mountains, and even found a fair amount of gold in the process. Today I'm going to share a gold nugget that came from northern California, it's one a friend of mine found. I've always liked nuggets with some quartz matrix still attached to them, so I swapped a couple of my nuggets for this one. It was love at first sight!
Pictures from Paul Johnson
This nugget weighs just about 1.2 grams, so not huge by any means. However, it is a really nice little piece of gold. My friend Paul gave me these photos too when we swapped nuggets, at the time he had a much better camera setup than I did, and it really picked up some nice details of the quartz crystals embedded in the gold. Isn't that an awesome gold nugget?
Once you find you're first gold you'll get the gold bug, just a warning. It's a hard habit to break!
The Mojave Nugget
raregoldnuggets.com
The State of California really is a place that is still very rich in gold. Every winter the snow covers the mountains and then with the spring melt it washes gold downstream from gold veins in the higher elevations. If you know where to look you can frequently at least find some fine gold mixed in with the sand. On some occasions you may even find some nice little nuggets. This does require a fair amount of work as gold panning is labor intensive. If it were easy, everyone would do it!
Over my years of treasure hunting I've become more of a metal detector fan. It involves less time hunched over panning at the river's edge. The downside is you often will find nothing but old garbage like cans and old nails. But on occasion you can find a big score.
In 1977 a metal detectorist named Ty Paulsen went detecting outside of Randsburg, California. What he found was a life changing experience, he had found the Mojave Nugget. This incredible gold nugget weighs 156 Troy ounces (4.9 kg), just imagine how fast your heart would be racing if you found one similar to this! At gold prices today it's worth more than $524,000 just by gold content, but collectors will pay huge premiums for nuggets this big. At the right auction you could pull in $750,000 to $1,000,000, not a bad days work.
Thrift Store Gold & Silver
For those of you less interesting in spending your day in the outdoors experiencing nature, there are other less labor intensive ways to find treasure. Thrift stores are a great place to find big scores, I've often uncovered some valuable LEGO finds in these places. Many of the bigger stores don't have sufficient staff to properly analyze all of the incoming donations, and in some cases completely miss gold and silver.
One reddit user recently shared a take they found at a thrift store, inside an old jewelry box. The thrift store employee either didn't look in the drawers or just assumed in was worthless costume jewelry.
reddit
reddit
As it turns out there was $780 worth of gold and silver at spot price price. All this for the price of $9.99 for the jewelry box! Not a bad score for just searching around in a thrift store... I've personally never looked at jewelry boxes in thrift stores in the past, but now I will be sure to check them all out as well as the LEGOs.
Treasure hunting is a great hobby, it gets you out of the house and burning some calories. If you are interested in gold prospecting a great way to start is to find a local prospecting group, they are usually pretty easy to find online. Often they are very willing to help you get started, and if you're lucky they may let you tag along when they go prospecting.
A few final thoughts on treasure hunting. Please always keep in mind that it's always a good idea to go out with a friend as there is safety in numbers. Always be mindful of someone else's mining claim, they will be marked and they won't like claim jumpers. And always remember not to take dangerous risks, because you can't spend your treasure if you're dead.
That will do it for this Monday's treasure hunting post. Please feel free to leave any questions or comments below, and thanks for taking the time to stop by and checking it out. I want to thank all of you for all of your support, it deeply appreciated. Have a great week everyone!
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojave_Nugget
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/articles/shopper-amazed-looking-inside-jewelry-104536645.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9kdWNrZHVja2dvLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAGbGlE0g9Iqv6IdrkPh3fTw7r_xX7pOcdR87d7xxgbMOBGN77YCHWu-LuNqazn-ofEyWa2G16Q5MmqqMxv_y4WigiSzIqB234IHVP350ufeoMMPQZgx2qkbYygqoffeF0YXVFWJlmMvYIBwxv6dd4ujoe0DEqpcLSiP0_phNlaTg
Disclaimer:
I am not a financial planner and this isn't financial advice. Please always do your own research before investing your money. You worked hard enough to earn it!
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