As a prospector, I’m always thinking of easier ways to find gold. After all, it’s no easy task to accumulate even a small amount of the yellow metal. I’m usually content to find even 1 or 2 grams of gold after a long day of digging. Let’s get this out of the way first… GOLD […]
Finding gold nuggets with metal detectors should be easy, right? The detector beeps, you dig, that’s it! Not really. Not only is it difficult, using metal detectors to find gold nuggets is a painfully slow process that requires patience and skill. Big nuggets are like finding a needle in a haystack. Most are tiny. Heavy […]
What do most people think of when they think of natural treasures? I consider the natural mineral that come from the Earth… things like diamonds, emeralds, gold, silver, rubies and sapphires. Natural gold is of particular interest for a couple of reasons. Over the past few years this precious metal has hovered between $1200 and […]
Metal detectors respond very differently to a solid, dense gold nugget than a thin, wiry gold specimen. Sometimes these unusual, “non-traditional” gold nuggets are virtually invisible to certain types of metal detectors. It isn’t just the size of the gold that makes them hard to hear. I have seen large multi-ounce specimens of gold that […]
I had a discussion with a fairly newbie gold prospector recently. He has been finding some decent gold, mostly down in dry creek beds on club claims and known gold mining areas. He mentioned his confusion about where gold actually occurs, and how anyone would ever go about finding the source of the gold, rather […]
There are a few different options on where to sell your gold. If you are a prospector who has accumulated a bit of placer gold that you need to sell for some quick cash, one simple place that you can sell it is to a refinery. Refineries will pay you for the actual gold content […]
The Fricot Gold Nugget is one of the finest crystalline gold specimens in existence today. It was discovered in Eldorado County, California in 1865. Located in the heart of California’s Mother Lode Country, Eldorado County is well known for producing some spectacular museum grade gold nugget since the days of the early gold rush. Numerous […]
The Mojave nugget is a huge chunk of gold discovered by Ty Paulsen in 1977. It was said to have been discovered using a metal detector in the area of Randsburg, California in Kern County. As part of the Stringer Mining District, the Mojave nugget is not the only large nugget to have come from […]
The Armstrong Nugget was found in Eastern Oregon, and is the largest known existing gold nuggets known to be found in the state. It was found in Elk Creek, near the historic mining town of Susanville. Located in Grant County, the mining town has long been abandoned, and only a few old building remain at […]
The largest gold nugget ever found in Alaska was discovered in 1998. It was recovered from a placer mining operation near the small town of Ruby, Alaska by Barry Clay. He was moving material with a bulldozer along Swift Creek when something unusual caught his attention. He jumped out of his dozer and examined the […]