Posted on 10/22/2014 9:16:37 PM PDT by PeaceBeWithYou
A five pound, quarter of a million dollar gold nugget was found on Butte County public land this summer.
The nugget, found in July, is currently being held at Kagin's Inc. in the Bay Area and will be unveiled to the public at the San Francisco Fall Antiques Show scheduled to begin Thursday.
Information about the nugget and its finder remain vague.
The person who found it has chosen to keep their identity a secret, and the location of its discovery is only being described as somewhere in the foothills in Butte County on public land.
The Butte Nugget was found with a metal detector, buried about 12 inches underground. It weighs in at 5.18 pounds and is 75 troy ounces. Experts say the gold is valued at somewhere between $250,000 and $400,000.
‘the San Francisco Fall Antiques Show’
Otherwise known as The Cornholers’ Convention.
Well, there is some “collector value” to a nugget beyond the spot price of the gold.
Anyone can make a nugget.
Let’s see if some inner city lady from Ohio (or wherever) files a lawsuit claiming it was hers, but she dropped it and this guy picked it up and is cashing it in, just as happened with the Powerball ticket.
Pulled a large nugget out of their Butte.
Such a great scene!
“I’z like yous ta meet my daughter, Avoirdupois Jones.”
I find small nuggets on public land all the time. The secret is to look where gold has been found already. If it is rich enough you can still file a mining claim.
I say good for him, but I don’t see why anyone would publicize a find like that, especially on Federal land.
I think that I would have quietly gone home and melted it down.
Maybe there’s a reason he didn’t ?
Anyhow, good for him.
“I narrowed it down. It is here in this general area....”
Most likely found along Butte Creek, which is known for producing some nice nuggets.
A friend of mine and I worked a small claim (100 ft. of creek) on Butte Creek back in the mid-70’s. Some days we’d get skunked and some days proved quite lucrative.
Just over the ridge was the Feather River where a guy found a 54 lb. nugget in 1859, known as the “Magalia Nugget” or “Dogtown Nugget”.
There’s still a lot of gold to be found in that area, but California environmentalists have pretty much closed down all mining activity.
Nope, an ounce is 28.3495 grams, a troy ounce is 31.1035 grams.
So it's 1.0971 regular ounces per troy ounce.
A troy pound is 373.24 grams, a pound is 453.59 grams.
“The secret is to look where gold has been found already.”
Correct.
We used to hit the old claims and work the tailings. They got most of the big stuff back during the gold rush days, but their sluices and dredges were inefficient and the finer placer flakes would pass through.
We’d move rocks to get to the bottom and bring buckets of black sand home and pan them out during the winter months.
Even though it’s been 40+ years ago, I think I’m starting to get gold fever again.
Would it not have been smarter to have disposed of this nugget on the qt, bit by bit, even if it brought in less for it than as an intact nugget?
Whatever happened to the people in California who found the can full of gold coins? I suspect that gubmint at all levels will confiscate 80% of the proceeds.
It's a link from a local news station out of Redding, California. Does your local news tell you what state your town is in with every story?
Placer is simply gold that is not bound in other rocks.
It is carried by water or weather from place to place.
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