🥇 BANNER Gold Miner’s Starter Kit

Hendo0601

Sr. Member
Jul 30, 2014
257
455
California
🥇 Banner finds
1
Detector(s) used
Minelab CTX 3030
Primary Interest:
Metal Detecting
I live in and detect mostly in El Dorado County, California in search of early Gold Rush camps and settlements. The other day I was detecting a new area down on a creek and it was clear that no other detectorists had ever been there before me, great success!! Period 1850s targets began coming out of the ground and then I got a MONSTROUS overload signal on my CTX...I figured it was a cast iron stove door or something similar. I dug down and about 8” down I began unearthing a sluice rake, and next to it was an upside-down gold pan! Those who detect in the mother lode know how hard it is to find an intact gold pan as they are extremely brittle and disintegrate in the ground. I got these out of the hole and underneath the gold pan was ANOTHER gold pan! Two intact gold pans in one hole doesn’t happen...it just doesn’t...but there was still more. Underneath the gold pans were three intact pick heads, a sledge hammer, and two axe heads. In the same hole next to the gold pans was two intact period shovels, and underneath those was what I thought was another gold pan, but it turned out to be an upside-down long handled skillet. Underneath the skillet was two intact 3 prong forks and two spreader knives....and yet there was still more! Beneath the silverware was a small cooking pot with lid, a coffee pot with lid (sadly destroyed during the trip home), a broken pewter or Britannia metal spoon, 2 metal dinner plates, a fully intact JW Hunnewell condiment bottle, and the extremely brittle remains of what I can only assume was a rubberized tarp or tent material all folded up at the bottom of the hole. It took several hours to dig it all and 2 trips (2.4 miles each way) to carry it all out. It is literally a gold miner’s starter kit all in one hole! Truly one of the most epic finds of my life and I will never forget what it was like unearthing all of this at once!
Total contents of the cache:
1 sluice rake
2 gold pans
3 picks
2 shovels
2 axes
1 sledge hammer
2 forks
2 spreaders
1 spoon
1 skillet
1 small cooking pot with lid
1 coffee pot with lid (Destroyed)
2 metal plates
1 JW Hunnewell condiment bottle
1 folded up tarp/tent (destroyed)
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Hendo0601

Sr. Member
Jul 30, 2014
257
455
California
🥇 Banner finds
1
Detector(s) used
Minelab CTX 3030
Primary Interest:
Metal Detecting
Just checking in to see if you had gotten things preserved and taken a picture of it all together?

Don’t let it get mixed in with piles of other goodies you probably have laying around!

I actually just put the display together a few days ago and took some pics!
 

MrMarsHill

Full Member
Jan 15, 2019
168
528
Mars Hill NC
Detector(s) used
Garrett ACE 300, current main user.
Garret AT Propointer, current main user.
Garrett GTAX750, classic machine and I love it!
Bounty hunter tracker iv, missing knob bought used on eBay... Still find
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
So dang cool man! I envy you gold rush detectors. I have my own special finds, but there is something about the gold rush that gets my blood pumping. Maybe I was a '49er in another life haha. I had a later 1800s KEEN KUTTER pick a guy found at an old gold camp in Cali... had to sell it, but it was a special piece. If it wasn't already banner, id be voting haha. Worth the 2 trips no doubt. I would have crawled it out of there if I had too haha.
 

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Slowtaknow

Sr. Member
Oct 27, 2015
372
430
Kannapolis nc
Detector(s) used
Fisher f2, Tesoro vaquero, Nokta Simplex, Garrett Csi 250, whites gold master 2.
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
Someone never came back to reclaim, I wonder what happened?
 

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