Ok, woody the fellas have had their fun how about some backstory
So a little bit of a back-story as requested. I, like many of you, am only a weekend or what most people would call a hobbyist prospector, that said, I make use of my time doing research so I am well prepared long before I step foot in the field. I hadn't had much luck this year, or even late last year for that matter, walking away with little for my efforts. That said, I really do this just to get away from it all and be outdoors.
One of my younger brothers moved out here this spring and I introduced him to panning and we started hiking into some of the more remote areas that I hadn't frequented in a while. So obviously, as I am sure most of you can tell this is a Motherlode specimen, at this point I am hesitant to narrow it down any more than that as I am certain there could be more there...possibly larger?
We spent Saturday in the river sniping, I found this just before we were getting ready to call it a day. I had been working to expose bedrock near a large boulder, the boulder itself wasn't wanting to move even being under 3-4 feet of water but I had put pretty much my entire days work into freeing it up. It finally gave and with the buoyancy effect I was able to half roll the thing from the bedrock it had been sitting on.
The specimen was wedged under where the front squarish lip of the boulder would have been, a lot of heavies and some gravel had settled out as well, I didn't even notice it until I went under a second time and started fanning away at the gravels.
At first I dismissed it because these kind of things just aren't out there, I actually tossed it out of the way under water and decided it merited closer examination as it didn't make it very far with my toss before dropping to the bottom even with its relatively round shape and good underwater currents.
Bringing it out of the water I was shocked both by the weight and a better visual. I haven't been able to get a weight or estimate gold content yet as I only have a small scale that overloads at 1 lb, and my bathroom scale wont even register until around ten pounds of weight. My graduated cylinders aren't wide enough to accommodate the sample either so I am ordering a few things to test it. At this point I can say by palming it easily weighs somewhere between 3-5 lbs. It is roughly the size of a squashed or deformed baseball...obviously far from pure gold.
For now it is locked away for safekeeping. As much as it may be worth, I don't see myself parting with it for a while.
This is how I weigh my cats & it works fine, lol. (I weigh cats just to see how many anti-flea capsules they need). Hope you find more! Andi
