Dirty Paws

I Was up in the forest above Graeagle 3 days ago detecting along with my girlfriend getting fresh air and looking for some new ground closer to me to claim. I had my sdc2300 and my girlfriend was using the gm1000. it was a great day even though it was very challenging ground to detect. even with our compact detectors and small coils we had to keep super tight sweeps do to the vegetation. My biggest challenge of the day was when I picked up a target near the base of a dead tree. the deeper I dug the fainter the target got. I dug for 10 minutes at least. I was so stuck in tunnel vision focused on the ground that I did not notice that there was a rusty Panther Martian fishing lure stuck in the tree trunk about 10 inches off the ground. I sure felt stupid but new lesson learned. after filling our pockets with lead and other various things we decided to head back to the car. It was on the walk back towards the car that I picked up a strong signal. I only had to drag the ground with my boot to move the target so I instantly assumed a soda tab or something light. I dig up all targets because you never know plus its just good practice to remove trash weather its yours or not. once had uncovered the target I was sure I found an unoxidized fresh piece of lead that just happened to look like a nugget. tested it with my magnet, did not stick. gave it the good old bite test and chipped my tooth. Oops. at this point I was puzzled. when we arrived home and jumped straight on my computer. after graduating from the geology school of You tube "lol" I ran a few tests on the object. first I weighed it (1.69 g). then I gave it a streak test comparing it to a known lead piece and a steal bird shot. the streak test was done on thick dense paper as I did not have a ruff white piece of porcelain, even checked toilets underside of the porcelain lid but was a raw color not white so was stuck with paper. after that i soaked it in muriatic acid over night, Nothing happened, no reaction, Oxidation or anything. then I put it in some cold aqua regia I made. it took over an hour for me to notice anything. it seems like it just cleaned off any surface contaminants. the next test I did was a density test. My mass was 1.69g and my liquid volume displacement was 0.077ml. entered it into a density calculator and got a density of 21.94805194852 g/m3. My best guess is it is a natural formed Platinum osmium alloy. Platinum has a density of 21.45 g/m3 and osmium has a density of 22.59 g/cm3 sure would be great but I have my doubts after searching for a long time on the internet looking up the history of any platinum found in Plumas county. only thing I found was was info about Nelson creek which is roughly 8 to 10 miles from the location I was at. it said very few platinum nuggets were found there the largest being bean size. barley larger than my alien jelly bean. that all I could find related platinum nuggets in Plumas county. Platinum is also way more rare than gold especially in the nugget form. I have not found a gold nugget with a detector yet so what are my chances that my first good find is something way more rare than gold? could the little alien jellybean be my first valuable find metal detecting? Wanting to do my Hallelujah but cant till i know what i have found. Is it worth sending off to get analyzed please let me know what you all think it could be? Thank you.

Welcome as well!, Seems like a great place place to meet new people in the hobby, share adventures and learn.

GB_Amateur Thank you for the kind welcoming. loving the detectors. yes getting cold here and ground is freezing but hope to do a few winter road trips to AZ, if I can find good places to detect without accidently claim jumping.

oops

rvpopeye thank you. Really loving detecting. Happy detecting!

Valens Legacy, Thank you for the warm welcome. Cant wait to have future adventures to post.

Hey Gerry thank you so much to you and your crew. I absolutely love the Minelab Sdc 2300 that I picked up from you. your crew is the nicest most knowledgeable group. it was lots of fun meeting a great group of new people into detecting. The class made my girlfriend and I feel super comfortable and confident with running our detectors. My girlfriend found a desert tarantula which was pretty awesome. We will be recommending the class to any new detectorists we run into. Thank you to Gerry and everyone that made the class such a great experience!

Hello everyone, hope you all are finding great gold and making even better memories! Adam (Dirty Paws) here from Northern California. I am fairly new to prospecting. I have been prospecting for about 3 years now, mainly panning, sluicing, and highbanking. In April 2021 purchased my first metal detector (Gold Monster 1000). Love the detector. Nov 7th 2021 I purchased a Minelab Sdc 2300 from Gerry from Gerry's Detectors and took his 3 day class at the Rye Patch with my girlfriend (Nicoles Gold). The class was great. Gerry and all of his staff were amazing. The amount of knowledge between them is infinite. since then my girlfriend and I have been trying to figure out new areas to detect and other individuals to do some detecting with. always wanting to gain more knowledge, experience, and respect for prospecting. Happy adventures to all!