Wanted - Compass 1990-1992 Metal Detector Catalog

[Lennie Anderson]

Thanks Steve.

[Wild Bill]

 

Here’s the specimen in the Compass 1991 catalog.  I actually don’t know how it got in the catalog but it was found on the North Fork of the Yuba River in Sierra County in 1986.  It was actually found running our 8” VW powered dredge as we operated up and down the river for many years often using two 8” dredges together.  We also ran a big custom built VW powered winch built from a mine hoist to pull rock baskets and large boulders.  The unusual thing about this quartz nugget is that it could have been found with a detector because it was on the top of the gravel on the side of a gravel bar just under some sand barely under the water!  I just started clearing overburden that had minor amounts of flood gold.  All the gold was on bedrock with some nuggets up to quarter Oz.  So the biggest gold was on top of the gravel.  It was a very rich area.  I took it to UNR and they did a specific gravity test, weighing about 20 Troy ounces with about 9 ounces being gold.  I enjoy metal detecting now days as my dredging days are long gone but my wife and I recovered some amazing gold back in the 1980s and had seen others make great cleanups.  The largest nugget I saw pulled from a bedrock crevice was 53 Oz.  The most gold recovered from one crevice was about 800 Oz.  By a friend also running another 8” dredge and using a Cat 941 track loader to pull boulders.  Yes we got away with that back in the day.  No harm was ever done.  Just relocating rocks.