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Sierra Mountains Gold Crown


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     I was with my family on vacation in the Sierras in a town called Downieville. I brought my detector, but quickly found out almost every bit of the Yuba River is a claim. I met a guy in town they called "Too Tall Tim", and he told me to go ahead and tell the guys I was his guest. The local area was claimed by a group called Comstock.

     I didn't really want to detect the river, as I could see that the guest pass didn't fly with everyone. I tried to communicate that I was actually looking for dropped jewelry, or coins, and relics, but swinging an Equinox 800 with a small coil, had people doubting that truth. 

     We took a day trip up to a place with two lakes, and plenty of swimming. I detected around the swimming area for a while, and besides clad change, came up with a small lead toy soldier. I decided to try around the edge of the second lake, and found this gold crown for a tooth. I was in Gold 1, Recovery Speed 7, Iron Bias 0, and manually ground balanced. It came up like an older pulltab between 16-18 on the VDI, and was only about an inch down.

     So I did find some gold, but it wasn't what I expected by a long shot. I showed Tim, and the other fellas in town, who were greatly amused that the guy who wasn't a prospector, came up with a bit of gold. I'll definitely be joining the club so I can do a little more searching around the river, and hopefully recover some more cool finds. I'd love to get into prospecting at some point, so a membership with them, as well as the GPAA may be a good start! 

     I wonder how that crown ended up there without the tooth. It looks old, but I'm no expert on dental history.

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So that’s where I lost it!

 Gold is where you find it and it makes no difference where that is. In the ground are in someone’s mouth 👄.haha

 The best!

 Chuck 

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35 minutes ago, LukeJMG1986 said:

I wonder how that crown ended up there without the tooth.

I think they are just cemented into place.  If the adhesive fails....  Pretty nice find and unlike a ring you probably won't be able to locate the person who lost it.  😁  Do you have a scale to weigh it?  And if you don't, they can be bought rather inexpensively, ~$10-$20 -- you'll hopefully need one in your future endeavors.  I have several with different precision levels (smallest measurement 0.1 g, 0.01 g, 0.001 g -- the middle one is probably the most useful for native gold searching).

Interesting figurine, too.  Toy soldier?

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34 minutes ago, GB_Amateur said:

Interesting figurine, too.  Toy soldier?

     I believe so. From the research my wife's grandfather did, he said that back in the late 1800s, to early 1900s there were these molds you could buy, and pour your own lead soldier toy, and then paint it. It has a lot of weight to it for the size, almost like a bullet, which leads me to believe it could be lead, possibly one of the "make it yourself" toys grandpa was talking about.

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38 minutes ago, GB_Amateur said:

Do you have a scale to weigh it? 

     I actually do have a small digital scale. I haven't weighed it yet, but if I had to guess, I'd say 6-8 grams. Like the toy soldier, it's a weighty little tooth crown when you bounce it in the palm of your hand. Maybe I'll make a cool necklace out of it. I found a 14k chain at a tot-lot not too long ago. It would definitely make for a good talking piece 😁

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Nice work...don't let them guys scare you off your not jumping their claim when looking for jewelry and the like...but what would you do if you thought your were digging a quarter signal with the nox and instead pulled up a 1 ounce gold nugget on their claim? would throw it back? give it to Ole Too tall Tim? what would Tim do with it once you gave it to him? just thinking out loud here... go out and have fun... you have been doing really well so far with your new hobby...and joining a club is a great way to meet people and get your foot in the door so to speak. 

strick 

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I found a whole section from someone’s gob a bunch of years ago. You can see the very fine join where the two pieces lock together like a jigsaw puzzle.

This was from an old 1850’s gold field though not sure if they date to back then. The workmanship is brilliant.

On the underside you can still see parts of the teeth they locked over to hold them in place.

 

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Crazy, I found golden crown too years back, mine came from a backyard though, I'll see if i can dig it out to add to the photo collection here when I get back home. How are so many people losing crowns, getting in knockout brawls or something?

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