Do You Remember Finding Your First Nugget?

[Glenn in CO]

Do you remember finding your first nugget?

I started selling my gold specimen collection that I found metal detecting in 2021. Between 2021 and this year I finished cleaning, photographing and selling what I had found metal detecting starting in the summer of 1990. My first gold specimen was found with the White’s Goldmaster II. Learning how to ground balance and maintain the ground balance to the changing ground, distinguish between a good target and hot rocks, dealing with iron targets, did not make finding that first gold specimen any easier. But finding that first gold specimen and the ones that followed made my ability and confidence grow as each year went by. I was fortunate that my wife and dad enjoyed metal detecting for gold specimens and that we were able to share the excitement and experience finding some incredible gold specimens.

My first gold specimen weighed 4.6 grams:

 

The area where I found my first gold specimen:

 

Some of the gold specimens that I, my wife and dad found the first year metal detecting:

 

[glacialgold]

Guarantee I'll remember my first nugget...whenever I actually find one!

But seriously, those are lovely nuggets you have pictured. How many nuggets and specimens would you estimate you found during those years of detecting?

[Glenn in CO]

1 hour ago, glacialgold said:

Guarantee I'll remember my first nugget...whenever I actually find one!

But seriously, those are lovely nuggets you have pictured. How many nuggets and specimens would you estimate you found during those years of detecting?

Between my wife, I and my dad over 800 gold specimens.

[Dutchman4]

I found my first nugget in the Dale District on Feb 7, 2022, a testimony that I am a relative newbie at metal detecting for gold.

I bought a slightly used GPX6000 the day before and took it to the Dale for my first outing with it and I got a very weak signal in a decomposed quartz vein.  It turned out to be a very small nugget that took me some time to recover because I kept loosing it, I really didn't know what I was doing.  I celebrated like I had found a multi ouncer because after 4 years of finding only trash, with my Gold Bug Pro, I didn't think that I would ever find gold or even had the ability to do it.

[Lead Detector]

I Vaguely remember my first find. It was approximately Aug 4th, 2024, at 8:15 AM pacific time. It was a sunny morning with Temps about 75.6 degrees Fahrenheit at an elevation of 6473.2 ft.  🙂

[okara gold]

I sure do! It was around late 1986. I was trying to ground balance a Garrett ADS-7 coin machine (it was the only machine I owned), and it was right over a tiny nugget, not much more than a gram. It was near Black Canyon City in Arizona.

[Ridge Runner]

This wasn’t my first gold nugget but more so where I found two twin nuggets.

 This was when this old gale had the 24 K claim and she started this club. 
 What she would do with a bulldozer is cut down about 6” a patch about half  the size of a basketball court are less. Then on a Saturday we’d all line up and hunt it . With all the detectors going off you didn’t know if it was yours are the guy next to you.

 One day I found where they had been parking the dozer and here was all this dried clay that had fallen out of the tracks. I started hunting it and I come up with two nuggets . The first was little over a gram and a half with the other at just under two grams . This claim was on the side of rich hill just outside of Stanton Arizona and I was swinging a GP 3500 then.

 Keep going up the road to the Johnson mine and I hunted it when Steve Scott had it and I had some luck there. I had the GP Extreme then.

 Chuck 

[okara gold]

10 hours ago, Ridge Runner said:

This wasn’t my first gold nugget but more so where I found two twin nuggets.

 This was when this old gale had the 24 K claim and she started this club. 
 What she would do with a bulldozer is cut down about 6” a patch about half  the size of a basketball court are less. Then on a Saturday we’d all line up and hunt it . With all the detectors going off you didn’t know if it was yours are the guy next to you.

 One day I found where they had been parking the dozer and here was all this dried clay that had fallen out of the tracks. I started hunting it and I come up with two nuggets . The first was little over a gram and a half with the other at just under two grams . This claim was on the side of rich hill just outside of Stanton Arizona and I was swinging a GP 3500 then.

 Keep going up the road to the Johnson mine and I hunted it when Steve Scott had it and I had some luck there. I had the GP Extreme then.

 Chuck 

Hey Chuck! I was in on many of those dozer pushes for years. The guy who owned it was George Medd. Sadly, he was crushed to death while working under it one day on his own property. I have some old pictures of a group of people hunting those pushes. Ellie Loftin owned the claims called Devil's Nest. Those claims lived up to their name many times. I met a guy named Chuck who was from Nacogdoches, TX. Wonder if it was you?

Nice memories and great gold!

 

[Ridge Runner]

1 hour ago, okara gold said:

Hey Chuck! I was in on many of those dozer pushes for years. The guy who owned it was George Medd. Sadly, he was crushed to death while working under it one day on his own property. I have some old pictures of a group of people hunting those pushes. Ellie Loftin owned the claims called Devil's Nest. Those claims lived up to their name many times. I met a guy named Chuck who was from Nacogdoches, TX. Wonder if it was you?

Nice memories and great gold!

 

No that wasn’t me!

 Chuck