From a Backyard Signal to 15 Pounds of Gold

On September 9, 2022, I got the itch to prospect with my GPX5000 and search for the famed “nugget patch” everyone talks about.

I wasn’t even 500 feet from my dad’s back door, walking behind the house, when I got a signal. That signal turned out to be a 2.3-gram rough gold nugget.

This is where things got interesting. A friend of mine came over to examine the area. He brought along a Minelab GPZ7000 with a GP19 coil, and a wealth of experience in gold prospecting, hard rock mining, geology, and metal detecting. He was also the former owner of the famous Colorado Quartz Mine in Mariposa, California.

We spent three hours detecting 100 feet up the slope from where I found the first nugget, and 50 feet on either side. We were hoping to find its “siblings.” After a while, my friend gave up and said, “That nugget must have fallen out of some poor miner’s pocket or slipped out of a burlap sack full of gold.”

Over the next week, I continued searching daily with my GPX5000 — finally putting my college training to good use by properly tuning the machine. One day, I got another signal. Expecting trash, I dug carefully… and couldn’t believe my eyes when I uncovered a solid, round, 1-inch quartz-gold specimen weighing 13 grams!

The hunt was officially on. I could write a book detailing every discovery and the thrill that came with each one.

Long story short: It's now been 1 year and 2 months since I found that first nugget. My total gold recovered (by specific gravity) is over 15 pounds — all gold weight — much of it coarse nuggets and crystalline quartz-gold specimens.