My Cobra Nugget specimen...found !


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Here is a piece I found a while back.....I did not expect this type of gold in the area I was hunting....but my buddies 1200 acre ranch was known for gold during the gold rush, so I asked it I can do some hunting. Most of his ranch is used for beef cattle...grain fed which is becoming very popular and very expensive. But back to this Cobra nugget. So I am hitting some tailing piles...not knowing what to expect but the usual iron tin and various trash....we all dig out of these piles. I most have been detecting for about three hours.. when i get a nice solid signal from my sadie coil....diggin down 10 inches or so....the shine of yellow staring at me.....what amazed me the most is it's hoppered and best of all an obvious cobra head at the top and kinda looks like its coiled throughout the piece. post-65703-0-13496600-1408905511_thumb.jpost-65703-0-46206400-1408905545_thumb.j

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Well..... when I lived in Ventura I use to hunt the east fork of the San Gabriel river up in the hills of Azusa, California. Most of the time myself and a few friends Don and Howard of Burbank and the famous mayor of Follows Camp Bernie the Miner. We would meet at the restaurant and eat a greasy but damn good breakfast and go on to prospect various gulches below hwy 39 off of shoemaker road. We had some success I found over 100 small nuggets over a few years with my first gold machine the Whites V-sat goldmaster. But what intrigued me the most were stories Bernie, and Al Marconi who ran a small gold /prospecting shop told me of large gold being found past the bridge to no where...a bridge the state build in the 30's by convict labor that leads to no where to day. Al showed me a gnarly 1.5 ounce nugget that was found up beyond the bridge. This area is a hike and not to many people go up there, but I did make a trip there once with my V-sat and spent very little time as I was alone and did not want to spend more than one night in the wilderness area. So, 12 years forward am now living in the Motherlode....I always wanted to go back for a visit with my 4500....so I did that. I drove from my brothers house in Ventura 2 hours south to Azusa and turned up hwy 39 and up into the hillz...I went up shoemaker rd...and hiked into what we called nugget-gulch which runs from the old hwy 39 down to the river...and detected it with my 4500 for a few hours did not find much but just a little trash...so I decided to do the hike to the bridge....along the way on a trail which runs along the river...you notice coyote holes going into the ancient placer deposits. Today...there are a very few who actually are working very, very carefully in those old channels and recovering huge nuggs...but I would not recommend it. After passing a number of old workings I came to one that had some shallow bedrock above the river but up high on a bench..so i started detecting as I realized i had but 4-5 hours before I had to hike back, before it gets to dark. I was alone and high above the river working an old diggins and no one around..but this time with my 4500 :) after diggin up various rusty nails and small boot nails..on some tailing piles...I decided to dig above and beyond the workings and broaden my search area..so i went up above higher and noticed some quartz float. I noticed there were some depressions in the ground man made and started detecting the area and thats when i got this signal...soft , very mellow sound..I dug down about 10 inches and WHAM ..the color of yellow....I could not believe it...I was using my 8x6 sadie by the way. I spent a few hours more with nothing else....and hiked back to my car and left....thinking I am going to come back again one day to my spot .....and this time bring a tent and enough food and water for a few days....and maybe find more.

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You need to put that very special Cobra nugget in a very safe place, could be, but not necessarily a bank box, as with the times, you might not be able to access it again, if things in the country go south...add to that, a second trusted person should know it's whereabouts. And NEVER give it to anyone to sell for you, would be my advice. Perhaps others might have a different take on that aspect, however

I have seen even 1 oz. nuggets go for more $$$$$.$$ than you can ever imagine, for their size. The eye and desire of the right collector and his/her willingness to pay, will dictate the price. I would say you could fare quite well.

I hope you masked the location here as you wrote your story, which is an interesting one, to be sure. Just as a photo of a place a guy finds something everyone else may be interested in, the background should always be one that a well traveled prospector cannot say, hey, I know where that picture was taken... Happens ALL the time.

Congratulations on your find!

Gary/Largo

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