Lost gold and gems...we know u've found it, how many have lost it?

Ok ill start this one off but im sure many of you have ugly stories of losing your pride and joy. I had a vial of the good stuff, kept it in my pocket as my good luck charm and one afternoon reached into the pocket to find my blood sweat and tears...GONE!

Im yet to fall over and spill a concentrate pan, I have dropped a sapphire or two and spent some time on my knees trying to locate them.

There must be some interesting stories out there...like sneezing on your flour gold, or the dirty leach on the hand causing the pan to fly into the air and...oops its all gone.

I still hope that vial turns up somewhere, hey im still looking for that envelope I lost at home with $1500 in it. Where the hell did that go!

I'm sure I am not the only one so would love to hear a story or two of how you had it, and how you let it "slip away" !!! Who knows, some may have a Lasseter's tale of finding the reef, and not finding your way back to it.

I lost ALL the gold so when you find it just PM me and i'll describe it and organise to pick it up.

my mate once swapped a car for cash and some sapphires.. His kids got hold of the sapphs and spread them all over the place never to be seen again.... 8.(

I have been 'lucky' enough to lose gold on two occasions, first one was i had some very fine gold in a stainless ashtray i use to dry it out on the stove, well i had dried it, let it cool and sat it on the bench, when my fiance came home she knocked it of the bench unknown to her it was gold and said to me not to put a dirty ashtray inside on the bench... my response to that, IT WAS GOLD NOT ASH WOMAN!!!! she wasn't sure what to say to that but did get me a beer.

The second time was after i had panned out all my cons at home and had a couple of inches of gold/black sands in the bottom of a large yoghurt container, i sat it down beside my barbeque cause i had to run to the shops, well by the time i got home the lawn maintenance guys (i live in units) had come and mowed and done a lovely job with the whipper snippier around the edges and around my barbeque, found the cons on the ground, done my best to recover it but still haven't panned it off yet

I had about 3g of fines in a snuffer on the ground behind a log.went to do some panning,a couple of minutes later my 13yr old son comes over shows me a pan full of gold.i says that is amazing where did you get that.he says over near the log.i go to check ,my boy points out the spot with a strange look on his face and then tells me he stood on my snuffer bottle a squirted the contents over a metre of creek bed.but he shoveled it back in his pan and recovered it all.luckily.the time teaching him to pan was well worth it.lol.i have seen many a snuffer bottle(not mine) float down a creek/river.some were found others are probably still out there somewhere

A good tip if you lose your fine gold or sapphires in thick carpet, put a pantyhose stocking leg over the vaccum cleaner nossle. Let it suck the leg in a bit hold the outside so it doesn't all get sucked in and run your vaccum over the spill. Your gold and gems will be caught by the pantyhose. Turn off vaccum and pull out the stocking and your goodies will be sitting in a nice clump in the bottom.

About a year after we started prospecting i got into the habit of taking my gold with me to Oallen in vials to show people who were stopping bye for a chat and a stickybeak. One day i had 3 vials on me, one with about 15g of dust, one with about 0.5g of dust and one with a 0.5g nugget. At the end of the day i went to get the vials out to add what we had in the snuffer bottle to the 0.5g vial, to my horror i pulled out to caps and some broken glass with gold dust on my fingers Thankfully the 15g vial was intact but the 0.5g vial had shattered and the lid had somehow come off the vial with the 0.5g nugget and it was not in my pocket 8.(
We ended up highbanking my pocket and got about 0.4 back of the dust but after much searching still no sign of the 0.5g nugget :/
We came back the following week and continued where we had left off as we were doing well at that spot. At the lunchtime clean out we could see a nice line of gold in the pan, but to my joy, as i got about halfway through panning i saw a huge flash of gold and after giving it a prod with my finger saw it was the nugget we had lost the previous week

Brumble-Gum said:

A good tip if you lose your fine gold or sapphires in thick carpet, put a pantyhose stocking leg over the vaccum cleaner nossle. Let it suck the leg in a bit hold the outside so it doesn't all get sucked in and run your vaccum over the spill. Your gold and gems will be caught by the pantyhose. Turn off vaccum and pull out the stocking and your goodies will be sitting in a nice clump in the bottom.

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Great tip there BG, im sure there are also few flakes and sapphire chips in my 4wd carpet so may give it a go.

My first and only saphire the size of a grain of rice fell through the cracks in the timber pavers on our deck. One day I am going to have to lift them and retrieve it. :8

shivan said:

About a year after we started prospecting i got into the habit of taking my gold with me to Oallen in vials to show people who were stopping bye for a chat and a stickybeak. One day i had 3 vials on me, one with about 15g of dust, one with about 0.5g of dust and one with a 0.5g nugget. At the end of the day i went to get the vials out to add what we had in the snuffer bottle to the 0.5g vial, to my horror i pulled out to caps and some broken glass with gold dust on my fingers Thankfully the 15g vial was intact but the 0.5g vial had shattered and the lid had somehow come off the vial with the 0.5g nugget and it was not in my pocket 8.(
We ended up highbanking my pocket and got about 0.4 back of the dust but after much searching still no sign of the 0.5g nugget :/
We came back the following week and continued where we had left off as we were doing well at that spot. At the lunchtime clean out we could see a nice line of gold in the pan, but to my joy, as i got about halfway through panning i saw a huge flash of gold and after giving it a prod with my finger saw it was the nugget we had lost the previous week

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had something simil5 happen to me. For the rest of the trip people were calling me gold pockets.

My interstate jaunt I highlighted two mishaps. Pan and snuffer bye bye down the Delegate river in Bendoc, and putting the Highbanker on the snuffer while packing up near cooma. Had feet on the Highbanker sink on one side and watched a 3 hour run dissappear over the end once too.
Lessons learnt..... attach snuffer to around the neck strap and put fluro yellow dot on one side.
Clean up highbanker regularly in case of mishaps like tipping, pump running out of fuel or children being curious. Also modified my equipment to have flat feet based on a design that's not my own.
Not expensive lessons but well learnt. Put all my gold in plastic vials or wrapped in poly foam. Starting to sound a bit cavalier but there's a couple of tips for free.

Found a speci on the side of a mullock dump that was around an old shaft, Twas about the size of a cherry tomatoe, pretty excited when I picked it up, spun to the side hitting the handle on the 5k, sending almost both to the bottom of an inaccessible old shaft, coiltek power lead saved the 5, speci long gone......

Ramjet said:

My first and only saphire the size of a grain of rice fell through the cracks in the timber pavers on our deck. One day I am going to have to lift them and retrieve it. :8

https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/img/member-images/214/1425080408_20150228_103902_copy.jpg

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Try my tip with the vaccum. You will get it.

Brumble-Gum said:

Ramjet said:

My first and only saphire the size of a grain of rice fell through the cracks in the timber pavers on our deck. One day I am going to have to lift them and retrieve it. :8

https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/img/member-images/214/1425080408_20150228_103902_copy.jpg

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Try my tip with the vaccum. You will get it.

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Thanks Brumble Gum. I had thought of that. I have vaccumed before to just get the dirt ou. tReally need to lift them to give it a good clean.

My story is lost and found, back about the end of 2013 I had just started out prospecting a few months earlier, having found about 1.3 grams of fine alluvial in those months I melted it down into a button. I already had a xterra 70 detector which I had purchased a few years earlier and had the bright idea that I would test it on my gold button. grabbing the detector and glass vial which held the gold button, I went to my back lawn and casually tossed the vial on the lawn, mmm sure the detector finds that ok, now for a harder test, I buried the vial in the garden at a depth of 6 inches , to my amazement I couldn't detect it, successive tests after removal of some of the soil and still no result, this detector is sh@t I thought, by now I am down to the vial, picking it up it was empty, the bottom was broken out of it , must have happened when I tossed the vial on the lawn. Did I walk on it and press it into the dirt - damn I thought.

My lawn was a bit long - having had a lot of rain and it is a sir walter buffalo lawn , now I am under pressure , gotta find it!, now where did I toss that vial originally???, well after a half hour of frantic swinging , finding assorted bits of metal I finally found it, the missus came home and wanted to know why all bits of disturbed lawn and then had to explain sheepishly, "just detecting gold in the back lawn dear".

Cheers

Barry

Great story bazza, cant say I haven't detected the front lawn as well!!

dwt said:

Found a speci on the side of a mullock dump that was around an old shaft, Twas about the size of a cherry tomatoe, pretty excited when I picked it up, spun to the side hitting the handle on the 5k, sending almost both to the bottom of an inaccessible old shaft, coiltek power lead saved the 5, speci long gone......

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Abseiling gear not worth it? I reckon there would be a few blokes (not me) on the forum that might take the challenge!!

Twapster said:

dwt said:

Found a speci on the side of a mullock dump that was around an old shaft, Twas about the size of a cherry tomatoe, pretty excited when I picked it up, spun to the side hitting the handle on the 5k, sending almost both to the bottom of an inaccessible old shaft, coiltek power lead saved the 5, speci long gone......

Click to expand...

Abseiling gear not worth it? I reckon there would be a few blokes (not me) on the forum that might take the challenge!!

Click to expand...

Shafts to far gone for that mate unfortunately 8.(

I dont have any gold stories yet but I did take a pick to a large zircon in the Harts Range 8.(
Was the end of a long day fossicking and I thought I would be a bit more aggressive on a wall that was like cement...... The pick was a direct hit on a crystal and half of it went flying never to been seen again. The remaining half was the biggest piece I had found for the day. :8

not gold... but...

I have ALWAYS collected stones and rocks and stuff. i used to keep my collections in boxes in the garage

Dad had a good mate Bert... both dad and Bert were merchant seamen so were 1 month on 1 month off. Bert had a opal mine up at Lighting Ridge. When Bert was off ship he would hobby mine in his little camp. Bert was a real gentleman all 6 foot 6 inches of him... and he was NOT a little man in girth either. Even then i wondered how he fitted down in a mine shaft. Bert was also a softie with a generous heart (unless you insulted his honor... but that's a totally different story about 4 guys in a pub, that should of had more manners and got what they deserved)

I really liked Bert he was like a uncle to me and he took a shine to me and my rock collecting. When ever he would visit dad he would flip me a piece of opal that he had dug... flashing greens, blues and reds.. Ligtning Ridge black opal in the rough... small un-cuttable stuff.. but BEAUTIFUL

except... for my birthday one year.. i was 11 or so, Bert gave me this piece that was the size of.... not quite a chickens egg... but not far off it. It had a thin base of obsidian black potch but the rest of it threw colours amazing! black-blues fleck of green and reds from every angle. It must of been 1cmx2cmx2cm-ish of solidified lightening! This thing was the COOLEST thing a budding rockhound could get! Bert was all smiles as he could see me beaming. And all that he said was "you look after that, don't loose it, that's a nice stone"

So i used to keep it, with all my BEST stones rocks and fossils in a old arnotts biscuit tin... in the garage. and there it stayed, safe as... houses? for years. I used to go in the garage often and take it out and look at it then carefully wrap it back up in a old sock then in a old pillow slip... until...

I came home one day and dad had decided to clean out the garage because we had a redback problem. Along with a bunch of real junk.. he picked up my rusty arnotts biscuit tin, without opening it to see what was in it (jasper's, banded agates, quartz crystals, some fossils and my opal "egg") loaded into my old billy cart (with a car number plate from California that some drunken mate of dads had souvineered for me on a trip stateside) and put the lot into the boot of the car. he loaded the cart so heavy he broke its back, so it went too... along with the number plate

When i got home from school on my bike, and i saw the clean concrete space where my worldly possessions had been. I lost it. Instantly burst into tears. The old man didn't understand what was going on but once he realized what he had done, straight back out to the tip. in the 6 hours since he had been there, the whole area had been turned over and compacted. The tin, the cart were gone. Never to be seen by us again.

People say opals are a bad-luck stone... but whoever found (or one day will find) that rusted through arnotts biscuit tin, would definitely disagree. I wish i knew who / if someone picked it up. it was an expensive stone. I hope some one loves it as much as i did

even now i am sitting here shaking my head in disbelief... but what do you do? its just a pretty rock right?

funny... dad made me promise to never mention it to Bert <giggling>

And i still have a 30kg bin of "tailings" that Bert gave me when he sold the mine... hopefully i wont loose them before i get to play with them... been 30 years safe so far!