A 23-Karat Find for Prospector : Gold: A novice discovers a 12.8-ounce chunk in the Acton area. It could be worth as much as $13,000; he trades it for mining gear.
A Mojave man who took up gold prospecting three months ago while on disability leave from his painting job has come up with what may be the largest nugget found in Los Angeles County in recent history.
Using $800 worth of equipment acquired from a Northridge company, Kent Gates discovered a 12.8-ounce, 23-karat nugget last week while prospecting in the Acton area. According to a gold expert, the find could be worth as much as $13,000.
But Gates wasn’t interested in cash. On Thursday, he returned to Keene Engineering Inc. to trade the nugget in for more mining equipment. “I’m planning to go back for more,” he said. “This nugget looks like it broke off from a larger piece.”
Staff members at Keene--a leading manufacturer of portable mining and dredging equipment--could only marvel at Gates’s good fortune. “In 30 years in the business, I haven’t seen anything close to it,” said company President Jerry Keene. “A piece of gold that size is just unbelievable.”
Other experts were a little more skeptical. “Desert areas (in California) have been producing some very nice, big nuggets,” said Wayne Leicht, a gems and minerals dealer in Laguna Beach. “But very little gold of that size has been found in Los Angeles County.”
Gates, 35, began prospecting while recovering from a lung infection he contracted working as a painter for Jade Inc. in Mission Hills. “It was just something to do while I was waiting to go back to work,” he said. “I was bored around the house.”
With a shovel and an $800 hot-air dry-washer--a machine that looks like a giant vacuum cleaner and is commonly used by prospectors in dry areas--he worked 12 hours a day in the desert heat on a site he said he picked randomly on public land in the Acton area.
“It was instinct,” he said. “I just went there and dug it up.” Sometimes, he spent the night in the motor home of another prospector working a site only 40 feet from him.
Gates would not give the exact location for fear of other prospectors muscling in on his territory. But the area is known for placer-type mining. California’s first gold strike, in 1842, was in Placerita Canyon in the Santa Clarita Valley.
After several weeks of finding only small granules, Gates hit the jackpot a week ago Thursday. The nugget--a round lump with a rough surface--was so big it wouldn’t even go through the sieve-like mechanism of the dry-washer. “I was surprised,” he recalled. “I just screamed, ‘Yeah!’ ”
When he took it home, his wife’s initial reaction was disbelief. “She said I’d painted it,” he said. “I said, ‘No, I didn’t.’ She screamed and asked, ‘How much is this worth?’ ”
Gates explained that he waited a week before bringing in his find so he could keep looking for the rest of the rock he believes his nugget came from.
At Keene Engineering on Thursday, staff members didn’t need much convincing about the authenticity of the gold. “I know it’s gold because I’ve seen thousands of nuggets,” Jerry Keene said. “It’s not the sort of thing you can manufacture. . . . We’re thrilled about it.”
It also didn’t take long to find a buyer--a movie and television sound mixer from Reseda, who asked not to be identified. The buyer, described by the Keene staff as a longtime treasure hunter and prospector, paid Gates in mining equipment for the nugget. He said he was thinking of giving the gold to television producer Steven Bochco, with whom he said he has worked on such shows as “Hill Street Blues” and “Doogie Howser, M.D.”
“He’s done an awful lot for me over the years,” the buyer said.
Neither Gates nor the buyer would reveal the value of the transaction. But Leicht, who specializes in gold specimens, said a nugget of that size from Los Angeles County could fetch a premium price per ounce of two to three times bullion value. With bullion prices now around $380 an ounce, the nugget could be worth as much as $13,000, Leicht estimated.
Dr. Anthony Kampf, curator of gems and minerals at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, said Gates’ find doesn’t compare with the largest recent find in the California desert--a 156-ounce monster discovered near Randsburg in Kern County in 1977 that is currently on loan to the museum.
But he added that it was unusual for the Acton area. “I’m certainly interested to hear about this nugget. We might be interested in exhibiting it.”
Leicht said he would like to know more about the geology of the area of Gates’ find before deciding whether the novice prospector had stumbled onto a major find. “It’s possible that nugget originated from 20 miles away and somehow rolled its way down over millions of years,” he said.
But Gates wasn’t waiting around for any expert opinions. He is due back at his painting job July 1 but, armed with new machines including a Vac-Pac vacuum cleaner and an automatic panner, he will be prospecting full time until then. “That equipment will really help,” he said. “Now I don’t have to do it all by hand.”
