So, I took the plunge. I decided on the maximum I would pay for the claim, then placed my bid. A day later I received a congratulations e-mail that I was the high bidder, and oh, by the way, send us your money.

When I teach people about finding gold, I often explain that it is helpful to think of any river or stream that carries gold as being something like a sluice box.

The nugget sat there in plain sight, though it was covered in dirt, while hundreds of people had passed that way every day.

This was no ordinary nugget. It had not traveled very far from its nearby source, and that did mean a lot, as we were searching for the source of several such nuggets found during a gold rush that occurred in 1859.

Has your experience ever led you to wonder why some gold is deposited on bedrock and in crevices, while other gold is not? We’re going take a deeper look at this and see what we can figure it out.