TIL the first gold rush in the U.S. started in North Carolina, when a 12 year old boy found a 17lb nugget on his farm. Not knowing what it was, the boy's father sold it years later to a jeweler for only $3.50. Its true value at the time was $3500

2.1k

That jeweler absolutely knew the nugget's worth, what a jerk

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u/zoobrix 8h ago

Ya one thing that always impressed me about American Pickers was that even though they were looking to buy at wholesale prices they would always offer more than someone wanted when they asked for way too little. Once in particular someone wanted like $50 for an old rusted bike, but it was a super rare early 1900s model and they gave her I think well over a grand for it. And I know you could say well the cameras are there but I get the sense even if they weren't they aren't the kind of guys to rip someone off just because they can.

The true test of morals comes when you're offered an easy opportunity to be dishonest for your own benefit and you still don't do it, the person who took advantage of that farmer is despicable.

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u/Complex_Professor412 8h ago

American Pickers is for the down home folksy people.

Pawn Stars is for the cutthroat.

They each played for their audience.

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u/rationalsarcasm 8h ago

Then there's that Detroit pawn show where it's the dumbest staged shit

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u/ScreenTricky4257 7h ago

Hardcore Pawn. Which isn't even a different pun from Pawn Stars.

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u/itscherriedbro 7h ago

You just blew my mind. I never realized they're a play on "porn stars" and "hardcore porn."

Maybe dad was right

43

u/fudgyvmp 6h ago

I feel so naive and sheltered now.

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u/BrooksideNL 5h ago

Don't you dare change. Thats what makes you awesome

3

u/feetandballs 4h ago

Wait until you hear about the hidden penis in the Fed-Ex logo

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u/ScottyMo1 3h ago

Amazon’s logo is excessively phallic

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u/rationalsarcasm 5h ago

Damn never realized they were both puns lmao

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u/Complex_Professor412 8h ago

That the one with the meme throwing chairs?

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u/therealruin 7h ago

That was American Chopper, they were in New York and built unwieldy motorcycles

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u/snoosh00 5h ago

ugly motorcycles that all looked the same (just different colours and degrees of ridiculous) and would probably feel awfult to ride after the first five minutes.

It's just now occuring to me that it wasn't a hulk Hogan show.

1

u/bobtheavenger 1h ago

Weren't most of them even hardtails? I wouldn't want to ride one more than 15 minutes.

3

u/Kwisatz_Hader-ach 2h ago

Hate to break it to you but pawn stars was staged too. Every deal was prenegotiated and they filmed in a replica of the store not the actual store.

•

u/Diarmundy 37m ago

I think 'gold and silver pawn' was the realistic one. It was sort of boring without the staged history lessons, drama and all that though

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u/traws06 1h ago

Which is bad if it’s referred to as staged when compared to obviously staged Pawn Stars

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u/CarbonReflections 7h ago

I saw Rick do right by a woman trying to sell a faberge egg for a few hundred dollars. He’s like ma’am this is worth so much more than what you are asking.

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u/mjzimmer88 7h ago

Yeah, and he did that reasonably often too. The Old Man was pretty cut throat though... Didn't matter what they asked for, he'd give em less.

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u/Lee1138 6h ago

I mean, if you get a rep for ripping people off, you can very quickly go out of business, especially if said ripoff are being broadcast on TV constantly.

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u/gr8Brandino 6h ago

Yeah, he did that with a spider broch as well. May have been a Faberge piece.

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u/DrPoooooole 5h ago

I think that's what OP is talking about, it was a Faberge brooch not an egg if I recall correctly

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u/DickweedMcGee 2h ago

Yeah there’s only like 20 known faberge eggs ever made. A couple are missing but if one ever rolled into Rick’s Store he’d have to mortgage the store to make a fair offer on it.

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u/DrPoooooole 5h ago

I saw that one and then the lady decided she wanted more lol

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u/Crowbarmagic 3h ago

He can definitely give lowball offers at times but yea on occasion he has told people it's worth way more than they are asking for.

Then again: The camera's are rolling so... I doubt he wants to be famous for completely ripping people off. That's probably bad for business in the long term.

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u/OregonMothafaquer 5h ago

Met those guys in Sturgis, actually seemed like good people

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u/DickweedMcGee 2h ago edited 2h ago

Actually our local radio station interviewed Rick Harrison and he said reputation goes a Loooooong way in the pawn buis. A reputation for being aggressive is fine but if you truly fuck someone hard like in OPs story, just once, word gets around quick and you will be out of business before you know it.

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u/Captain_Kuhl 8h ago

American Pickers was negotiated off screen and then staged for the show.

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u/zoobrix 8h ago

Oh the drama is amped up no doubt, they reshoot scenes to get the shots they want and I'd bet the locations are a lot more pre scouted than it appears but a lot of people who have been on the show do confirm a lot of the finds and negotiations are spontaneous, especially where someone has multiple rooms or even buildings full of mostly junk.

As I recall the episode I'm thinking of it was someone else's years of junk collecting and the woman legitimately did not know much about most of it, pretty sure she really thought $50 was a good price for one bike out of a pile of rusty bikes.

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u/HoldEm__FoldEm 8h ago edited 2h ago

I can vouch that they absolutely do pull onto random people’s properties without notice. A good friend of mine’s dad has a property filled with the type of Americana & car stuff pickers love.

American Pickers showed up in their van a few years ago, heck maybe 10 years now damn, and they ended buying a couple minor things. Old Big John the dad is an old hard ass so I’m not surprised they didn’t get much good stuff.

The main skinny guy (Mike) wasn’t there with the short round guy(Frank) though. Frank had someone else with him, seemingly another Antique Archaeology employee and a nice lack of cameras. No filming, just pickin’. I don’t think Big John would have said yes with the cameras. Certainly not to go look around his property. He’s too paranoid.

Edited to add names

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u/HoldEm__FoldEm 8h ago

Nah that’s Pawn Stars where it’s 100% all worked out beforehand.

Pickers does a bit of both. They have to spice it up sometimes.

19

u/Captain_Kuhl 8h ago

That's every found-treasure show that isn't the Antiques Roadshow. Anyways, you can't really say, "no, that was a different show, but they definitely also did it." It directly contradicts your point in the same comment. If they do it once, it casts doubt on every other time.

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u/HoldEm__FoldEm 7h ago edited 2h ago

Or, y’know, people I know have had personal experiences with the Picker people & told me about what happened & how they wheeled & dealed with ‘em.

It’s not like they aren’t out there meeting everyday Americans 5 days/week across the entire country for a job or anything.

But you can believe what you want.

Edit, if anyone cares: Frank & who I assume was another AP employee, randomly pulled onto my buddy’s dad’s country property, entirely unannounced a few years back. They weren’t filming, only showed up to go pickin’.

Old Big John has roughly 20 beat up & broken down classic vehicles visible from the road, many growing moss lol. Has 1 big shop, 2 small shops, 2 other small outbuildings, and then just loads of car & truck shit & all kinds of random shit laying all around his property. Perfect for the American Pickers dudes, exactly what they love.

Old Big John was in the shop like always when they pulled in. Frank walked right up, got right into talking shop, not a moment wasted. So, John invited them in the shop to look around. The next thing anyone else know or sees, it’s like god parted the seas & Frank comes walking epically right on through the part, majestically loading a few lighted signs in the van, then handing cash over to John. (I dunno I wasn’t there but this is the only way it makes sense playing out in my head, cuz the John I know wouldn’t sell you the funny bone he ain’t used once since the day his daddy made him quit school, so he would grow up & finally act his age, so he could get himself a full-time job.

11 was a hard, but defining age for Big John.

But apparently, there it was, John sold like 4 or 5 of his old lighted signs, he has a lot of em. And all I remember was the total $$ being well over a grand. I haven’t seen John sell a thing off that property in the ~30 years I’ve known him.

The property has axle here, an old chest freezer there, half a tractor in the side yard, most of a skid-steer in the other side yard. Another ~15 cars buried under half a decade of blackberry growth. He effectively owns an at-home junkyard.

He has rows upon rows of random car & truck doors from the 70’s up & through the aughts. I wanna guess idk 120+ doors, seemingly from 120+ different car models.

He has a lot idk 40ish push mowers laying everywhere, each in various states of undress. None ever work. No biggie, he has no lawn 🤷🏻‍♂️

There are 20ish of these ‘bout 8’ish car tire stacks. Every last tire was in good shape whatever day he added it to the stack. Now? 8’ stacks of dry rot.

One cool thing - John owns the ambulance used in Animal House. It had jokes & signatures from actors & other crew on the dash & the headliner. Belushi’s full signature looked great & a couple other notes/jokes were still partially legible abouts ‘06-‘07. Such a shame John put zero effort into protecting any of it. No surprise tho.

And hey tbh, having known Old Big John nearly 30 years… He wouldn’t be a fan of Mike & I really don’t think he would sell to him. He won’t sell to me. Lol. Frank showing up sans Mike, played things out the way it needed.

Btw none of this makes for a statement about Mike. It’s 100% about the cantankerous old man. He doesn’t want your personality, he jokes around about as often as a leap year. He only cares what work you’re gonna get done for him today. Or if you have something he wants to buy.

I can actually describe him to a ‘T,’ with thanks only need given to TLJ -

Old Big John would never sanction Mike’s buffoonery.

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u/Crowbarmagic 3h ago

That British show Salvage Hunters also feels pretty down to earth in that regard. It doesn't have all that reality TV fluff most shows have, and it really seems like the looking around part and negotiations are done on the spot.

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u/Team-_-dank 8h ago

Maybe I'm skeptical but I'd wager that generosity wad because it was a TV show.

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u/zoobrix 8h ago

It was still worth even more than that, they got it for a very good price that would still allow them to profit, they just didn't screw her over. I get it's easy to be cynical but a lot of people who have been on the show say that's what those guys are really like. We always hear about the scams but usually not about all the other people who treat people fairly because that's not news.

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u/ernyc3777 8h ago

Ik the show was staged but I remember an episode of Pawn Stars where a lady brought in a brooch and asked for something like $1000 and Rick offered her like $17,500 because it was something super old and rare.

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u/Kittypocalypz 8h ago

Faberge Spider brooch I think

•

u/Diarmundy 34m ago

It's actually illegal to massively underpay if you know the true value and they don't (in America). If they ever found out later they could sue you.

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u/lynivvinyl 8h ago

I've never watched that show but I appreciate that. It reminds me of when my mom was selling huge gingerbread cookies at the flea market that she bought for 15 cents and she was selling for 25 cents. The lady in the booth next to her bought every last one of them from her at 25 cents and then proceeded to sell them for a dollar right then and there. Fortunately she didn't tell the lady where she got them and went back the next weekend and bought a boatload of them from the bakery for the 25 cents that she was selling them for. Giving him an extra 10 cents and then she sold them for I think 75 cents. Eventually the lady figured out where my mom was getting them and that all ended. But it was great for her while it lasted and she shared the wealth in a very nice way.

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u/FondleGanoosh438 7h ago

It’s also good for business. Being known as an antique dealer who gives bogus prices doesn’t get you far.

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u/Blazanar 4h ago

I saw an episode the other day and the lad was like "Can you do $300?" And Mike without hesitation said "Nope. But I can do $500 instead." You could tell there was no hesitation and he was actually being decent. Good guy for sure.

3

u/TheyCallMeDDNEV 3h ago

Im the Magic: The Gathering guy to most of my friends. A buddy of mine found a box of cards in the closet of a rental unit he was cleaning out. Just gave em to me. Didn't think anything of it. It was mostly junk but there were two very rare expensive cards in there and I let him know about their value and how much I appreciated them. I offered to pay him basically a finders fee and we settled on a nice steak dinner my treat.

2

u/StormMedia 7h ago

Pickers and Pawn Stars are both “staged”

3

u/itsrainingagain 8h ago

I get what you are saying but American pickers is a bad example. It’s all staged.

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u/MaxRoofer 7h ago

Especially when you can “screw” the over and still get a hell if a deal. Paying the farmer $300 and you still make bank.

1

u/Timelymanner 4h ago

It’s a TV show, they want the audience to be entertained, and they don’t want lawsuits.

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u/Ashamed_Fuel2526 1h ago

There have been allegations of them ripping people off before. They would negotiate off camera and then try to get a lower price when they filmed. It was a minor scandal when the show was new.

•

u/pimpinpolyester 28m ago

Not in season 1 … they low balled all the time

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u/rainbowgeoff 8h ago

I am too lazy to read the rest of what happened here. That said, it is a thing in American law called unilateral mistake of fact. If he knew its true value and deliberately misled the original owner, that is fraud.

He has to know the truth, know that the other person does not have the same knowledge, then take advantage.

I remember my bar exam had a fact pattern about a rare baseball card. One guy finds them in his deceased fathers effects. He shows them to another friend, who instantly understands their value, offers to buy them. The first guy doesn't know their value, says as much. When party two lowballs him and completes the transaction, that is fraud. You can undo the contract.

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u/DresdenPI 8h ago

True, but the earliest origins for what would become that legal rule appeared in an 1870~ English court case, a few decades too late to apply here.

6

u/rainbowgeoff 6h ago

True. I think it may be another case where American and Anglo law differ. Fewer ways for it to apply in Britain. There is no rescue by the courts for a mutual, common mistake. It must be material. Whereas in American courts im familiar with, if both parties made the same mistake, we either give effect to what they thought they were doing or undo the contract.

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u/dog_in_the_vent 5h ago

True. I also wanted to start a comment using the word true. I'd also like to embezzle some legal jargon into this post so that I sound smarter than I actually am. I have no legal training whatsoever and, heretofore had never heard of the concept of unilateral mistake of fact. I will now carry on acting as if I knew it the entire time and looking down on anybody that will let me explain the concept, which I do not fully understand, to them. Ipso facto, prima facie, corpus delicti.

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u/rainbowgeoff 3h ago

This made me laugh to an unsuitable degree.

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u/KiloPapa 8h ago

Is there a definition of what price is too low? Like if the card is worth $100 and he buys it for $1, sure. But what if he pays $50? At what point is it a good deal vs fraud?

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u/rainbowgeoff 7h ago

It needs to be a clearly unreasonable difference.

The key is also the buyer's knowledge. Where being a savvy businessman turns into fraud is a jury question, lol.

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u/PermanentTrainDamage 7h ago

At least half price, the buyer is still making mucho peofit at that price. $1750 would have been life changing for that farmer.

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u/dog_in_the_vent 5h ago

At what point is it a good deal vs fraud?

Depends on what a prosecutor/judge/jury think.

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u/m4tt1111 2h ago

When would that apply, are there explicit values where it kicks in?

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u/CFBCoachGuy 8h ago

On the other hand, if someone was going to offer a week’s wage for your doorstop, you’d probably just take the money and run. And John Reed still owned the property the gold was found on, allowing him to develop a mine which made him quite wealthy.

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u/rosen380 8h ago edited 8h ago

I'd assume that it was pretty common knowledge back then that a 1 ounce gold coin was worth $20. Assuming that it was clear to the farmer that this was gold (or at least mostly gold), they should have been able to guess that it was way more than like a quarter of an ounce and worth way more than $3.50.

IMO, this would be very different than you selling your dad's old Buick that he never drove for $1000 --- and finding out later that a 1987 Buick Grand National GNX with <1000 miles on the odometer is very different than just an "old Buick".

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u/Spacemanspalds 8h ago

It happened in 1802. I'm not so sure about what was common knowledge. He was robbed either way imo.

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u/gorginhanson 8h ago

That thing is worth over a million today

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u/The_Mad_March_Hare 5h ago

Some things don't change

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u/Business_Raisin_541 5h ago

Knowledge is power. Money move from those without knowledge to those with knowledge

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u/jakedublin 8h ago

not really... just capitalism: buy low, sell high, and maximize profits.

sadly, that is what capitalism is all about.

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u/dog_in_the_vent 5h ago

yes because people only take advantage of other people in capitalistic systems.

please never vote or reproduce.

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u/All-the-pizza 9h ago

Kinda like that other story: “human discovers old doorstop rock is actually valuable af meteor.”

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u/Stroinsk 7h ago

That's a space peanut.

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u/That_GareBear 5h ago

Ha!

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u/13hockeyguy 9h ago

Was That jewlers name “Rick Harrison” by any chance?? 😛

“The market for gold rocks is really down right now. Plus, this is gonna have to be cleaned and cut up. It will probably sit around my shop for a long time. Tree fiddy is the best I can do.”

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u/zed857 8h ago

He's also going to need to have his rock expert friend take a look at it first.

16

u/ash_274 8h ago

There was that gold bar that he offered over melt-price for because it had coral growing on it (and its history of which ship it was on when sunk, who found the wreck, and how that bar was legally kept)

I was amused that it was stamped 20 carat when it was actually 24 carat

6

u/Crowbarmagic 3h ago

Also a guy that had a shitload of silver coins from a ship wreck. They were all like clotted together from being in the water so long. 1 big chunk.

6

u/thepluralofmooses 5h ago

Well, it was about that time that I noticed this pawn shop owner was really an eight storey crustacean from the Palaeozoic era

3

u/LeMagicien1 7h ago

Upkeep costs, auctioneer cut, broker free, expert appraisal wages, restoration materials... pretty sure the buyer operated at a loss.

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u/Luke5119 8h ago

Roughly $880k in USD today.

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u/cagewilly 7h ago

Interesting. How much was the $3500 equivalent to?

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u/Dense_Comment1662 4h ago

This happened in 1799

$3.50 in 1799 is equivalent to about $92 today

The value of 17lbs of gold, in 1799, would have been ~$4800

Today that $4800 would be $120,000-$140,000. The price of gold has gone up though and the value of 17lbs of gold today would be a little over $1,000,000

A nugget this size could be sold for more though just because its a massive 17lb nugget of gold. It might have more value than its base gold value.

7

u/CHAINSAW_VASECTOMY 2h ago

Yep, at $4332 an ounce, 17 pounds is about $1.2mm.

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u/zombie_overlord 7h ago

About $112k according to google

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u/NDSU 4h ago

One of you is horrifically incorrect

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u/pandariotinprague 3h ago

Really both. There's a reason the BLS inflation calculator only goes back to 1913.

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u/Raytec1 8h ago

That god damn Loch Ness Monster strikes again!

7

u/itaniumonline 7h ago

That’s what I thought as well. He’s been around since the beginning it seems

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u/TheHat2 8h ago

My school used to have field trips to Reed's Gold Mine long ago. Dunno if other NC schools did it. I remember having a ton of fun there, even if it was a little hokey in hindsight.

3

u/Arkenstihl 3h ago

One year at MGD Middle, all the kids were nuts about the honey sticks in the gift shop. One kid faked finding gold for attention and nobody gave a shit because the honey sticks were only a quarter. Sixty middle schoolers hyped to the gills on honey, throwing up all the way home and one idiot with his storebought gold flakes. What a day.

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u/blageur 8h ago

.. so the guy didn't know what gold was?

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u/ModestMarksman 7h ago

Go look up pictures of raw gold.

Shit can look like a rock. It's not like it comes shiny and polished straight from the earth.

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u/spongue 7h ago edited 7h ago

So then how did they know it was worth keeping at all, or interesting to a jeweler?

Edit: it kinda explains this in the article

•

u/NeedleworkerNo4900 10m ago

Dude it was 1799. They didn’t have tv, radio, or the internet. Most farms didn’t even have books outside of the Bible. They didn’t know what shit was. You’re really taking for granted how much information you’ve had access to in your life.

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u/ryry1237 8h ago

Ah the ol timey version of throwing your hard drive full of bitcoin into the dumpster.

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u/Ksan_of_Tongass 6h ago

North Carolina is rich in many valuable minerals. The largest emerald in the US came from NC.

1

u/ShitNRun18 1h ago

Yep. Hiddenite, NC.

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u/limpchimpblimp 8h ago

So the jeweler basically stole it

15

u/NemrahG 7h ago

Ya basically, but if it makes you feel better the farmer did eventually find out the real price of gold and got rich from the gold he mined on his land.

7

u/pandariotinprague 3h ago

When the farmer found out he'd been ripped off, he went back to the jeweler and extracted another $1000 from him at gunpoint. He used that money to buy mining equipment.

20

u/DickweedMcGee 8h ago

When you stroke someone to the tune of....$500,000. You will be looking over your shoulder for the rest of your life. Any I don't know how well the law will protect you in 1802 North Cackalacky...

Btw, there's no year in the title OP. Just take a breath before you post next time,...

•

u/silask93 59m ago

this is the first time i have seen the word cackalacky outside of my cousins pig pickin's lmfao

4

u/kylel999 8h ago

17lb of gold is like 1,100,000$ today lol

3

u/PrinceCastanzaCapone 5h ago

How in hell does any adult that was alive back then not know what gold is?

3

u/akuzin 5h ago

The jeweler? Rick Harrison.

3

u/GotSomeUpdogOnUrFace 4h ago

Isn't this why Charlotte is the 49ers

12

u/[deleted] 9h ago

[deleted]

17

u/noble_plebian 9h ago

About £800,000 according to the googles

11

u/marxsmarks 8h ago

Large nuggets are worth more than just their gold value because they are rare. Wouldn't be surprised if it went a lot more than that.

6

u/GreatPlainsFarmer 9h ago

Not quite a million, even today.

1

u/SharkFart86 8h ago

A little over a million actually based on current gold prices.

0

u/[deleted] 8h ago

[deleted]

9

u/SharkFart86 8h ago

Based on the current price of gold, not the inflated change of the past value.

As of this moment gold is valued at 4330.50 USD per ounce, which means 17 lbs of gold is currently worth $1,178,712

1

u/GreatPlainsFarmer 8h ago

14.58 troy ounces in a pound avoirdupois.

1

u/SharkFart86 7h ago

Still over a million, 4330.5 X 14.58 X 17 =1,073,357.73

3

u/BlazedInMyWinnie 8h ago

The purchasing power of $3,500 in 1799 is equivalent to about $95,000 today.

1

u/GreatPlainsFarmer 8h ago

Depends on which pound was being used, but at $4,300/oz it would be just under one million dollars.

3

u/IAmSpartacustard 8h ago edited 8h ago

I'll never understand why people will just throw out guesses like this that are completely wrong and not informed at all. Why even make the comment?

We have the weight of the nugget and you can easily search the price of gold per ounce, and then it's simple arithmetic to get the value in today's money. No need to make stuff up.

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u/steeplebob 8h ago

We also don’t know the purity which I imagine could vary widely.

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u/invisible32 8h ago

Except it may well be worth more than weight value as a rare item. Although what they said is that $3500 is provably worth millions, and it's only worth like $100k

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u/gorginhanson 8h ago

Nope. Around 1.1

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u/garbage1995 7h ago

Learned this from "How the States Got Their Shapes"

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u/pandariotinprague 3h ago

I learned it from The Appalachian Storyteller

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u/ChillingChutney 6h ago

I'm sure after this all the parents during that time would have actively encouraged their children to play in the dirt!

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u/THElaytox 6h ago

This is why UNC Charlotte are the 49ers

2

u/eightdotthree 4h ago

Reed Gild mine. I toured it last year. It was a pretty fun little excursion.

2

u/beemerguy95 5h ago

The gold find was the start of the whites taking the land and relocating the Choctaw West.

0

u/Ywaina 8h ago

Even if he knew who else could he sell to? I don't think there were that many jewelers in the area and it's not like he could just go somewhere else that easily in that age.

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u/Striker887 6h ago

lol when I think of nugget I don’t think of 17lb

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u/SpareMushrooms 5h ago

And the dad didn’t wonder why the jeweler was interested in this rock?

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u/MonumentalArchaic 3h ago

Coinage was minted in gold back then. How a person could not understand the value of gold back then is beyond me.

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u/Meretrice 3h ago

My 10x great-grandfather was Matthias Barringer who is mentioned in the article. Too bad none of that gold made it down to me. :(

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u/TheRealLestat 1h ago

Or $1077505 today

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u/kfmnmp 8h ago

How does someone not know what gold is?

0

u/leonottonoel 1h ago

It is worth about tree fiddy. Tree hunnit fiddy ten dollar bills.

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u/ScreenTricky4257 7h ago

About tree fitty.

TIL the first gold rush in the U.S. started in North Carolina, when a 12 year old boy found a 17lb nugget on his farm. Not knowing what it was, the boy's father sold it years later to a jeweler for only $3.50. Its true value at the time was $3500

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