Carson Nugget puts gold collection up for auction

After more than a half-century on display inside the Carson Nugget, the gold collection at the longtime Carson City casino is for sale.

Steve Neighbors, president of the Carson Nugget, said the decision to put the 313-ounce collection up to the highest bidder has been in the works for about a year.

"I determined the gold is not necessary for the operation of the Nugget," Neighbors said. "I've decided to liquidate that."

Neighbors said a portion of the income from the sale will be used on deferred maintenance for the casino and its City Center Motel, 800 N. Carson St. The rest will go to the Hop and Mae Adams Foundation, which will help fund the City Center downtown redevelopment project that includes developing a library, business incubator and office and retail space.

"The major motivation is I want to figure out how to help close the gap that may exist in the downtown redevelopment," Neighbors said.

The decision to sell the collection, comprised of dozens of nuggets and crystalline gold pieces, comes when the precious metal is selling at an all-time high of more than $1,200 an ounce. Bidding on the collection will start at $1.1 million.

The sale started on Aug. 1 and will end at noon Sept. 14. Bids must be sent by e-mail to Neighbors and Fred Holabird, a licensed broker from Reno.

Holabird, also a mining geologist, said the Nugget collection is one of the country's two premiere public gold displays; the other is in Mariposa, Calif.

"It's the rarest of the rare, we've all grown up with it in our own backyard," Holabird said. "It's some of the finest specimens in existence."

But despite its value, Neighbors said it wasn't paying dividends for the casino.

"My take on it, there's no real community statement with that gold supply," Neighbors said. "It didn't come from Carson City. I think it's better put where someone will want to look at it and get value out of it because I don't think we are."

The collection first went on display shortly after Richard Graves opened the Carson Nugget in 1954, said Guy Rocha, the former state archivist.

One of the few - or the only - histories available on the gold collection is Graves' oral history that he gave to the University of Nevada, Reno, in 1980.

A Sonora, Calif., man had offered to sell Graves the collection of gold that had come from the region's mother lode. Graves initially rented the collection, put it on display, but eventually purchased it for an unknown amount, Rocha said.

When he sold the casino to the Adams family in 1957, Graves included the gold collection in the sale - a decision he later regretted, according to his oral history, Rocha said.

Rocha said he's not surprised by Neighbors' decision to sell the collection, something that may have attracted crowds in the past but today no longer inspires younger generations to pay the casino a visit.

"It's worth a lot, but you need to identify with the gold," Rocha said. "Older people, they know about the gold country, the mother lode, the discovery of gold. ... There was a time that people looked at the gold not for the worth in it but what it meant to the American frontier."

He said some old-timers may regret the Carson Nugget selling the collection.

Still, Rocha said, "it's lost its allure, it's just not what it used to be."