Another massive gold nugget find on the outskirts of famous Central Victorian gold rush city of Ballarat has given renewed hope to all grey nomad prospectors.
The monster two kilogram nugget was unearthed by a retiree who wishes to remain anonymous.
Mark Day, who operates metal detector retailer Gold Ballarat, said it was the biggest find ever reported by one of their customers. Apparently, there have already been offers of $160,000 for the nugget that the prospector has named ‘You Wouldn’t Believe It.’
The man was using a Minelab GPX45000 detector and had recently come into Day’s store to upgrade the coil to one that was more sensitive. A short while later, he phoned to ask Day if he was interested in buying some ‘big gold.’
“When he showed me the nugget here in the store he was shaking like a leaf,” Day said. “He didn’t know what to do with it. He hadn’t slept in three days.”
The nugget was found about a metre down in old pasture land – below 30 centimetres of wash and about 15 centimetres of very hard clay. The location was within 150 kilometres of Ballarat, with the prospector keeping the specific site a secret.
“He told me the detector made a noise and when he dug down a short way and found a .22 lead bullet and thought that was that. But the detector kept insisting there was something there, so he dug further and – bang – there it was,” Day said. “History tells us that big finds like this have happened in this area before, and even though they’ve been digging gold in this region for 150 years, it’s still out there.”
With gold passing the $2000 per ounce mark, the nugget has a gold value of about $130,000, but collectors are offering a premium for the nugget’s rarity.
“People collect nuggets, they don’t want them melted down,” Day said. “And this one has real character to it. We were in awe when he brought it in. It really looks good.”
The largest gold nugget ever found, ‘The Welcome Stranger,’ was found at Moliagul, Victoria, in 1869. It weighed in at more than 78kg.
Purchased a decent metal detector a couple of years ago. Over that period I guess I’ve spend about 20 or 30 days prospecting. So far I’ve found a number of small nuggets about 16 grams in total, the value of which is far less than the purchase price of the metal detector. But it’s still good fun and keeps me active.