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One of the biggest gold nuggets found in modern times in Northern California’s historic Gold Country is going under the hammer this Thursday.
The so-called Butte Nugget, found on public land in the foothills of Butte County mountains, is the largest ever in California to be in private hands, the auction house that currently holds it told The San Francisco Chronicle.
The lucky prospector who made the discovery is withholding his identity and the chunk of gold, weighing in at more than 6 pounds, has been moved to an auction firm, Kagin’s in the Bay Area, for safe keeping.
The nugget, expected to fetch in the $400,000 range, will be unveiled Thursday at the upcoming San Francisco Fall Antique Show.
Image: Screenshot from kANAL24 via YouTube.
8 Comments
Independent Supply
I don’t get it. 6 pounds is 96 oz, right? Even at $1,300 oz, it is worth $124,800. Is the other $275,000 because of simply the rarity of the size?
Joe Barfle
Umm . . . there are twelve troy ounces in a pound . . . therefore, around $100,000 USD, if it’s six pounds and change . . . utterly ridiculous. There is no such thing as collectibility – full stop. Coins, jewelry, this . . . they’re only worth their melt value. Unless you’re a collector – and collectors are not investors; they’re fools.
Michael
Extremely large nuggets generally sell for up to 3 times melt value. 6 x 14.58 = 87.48 troy ounces. Multiply that x 3 = 262.44 oz. At $1250 an oz the nugget is worth about $328,050. This will attract plenty of interested collector / investors. This is rare obviously.
Chris Armstrong
Michael is CORRECT. 1 pound avoirdupois = 14.58 Troy ounces ! So, let’s get rich melting gold bars and making our own “nuggets” which we can sell for 3 times actual value!!!! Piece of cake!
fred
Here is how you do it in the market 1kg is 32.150743126506 ozs or so, and there is 2.2 lbs in a kilo, divide that into the ozs and it is 14.6139741 ozs (troy) That is the final round up, unless you want to settle with me when I buy your gold..at 14.58, we will do business.
Crazy_Goldminer
Use the metric system and we can avoid this nonsense
6 pounds/2.2 pounds/kg=2.73 kg
(2.73 kg*1000g/kg)/(32 g/oz)=85oz
85 oz*1250$/oz=106 000$
MINING.com Editors
Thank you all for weighing in. We’ll see how much this nugget really fetches quite soon. In the meantime, keep in mind what Michael said here: collector / investors are likely to pay for the rarity of this piece rather than for its actual gold value.
Cheers,
~ Cecilia Jamasmie
LAMB
The value of this ‘nugget’ is not necessarily based on the number of ounces in this nugget. It has not been assayed for gold content, yet everyone is using a ‘pure gold’ value. This nugget probably contains other metals like Silver (Ag), maybe Copper (Cu), etc., i.e. NOT PURE GOLD !
If it is 90% pure it would be worth less than what Michael has calculated – because he ‘assumed’ it was “pure gold” – WRONG assumption.
Correct that it is rare , if it was NOT man made .