The hunt for sellouts, as you may have witnessed on TV shows like Gold Rush, where the hosts get overly excited even to get ounces after a long search here and there, is nothing compared to the gold rush on television. Australian victory of the 19th century.
It is not common knowledge that at least 10% of all the world’s gold accumulated in the ground comes in some form from the continent of Australia.
Welcome Stranger and the Nugget of Canaa enjoy the status of the world’s greatest gold nuggets, at least in literature.
John Deason and Richard Oates discovered the Welcome Stranger in Moliagul, Victoria in 1869 and is considered by historians and authorities to be the largest gold nugget ever found in the world.
Welcome Nugget originally weighed more than 2,218 troy ounces, or just over 152 pounds, and was melted down in November 1859 in London.
the biggest gold nuggets
Another significantly large nugget, known as the Canaa nugget or Pepita Canaa, was discovered in the Pelada mine in the state of Pará in Brazil in 1983.
The nugget weighs 134 pounds and is considered one of the largest gold nuggets ever discovered, and currently the largest in existence.
The Canaá Nugget is surrounded by controversy suggesting that the original nugget discovered in the Pelada Mine weighed 331 pounds, but during the excavation process it broke into almost half its original size, and that is the piece we now call
the Nugget is now on display at the Central Bank Museum in Brazil;
Australian miners hold another record by discovering the largest gold nugget using a metal detector.
This gold nugget called the Hand of Faith weighs 875 troy ounces, or a whopping 27.2 kilograms (60 pounds), and was discovered in Kingower, Victoria, in 1980.
The gold rush that devastated Victoria, Australia, in the 1850s produced some of the largest gold nuggets ever discovered in the world.
Removing gold from a sluice, western North America, 1900
Another on the long list is Lady Hotham, who weighs 98.5 pounds and was found by a team of nine miners in September 1854 at Ballarat at a depth of 135 feet.
Lady Hotham was named because the wife of the governor, Sir Charles Hotham, was visiting the area on the day of the discovery.
A year and a half earlier, in January 1853, a set of three large nuggets weighing 134 pounds, 93 pounds, and 83.5 pounds was also discovered at the same site at a depth of about 60 feet.
Gold nuggets from around the world weigh between 20,000 and 22,000, which translates to a purity of between 83% and 93%.
However, in Australia, gold nuggets typically score 23K or a little higher on the purity scale, while nuggets found in Alaska score a little lower on the spectrum.
Here’s another “gold” story from us: Hobbyists discover the largest stash of Viking gold ever seen in Denmark
The color of the nugget is usually a good indicator of the level of purity;