When you think about prospecting or mining for gold somewhere like the Yukon, you probably imagine pans with tiny flakes in the bottom, or perhaps a small nugget glinting in the palm of your hand.
What if I told you, then, that the biggest one ever found was heavier than a full-grown man?
The world’s largest gold nugget was found in Victoria, Australia, on February 5th, 1869. John Deason and Richard Oats, two Cornish miners, dubbed their find “Welcome Stranger,” and recorded its weight as 158.7 pounds.
Image Credit: Public Domain
It was 24 inches long.
The nugget was so large it wouldn’t fit on the scale at the London Chartered Bank in Dunolly; they had to break it up before it could be photographed whole.
Image Credit: Image Credit: Museums Victoria CC BY 4.0
It was melted down into gold bullion and the men received around 10k euro.
Today, it would likely be worth over 2 million.
The Pepita Canaa is the largest golden nugget still in existence, and it weighs an impressive 134 pounds. Julio de Deus Filho discovered it in Brazil in 1983 and it’s currently on display in the “Gold Room” of the Museu de Valores.
Image Credit: Creative Commons
The “Hand of Faith” was found in 1980 by Kevin Hillier, and is the largest chunk unearthed by a metal detector. You can check it out at a casino in Las Vegas; it’s worth over $1 million.
The jury is out on whether or not anyone will ever dig up anything larger, but at this point, I think it would be something like a miracle.
