(Mike Maharrey, Money Metals News Service) On family vacations to the beach, my dad loved to tinker with a metal detector. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t motivated by the potential for riches because he never found anything more than some change and the occasional metal can. My mom used to tease him for wasting his time.
But it turns out metal detecting isn’t necessarily a waste of time. Some people actually find stuff!
In 1979, a couple using a metal detector in the Kalgoorlie Goldfields of Western Australia located a massive gold nugget. Known today as the “Golden Beauty,” the nugget weighs in at nearly 10 pounds.
Can you imagine stumbling on such a find?
I can’t either. My imagination can’t get past my dad digging up pop tops.
By the way, you can own the Golden Beauty. It is currently on the auction block. According to Heritage Auctions, the opening bid was $400,000.
The winner is going to have to do better. At the current spot price, the gold is worth around $481,800.
“Gold always has been enormously popular, in part because of its pure value and beauty, but also because it is exceedingly rare,” Heritage Auctions vice president of nature and science Craig Kissick said.
He noted that gold in nugget form generally fetches more than the spot price.
“All forms of specimen gold typically will warrant a value well beyond their weight in gold. Gold nuggets represent native gold in its most natural form and offer a unique way to own, maintain and appreciate the precious metal in a highly collectible and aesthetic form.”
Here’s a little perspective for you.
The average price of gold in 1979 was $306 per ounce. That means the Golden Beauty fetched the couple somewhere in the neighborhood of $44,600 if they sold it that year. Thanks to price inflation, that would buy you a little over $10,160 in goods and services today.
They probably should have kept the gold, eh?
If you can’t afford the Golden Beauty, a second nugget is also on the auction block. It weighs in at 15.52 ounces, just over 1 pound. Somebody dropped this particular nugget into a Salvation Army bucket last year.
Large gold nuggets aren’t easy to come by, even in gold-rich areas. Mining experts say a 1-ounce nugget is harder to locate than a 5-carat diamond. As Earth.com explains it, “One reason for this scarcity is that gold deposits are scattered and often require extensive mining operations before any visible pieces are brought to the surface.”
The largest nugget ever found was dug out of the ground by two miners in 1869. The Welcome Stranger weighed in at 3,523.5 troy ounces (about 241 pounds). At today’s gold price, the nugget would be worth $11.63 million.
Unfortunately, the Welcome Stranger is no more.
The nugget was so big that it had to be broken into three pieces on an anvil by a local blacksmith before it could be weighed. The pieces were later melted down and shipped to the Bank of England.
The duo received an estimated £9,381 for their find. That equals $12,652.32. That’s about $297,400.95 in purchasing power today.
Again, they should have kept the gold.
Unfortunately, my dad’s metal detecting experience is far more common than the Australian couple. You’re probably not going to find a 10-pound nugget of gold.
The good news is you can still get gold in exchange for your fiat dollars, and you’ll almost certainly be better off in the long run!
Mike Maharrey is a journalist and market analyst for Money Metals with over a decade of experience in precious metals. He holds a BS in accounting from the University of Kentucky and a BA in journalism from the University of South Florida.
