Amateur gold miner with his Equinox 800 detector discovers a multi-million-dollar gold nugget

A lifetime discovery in the form of a giant gold nugget was made by an amateur detectorist in a field in Victoria, Australia. The man, using a detector not primarily designed to find gold, was exploring an area known as the "Golden Triangle", which during the 19th century was the site of a gold nugget. the epicenter of the Australian gold rush, when his detector detected a large stone laced with gold veins.

He brought his find to a specialist gold prospecting supply store in the nearby town of Geelong for appraisal. "Our jaws dropped to the floor when we first saw it," Darren Kamp, owner of Lucky Strike Gold, wrote on the company's Facebook page. He described the find as an "absolutely jaw-dropping find".

"He brought me a sample of the gold nugget to ask if I thought there might be $10,000 (Australian) dollars worth of gold in it," Kamp told Live Science. "I told him, try $100,000 because it was so heavy; I knew immediately it would be worth it. And then the guy said it's only half of it, he's got the other half at home. When I asked him what he meant, he said he had broken the rock and expected to find a massive gold boulder inside."

The 4.6kg stone contained a whopping 2.6kg of gold worth AUD240,000 (almost 3.5 million kroner), according to BBC News. While it's not unusual to come across gold in this part of Australia, Kamp said that in his 43 years of prospecting, this is the largest piece of gold he has ever seen. Australia's largest gold nugget, the 'Welcome Stranger', was discovered by miners in 1869, weighing 72 kilograms and is still the largest gold nugget ever found in the world. At current exchange rates, it would be worth approximately $2.7 million (about 58 million crowns).

After the valuation, Darren purchased both halves of the gold nugget from the finder, joined them together and displayed them in his shop. He plans to keep the nugget for some time, with the intention of eventually considering selling it as a collector's piece: "It's a shame that it was broken in half, but on the other hand, you can see so much gold in the stone," he said, adding that this find will likely bewill likely motivate amateur gold prospectors to go looking for a similar lucky find in the next few weeks: "Hobby prospectors go out on the weekend and are happy to find a few hundred dollars worth of gold," he added.

Video

Roman Nemec

Sources: bbc.com, livescience.com, sciencetimes.com

The mound contained 2.6kg of gold

Darren Kamp purchased the nugget and displayed it in his shop

Darren with the nugget on the front page of the Australian press