Gold fever and the notion of traveling to a newly discovered goldfield to find one’s fortune have gripped people for centuries.
The value we place in gold has not diminished, and not so long ago, nearly all currencies were backed by the precious metal. As American debt has risen over the decades, so has the value of gold, seen as a protection against economic uncertainty.
Are you interested in investing in gold? When you become a Nomad Capitalist client, we will create your holistic strategy, including buying and storing gold offshore.
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Gold Nuggets
A gold nugget is a piece of gold that is found in its natural form, usually in streams and rivers. These large nuggets made of this most precious metal are often gathered together with smaller pieces of gold in areas called placers.
Nuggets can also be found in places where the veins or rocks containing gold have been weathered over time. Other precious metals like platinum are formed into nuggets in the same way as gold.
Gold nuggets found in their natural form are usually around 22 karat in purity (92%). Purity can be roughly assessed by the nugget color, and the richer and deeper the orange-yellow, the higher the gold content.
The Largest Gold Nugget
There have been numerous gold rushes down through history, in every corner of the planet from Australia to Chile, with the most infamous being The California Gold Rush in 1848 in the United States. But gold rushes date back as far as early civilization and the Greek Empire and further.
Welcome Stranger
Another significant gold rush was in Australia in the 1850s, when thousands of people traveled to the region of Victoria to find their gold fortune. Prospectors came from around the world, for most great wealth was never achieved, but some lucky few struck gold.
Two Cornish miners found the enormous nugget dubbed the Welcome Stranger or the Welcome Nugget as it is also known while prospecting in the gold fields of Victoria on February 5, 1869.
The largest gold nugget ever found was discovered weighing a whopping 2,520 troy ounces or 72kg and was 24 inches when John Deason and Richard Oates found it.
To put it in perspective, smaller gold nuggets range in size from just 1 millimeter to around 300 troy ounces, and a one-ounce nugget is now considered as rare as a five-carat diamond.
Deason and Oate met in West Cornwall, Southern England, both working in the mines there and the early 1850s. Both men then emigrated to Australia to begin prospecting.
It took years of digging before the two men finally struck gold. The men had discovered the massive piece of gold encased in quartz on a slope known as Bulldog Gully.
Welcome Stranger was immediately broken up, partly because it was too big to fit on the scales. If this nugget were sold on today’s market, it would sell for more than $3 million.
Today there is a replica of the Welcome Stranger in the Dunolly Museum, and in February 2019, the Descendants of John Deason and Richard Oates gathered at the spot it was found. Although these descendants have not actually profited from the men’s discovery, and noted that they “haven’t even got any jewelry made from the Welcome Stranger.”
Nowadays, gold speculators are still drawn to the area known as the Golden Triangle, and although there are still some nuggets to be found, nothing like the Welcome Stranger.
Pepita Canaã
Coming in as the second largest gold nugget ever found is the Canaã nugget, or the Pepita Canaa. When found, it weighed 1,955 troy ounces/60.8 kg, remains the largest gold nugget still in existence today, and is displayed at the Banco Central Museum in Brazil.
The Canaã nugget was discovered in 1983 by miner Júlio de Deus Filho at the Serra Pelada Mine in Brazil.
This massive nugget of gold contains 52.3 kgs of native gold, or 1,682 troy ounces of pure gold, and would be valued at around $2.8 million in today’s gold price.
The Brazilian mining region was known as one of the world’s most notorious gold mining areas. Thousands of independent miners flocked to the areas to participate in open-air gold mining in crowded and dangerous conditions.
Mining is still a massive business today, with the World’s Largest Gold Mines found in Indonesia, Africa, Western Australia, Uzbekistan, and the United States.
Go Where You Are Treated Best
A troy ounce of gold that was worth around $35 in the 1970s is now worth nearly $2,000. Gold has become an incredibly liquid asset to hold, but gold investors need to exercise caution when choosing what type of gold investment to pursue and where they store their gold.
Buying gold holds significant advantages for high-net-worth individuals seeking refuge from the devaluation of fiat currencies, notably the US Dollar.
As gold rushes spread across the globe, unfortunately, so did gold confiscation by governments, most notably in Australia and the United States. This is just one reason that at Nomad Capitalist, we believe it is better to store at least a percentage of your gold offshore, keeping your precious metals out of the reach of government freezes and seizures.
According to our gold partners, J. Rotbart & Co, people’s biggest misconception is that buying physical gold is expensive and complicated.
But in today’s world, especially when using a professional vaulting service like Rotbart’s, it is actually quite easy for our clients to make a gold investment.
They provide a full suite of services for mostly high-net-worth individuals who would like to diversify their portfolio by investing in precious physical metals, meaning gold, silver, platinum, and palladium bars and coins.
Do you value your economic freedom? With the Western world becoming more anti-wealth, prepare now by taking your business and assets offshore.
We help high net-worth individuals build a suit of experts and execute plans, whether starting off small or going all the way, reducing taxes, creating a global Plan B, and diversifying your wealth. Nomad Capitalist will help you prepare for what could happen next and go where you are treated best.
Largest Gold Nugget FAQs
The Hand of Faith is the largest gold nugget discovered through the use of a metal detector. The Hand of Faith is currently on permanent display at the Golden Nugget Casino in Las Vegas. Taking into account the value of the nugget back in 1980, the estimated worth of the Hand of Faith today is approximately $3.5 million.
Finding gold is an extremely difficult task. The Earth’s crust contains an average concentration of 0.005 parts per million of gold, equivalent to 5 grams of gold per 1000 tons of earth. With such slim odds, randomly digging for gold would be pointless. However, certain locations have higher concentrations, making them suitable for mining.
