Sometimes, the greatest discoveries come with their fair share of beginner’s luck. An amateur gold hunter based in Victoria, Australia, literally struck gold armed only with a cheap metal detector.
He detected a grubby old rock that indicated it could have some precious metal inside, and hoped it would be enough to be able to sell. So he lugged it off to the experts at Lucky Strike Gold, a gold prospecting business, and was informed by the owner that his find was worth much more than he initially thought.
The rock is 4.6 kilograms (10.1 pounds), and contains about 2.6 kilograms (5.7 pounds) of gold. Initially, the gold hunter found the rock to be very dirty and had a hard time spotting the gold on its surface. However, once it was cleaned by the prospector, the precious metal revealed itself. “You could see the gold just come oozing out of the rock everywhere,” Darren Kamp, the owner of Lucky Strike Gold told CNN.
“When it hit my hand, my jaw dropped with it,” Kamp recalls. “It was just incredible. Once-in-a-lifetime find.” The finder, who wants to remain anonymous, asked Kamp if there could be AU$10,000 (US$6,675) worth of gold in it, to which the owner replied ‘try $100,000.'” The best part? This was only half of the discovery, as the man had accidentally split the rock in two when unearthing it, and had another valuable piece at home. In the end, the gold was valued at AU$240,000 (US$160,000).
The rock - which has been named Lucky Strike Nugget, after the prospecting shop that unveiled its treasures - was found in an area known as the Golden Triangle. This region experienced a gold rush in the 19th century, and it is once again seeing a surge of gold hunters. No doubt even more so now that news of this new find has been widely broadcast.
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