2kg gold nugget found by prospector

AN anonymous prospector has found a two-kilogram gold nugget somewhere within one-hundred and fifty kilometres of Ballarat.

The lump of precious metal, which would be valued at about $130,000 on the base commodity price alone, has been named ‘You wouldn’t believe it’.

Mark Day runs Gold Ballarat and said the find could be worth even more to the right collector.

“He’s has already received offers of $160,000 for the nugget,” he said. “People collect nuggets, they don’t want them melted down. This one has real character to it. We were in awe when he brought it in. It really looks good.”

“I’ve been in this business for 25 years and this is the biggest find we have seen by one of our customers, that they’ve told me about anyway.”

It’s not the first time the prospector, a retiree, had struck it rich.

Following an equipment upgrade, he dug up 42 grams of gold nuggets.

Shortly after that the prospector called Mr Day and asked if he was interested in buying some “big gold”.

“I said I wasn’t a buyer and asked him what he meant by big. He said two kilos and I just said you’ve got to be kidding,” Mr Day said

“When he showed me the nugget here in the store he was shaking like a leaf. He didn’t know what to do with it. He hadn’t slept in three days.”

The prospector reported the ‘You wouldn’t believe it’ nugget was located about a meter below the ground in an old pasture.

It was under 30cm of wash and further 15cm of very hard clay.

“He told me the detector made a noise and when he dug down a short way and found a .22 lead bullet and thought that was that. But the detector kept insisting there as something there, so he dug further and bang, there it was,” Mr Day said.