According to Business Insider, an amateur gold prospector in Australia struck it big with a cheap metal detector, uncovering a massive gold nugget worth $160,000. The lucky find was made at a depth of just 0.3 meters in the “golden triangle” region between Bendigo, St Arnaud, and Ballarat, which was the epicenter of Australia’s gold rush in the 1800s.
Darren Kamp, owner of Lucky Strike Gold, a gold prospecting store, confirmed and appraised the find. He shared that the prospector who discovered the gold-laden rock initially wondered if it could be worth $10,000.
However, Kamp asserted that its value far exceeded that estimate. In his 43 years of gold prospecting, he had never seen a rock so laden with gold.
At the time of the discovery, the prospector had only brought in half of the nugget, leaving the other half at home. When the two halves were reunited, they weighed in at over 4.6 kg, with approximately 2.6 kg of pure gold, valued at around $160,000.
Kamp has named the massive nugget “Lucky Strike Nugget” and is considering selling it as a collector’s item. “The only unfortunate thing is that the nugget is broken in half,” he said, “but because it’s broken, we can see just how much gold is inside.”
