There’s gold in them thar Scots hills!
Giant £50,000 nugget found in a river is the biggest ever in UK
IT is the life-changing moment every prospector dreams of. Britain’s largest gold nugget has been discovered – worth at least £50,000.
A precious metal collector has found the 85.7g lump, which has the diameter of a 1.6ins golf ball, in a Scottish river.
Named the Douglas Nugget, it is the biggest piece of gold to have been unearthed in British waters since 1808, when a 59g lump was discovered in Cornwall.
The location of the discovery is a closelyguarded secret, along with the identity of the finder, in order to prevent a gold rush.
Gold expert Leon Kirk, from Gold Panning Supplies UK, said: ‘This is a very exciting and unprecedented find. But the nugget’s rarity means it is very hard to put a price on it. I would say it is worth at least £50,000 but, as it’s rarer than an Aston Martin or a Fabergé egg, a billionaire could easily come along and pay a lot more for it.’
The Douglas Nugget was found two years ago by a British father, in his 40s, who has kept the find a secret until now.
He came across it by ‘sniping’, in which gold hunters put on a dry suit and snorkel and lie face down in a river for hours. The man, who has been hunting for gold as a hobby for 20 years, said: ‘I was following a crack in the bedrock and found around 2g in fine gold. This led to a pocket, where I uncovered the nugget. I called over my friend to have a look. It wasn’t until I removed it that we realised just how big it was. I picked it up, jumped out of the water and screamed, “Bingo!” to my friend.’
Unsure what to do with it at the moment, he is keeping it in a safety deposit box. However, Mr Kirk hopes it will eventually be bought by a British museum. Dr Neil Clark, author of Scottish Gold: Fruit Of The Nation and curator at The Hunterian, University of Glasgow, said: ‘The rounded edges of the piece indicate that it has certainly been in the watercourse for a while.
‘The size of the nugget suggests that it probably did not travel far, though.’A 97g nugget was found off Anglesey, in North Wales, by Vincent Thurkettle in 2016. But experts later concluded it had originated from Australia. It came from the steam clipper Royal Charter which sank, laden with gold, when hit by a hurricane while sailing from Melbourne to Liverpool in 1859.
Gold is seen as the ultimate ‘safe haven’. Its value soars when stock markets slump, as investors cling to a tangible asset.