Gold nugget goes on sale

San Francisco (Oct 25)   A 5-pound gold nugget dug up in Northern California this past summer and believed to be the largest privately held piece of its kind from the state was offered for sale at $400,000 on Thursday.

The chunk of gold, which is the size of a misshapen baked potato and weighs 72 troy ounces, or about 5 pounds (2.3 kg), is on display at the San Francisco Fall Antiques Show from Thursday through Sunday, said David McCarthy, senior numismatist for Kagin’s Inc.

The California-based numismatic firm was billing it as the “Butte Nugget” because it was unearthed in Butte County in Northern California by a man prospecting for gold on public land in July, according to the company.

The firm did not identify the man for whom it is selling the nugget or where in the county it was discovered.

“There are bigger ones in museums and there were bigger ones certainly near the Gold Rush period, but today it’s believed to be the largest gold nugget in private hands in California,” said Donald Kagin, president of Kagin’s. McCarthy, who evaluated the find, said the man who found it photographed its excavation step by step and took McCarthy to the spot where it was unearthed, but not before blindfolding him.

Source: TheNews.pk