6 Pound Gold 'Butte Nugget' Goes on Auction Block

A massive gold nugget found in Butte County, Calif., will hit the auction block Thursday in San Francisco. The nugget weighs just over 6 pounds, comes with a price tag between $350,000 and $450,000 and may be the largest such specimen ever found in California by a private person.

After finding the nugget, the lucky prospector reached out to David McCarthy of Kagin’s Inc., a firm that specializes in such collectibles.

“Fortunately, the discoverer of the Butte Nugget photographed its excavation step by step," McCarthy said in a statement. "I was able to use his pictures to positively identify the location where the gold was discovered. Nuggets like this don’t come along every day -- I really didn’t believe that I would see a California nugget of this size unearthed during my lifetime.”

If you're considering breaking out the metal detector, take heart. The nugget was found, legally, on public land in the Butte County mountains.

“I can’t say the actual location of where this nugget was found, though I had to be blindfolded for the ride out to the location, so I couldn’t say exactly even if I wanted to,” McCarthy told the San Francisco Chronicle. “I’d call the spot rugged.”

From Discovery News