The largest gold nugget ever found in the world weighs as much as a grown man and is every gold digger’s absolute dream.
For people looking to invest their wealth, gold has generally been a reliable investment with consistently high value—so much so that Logan Paul even made a bottle of Prime out of the stuff.
During the Australian gold rush, the largest nugget in the world was found by miners from Great Britain.
On February 5, 1869, two Cornish miners named John Deason and Richard Oats were searching for gold in the Victoria region of Australia.
They discovered a massive lump, weighing 72 kilograms and measuring 61 centimeters long, stuck in the roots of a tree. Nicknamed the “Welcome Stranger,” it was discovered encased in quartz on a slope called Bulldog Gully.
In notes from the time, Deason wrote: “I tried to lift the nugget with the pickaxe, but the handle broke. Then I took a crowbar and lifted the nugget to the surface.”
The large lump of gold was taken to the nearby town of Dunolly to be weighed at the London Chartered Bank, but it did not fit on the scales.
The nugget had to be broken into smaller pieces to calculate its total weight. The two men who discovered it received just under 10,000 pounds and the gold was melted down. According to the BBCA similarly sized nugget would be worth about £2 million today.
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