Local state media first reported the incident on Thursday. The discovery was made in an area of China known for being abundant in natural resources, the Xinijiang region in the north-west of the country.
The gold nugget was reportedly “practically lying on bare ground” according to a Xinhua news agency, citing the farmer who found the gold, Berek Sawut, as the origin of the quote. It is currently uncertain as to whether he will be able to keep what he found.
The huge lump is 23 centimetres long, up to 18 centimetres wide and around 8 centimetres thick. It weighs a whopping 7.85kg and is expected to be 80-90 percent pure like the majority of gold nuggets that are found.
It could be worth $255,000 or 1.6m yuan in the finder’s native currency. A local expert, Zhu Xinfeng, said it could fetch more though as natural gold can go for several times higher than normal refined gold owing to its uniqueness.
The largest gold nugget ever found is called the Welcome Stranger and was discovered in Australia in 1869. Its weight was in excess of 78kg. The similarly named Welcome Nugget, melted down in London in November 1859, weighted 69kg. More recently, a Californian man found a 3kg nugget on his property last year.
This humble farmer has certainly struck gold though, even if by rather unconventional means. The vast majority of gold is retrieved by mining around known gold deposits. Such “lying on the ground” finds are exceptionally rare even for tiny quantities of gold, so to find nearly 8kg is a remarkable event.
