Weighing 85.7 grams, what’s believed to be the largest gold nugget found in British waters for the past 500 years was found by an amateur prospector in 2016.
The man, who wishes to remain anonymous, kept the exact location a secret for the past two years in an attempt to keep the area from being overrun by a gold rush.
“I would say it is worth at least £50,000,” the man told The Guardian this summer about the more than three-ounce nugget, “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. Historically, it is off the Richter scale.”
He reportedly used a technique known as sniping, in which a snorkel is used to search a riverbed. Named the Douglas Nugget, it is an unprecedented find according to British gold panning experts
According to The Guardian report, the largest gold nugget previously found in British waters weighed 59 grams and was discovered in Cornwall in 1808.