Are Natural Gold Nuggets Rare?
Just how rare is a gold nugget? Maybe the first question we should answer is how rare is gold? According to the US Geological Survey it is estimated that all the gold ever mined throughout the history of civilization is 187,200 tonnes. If all that gold were collected and melted it into a cube, it would measure about 20 meters tall by 20 meters wide (66 feet by 66 feet). To put that into perspective, all the gold ever mined, since the beginning of man, could fit into a cube that would fit nicely under the Eiffel tower. Gold is indeed very rare.
Also consider a few facts that we know about gold and gold nuggets.
- Less than 2% of all gold comes in the form of a gold nugget. Most gold that is recovered today is tiny flakes and microscopic gold dust that is removed from crushing massive amounts of ore. A rich gold ore today will have approximately 2 to 5 ounces of gold per ton and the ore must be crushed and refined to extract that small amount of gold.
- The majority of all the gold nuggets that have been found throughout history, from the Aztecs to the California 49ers, have all been melted down and refined. It is only recently, for the past few decades, that gold in its natural raw form has been appreciated and collected and not melted down to make jewelry or bullion bars and coins.
- Most large gold producers today still refine their gold! Hard to believe, but large mining operations don’t want to take the time to market their precious gold nuggets and specimens to mineral collectors and investors and continue to produce gold by refining and melting all the precious metal they uncover. They ignore the rarity and beauty of the natural gold they mine when they do uncover rare gold nuggets or gold specimens in order to produce as much gold as possible, as quickly as possible - they see quantity, not quality.
- The age of electronic gold detecting (using metal detectors) has been around for over 40 years (a longer stretch of time than most of the gold rushes) and although metal detecting technology continues to improve, the majority of rich gold fields have been depleted of gold nuggets and a gold nugget today is harder and harder to find with metal detecting. It is rarer to find a one-ounce gold nugget than a 5 carat diamond.
- More and more environmental regulations are being implemented and making it harder to find gold nuggets. An example is California, which on January 1st, 2016, banned all suction dredging from rivers and streams to protect the salmon. This legislation is severely hurting the California prospectors and gold nuggets from California are becoming even more rare and very hard to source.
For all these reasons, you can see how very rare gold nuggets are - if all the gold ever mined was divided and equally distributed amongst every person on earth, we would each own about 1/100th of an ounce. With that in mind, if you could divide all the “special gold” rare gold nuggets and gold specimens (the gold that hasn’t been smelted and refined), every person would receive a microscopic amount of gold. Clearly, most humans today are not able to own any gold.
At our company, we value and appreciate the beauty and rarity of all the gold nuggets and gold specimens we sell. We seek out only the highest quality jewelry and investment grade gold nuggets - the best of the best. Each nugget, large and small, is hand selected for its unique and individual characteristics and natural beauty. We are committed to providing you the absolute best selection and highest quality natural jewelry and investment grade gold nuggets and gold specimens anywhere in the world.