17-POUND GOLD NUGGET FOUND BY FARMER IN CHINA, LIKELY WONT GET TO KEEP IT

STAFF · FEB 6TH, 2015

17-pound gold nugget Found In China Worth $255K (PHOTO)

A herdsman in China’s far western Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region found a 17-pound (7.85-kilogram) gold nugget that was “practically lying on bare ground”.

The Kazak herdsman, Berek Sawut, from Qinghe County in Altay Prefecture made the extraordinary discovery last week. The estimated price for such a find, assuming the nugget is 80 percent pure (Nuggets are usually 80 to 90 percent pure), is an incredible 1.6 million $255,313USD.

Zhu Xinfeng, a local expert said the price of natural gold, considering its uniqueness, is often several times higher than that of standard gold.

The random-shaped gold nugget is about 23 centimeters long, 18 centimeters on its widest side and 8 centimeters at its thickest.

A gold nugget is a naturally produced irregular piece of gold, and is most frequently found through mining. The name Altay means gold in Mongolian. A 1.84-kg gold nugget was also found in Altay in 2010.

According to reports the farmer may not be able tocash in on his incredible find.

China is under communist rule, which basically means, the farmer does not own the land on which he works and does not have mineral rights to the property.

As the Inquistr reports, land in China is state-owned. This means when you “purchase” land, you are simply purchasing the right to use said land — you don’t actually own it.

As many Reddit users point out, Sawut may now be regretting telling anyone about his precious find.

Should have just kept it hidden and sold off portions of it piecemeal over a decade.
That said, if I ever found a giant lump of gold in my backyard I’d probably spend the first three days driving around with it in the passenger seat of my car and laugh hysterically and scream gold rush out my window at anyone and everyone.

According to Discovery, the largest nugget ever was found in 1869:

The world’s largest nugget was found just a couple of inches below the ground near Dunolly, Victoria, Australia on 5 February 1869. Weighing in at 2,315.5 troy ounces (72.02 kg) it surpassed the “Welcome Nugget” by nearly a hundred ounces. In this 1869 illustration published shortly after the discovery, the size of the nugget (61 by 31 cm or 24 by 12 in.) is compared to a 12 inch (30 cm) scale bar. The nugget was soon melted down into ingots and shipped to the Bank of England. Before 1990, just about all large nuggets were melted down for their monetary value. Today there are less than a dozen known nuggets over 500 ounces.