The largest gold nugget ever found on English soil is estimated at €50,000. The discoverer recently shared how he unearthed such a treasure...
In England a gold prospector has discovered what could be the largest gold nugget ever found in the country. Its value is estimated at nearly 50,000 euros. This nugget, unearthed by a certain Richard Brock in May 2023, in the hills of Shropshire, weighs 64.8 grams. Brock had traveled three long hours from home to join an organized expedition at the time and had only an old, faulty machine at his disposal after his more advanced detection kit stopped working.
The development of technology has indeed fueled interest in metal detecting in recent years, with increasingly sophisticated detectors and listening devices, GPS-assisted applications to track routes and mark finds, or even YouTube channels dedicated to this research. And in recent years, amateur gold prospectors adept at these technologies have continued to multiply. A manufacturer of these metal detectors, Minelab notably declared in 2020 that its sales had increased by 30% compared to the previous year, which had already increased by 18% a year earlier.
Yet Brock proved that flair and luck sometimes beat technology. “I arrived about an hour late, thinking I missed the action,” he said in a press release recently issued by the Mullock Jones auction company. "Everyone had all this equipment up to date and I played with three old machines, one of which was packed up. It just goes to show that the equipment you use doesn't really matter when it comes to finding gold, though. you walk on it,” he says in Business Insider. It was therefore his instinct that allowed him to achieve the feat. The most important discovery, before that of Brock, was a gold nugget weighing 54 grams, recalls The Guardian.
A metal detector can cost up to $15,000, but entry-level models are available for a few hundred dollars. While the excitement of finding treasure is one of the main sources of motivation for gold prospectors, enthusiasts also talk about the thrill of connecting with the past and escaping the routine of modern life. While Brock rightly celebrates his discovery, his haul may seem meager compared to one of the greatest discoveries of all time using a metal detector.
Indeed, in 1989, a man purchased an entry-level detector from Radio Shack in Mexico. “He began exploring the Sonoran Desert, straddling the American border, in an area known to contain gold,” we can read in the columns of Business Insider. His persistence finally paid off when one day his detector beeped. The latter dug up the famous “Cortes boot”. The largest gold nugget ever found in the West, it weighs no less than 10 kilos. It just goes to show that luck favors the bold.
