The heaviest good nugget ever was the "Welcome Stranger" which measured 61 cm by 31 cm and was discovered by John Deason and Richard Oates at Moliagul, western Victoria, Australia on 5 February 1869. It weighed 2316 troy ounces or 72.04 kg. The Welcome Stranger is not the same as the "Welcome Nugget" found in Ballarat in 1858 which was the largest single nugget prior to the discovery of the Welcome Stranger.
However, larger than this is the Beyers and Holtermann nugget, the largest single piece of reef gold ever discovered in the world. The Beyers and Holtermann nugget was, strictly speaking, not a nugget, but what is called a matrix. Weighing in around 286 kilograms(about 630 pounds), it measured 150cm by 66cm, and was worth at least £12,000 at the time it was discovered, in October 1872. It was discovered by workers at the Star of Hope Gold Mining Co on Hawkins Hill, at the Hill End goldfields in New South Wales, Australia. Gold sometimes appears as a "vein" included in rock, usually quartz. In this case it was a quartz reef. By removing the rock around the vein, the gold included in that vein can be recovered in one piece. And that was the case with the Holtermann Nugget.
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The Holterman Nugget was found in Hill End in NSW on 19 October, 1872. It was the largest single nugget ever discovered anywhere, although strictly speaking, it was not really a single nugget but rather a mass of gold found in a reef.
Fools gold (iron pyrite) is relatively heavy, it is about one fourth to one third as heavy as gold and about as heavy as iron.
The world's largest gold nugget was found in Australia on 5 February 1869. This was the "Welcome Stranger", and it measured 61cm by 31cm. It was discovered by prospectors John Deason and Richard Oates at Moliagul, which is about halfway between Maryborough and St Arnaud in western Victoria. Because no scales of the time could actually handle the weight of the nugget, it had to be broken into three pieces by a blacksmith in order to be weighed: it weighed in at over 2300 ounces, or 70 kilograms. Deason (Deeson) and Oates were paid £19,068 for their nugget which became known as "Welcome Stranger".This is not the same as the large "Welcome Nugget" found in Ballarat in 1858.
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The biggest gold nugget ever recorded was the "Welcome Stranger", found in Australia. It measured 61 cm by 31 cm and was discovered by John Deason and Richard Oates at Moliagul, western Victoria, Australia on 5 February 1869. It weighed 2316 troy ounces or 72.04 kg. The finders were paid £19,068. The Welcome Stranger is not the same as the "Welcome Nugget" found in Ballarat in 1858 which was the largest single nugget prior to the discovery of the Welcome Stranger.