We all love to see that first glimmer of gold when it peeks out from under the black sand in our pan, or feel the weight of a nugget in our scoop when we dig a good target. But sometimes things don’t go quite so smoothly.

Some prospectors would have assumed it was another shotgun shell, but in this case it was 17.6-pennyweight nugget!

The nugget sat there in plain sight, though it was covered in dirt, while hundreds of people had passed that way every day.

“The evidence is clear—mineral deposits alone are not enough to attract precious commodity investment dollars...”