After finding little specks and occasionally little nuggets all season, I had finally reached something economical and interesting! This had never happened before along the Pellice Valley in Italy.

We dug and extracted for two more hours. This time, as I dumped the concentrates, I saw a piece of gold three-fourths of an inch long and as big around as a pencil.

“I heard him hollering down in the hole as soon as I got there,” he said. “I was just glad to see him alive.”

While the bullion value of the nugget is already substantial, the size and rarity of the Ausrox Nugget combine to make its worth invaluable in the collector market.