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Placer Gold and Natural Gold Nuggets

natural gold nugget

Nugget and Placer Gold

   
    In the modern world, the most common ways a person gets to see, or own gold are; via jewelry, which is karat gold alloyed with other metals to strengthen the jewelry and alter its color and; gold bullion coins or bars. Less common are natural gold nuggets. Natural gold nuggets can come in many different purities but are usually at least 80% gold. The rest of the nugget is typically made of minerals and other metals such as quartz, silver, copper, iron and tin. Placer gold is typically smaller nuggets, sometime called flakes.

   Most natural gold nuggets are panned and mined in places like Northern California and Alaska. Due to the different minerals and other factors, nuggets from these different areas can vary in color (dark yellow brown or bright yellow, etc). Gold nuggets can vary in size from the size of a grain of sand all the way to 2200 troy ounces, which is the weight of the largest gold nugget ever found, the infamous Welcome Stranger Nugget.

   Because of the uniqueness and relatively high value of gold nuggets, very few gold buyers in the Las Vegas Valley area can test these nuggets properly for gold content. The reason for this is, most gold testing kits use different acids to determine the purity of gold. As these kits were made to only test jewelry, many other gold buyers can only determine if the gold is 10 karat, 14 karat, 18 karat or 22 karat. This can narrow it down but will never be accurate enough to make you a fair offer.

   This is where Rancho Gold and Jewelry is different. We not only have over 40 years combined experience buying items made of gold, such as natural gold nuggets, but we also have high tech equipment which many other gold buyers simply don’t have. Our Niton XRF X-Ray Spectrometer can give us the exact gold content of your nugget. Combine that with the weight, and we can make the highest possible offer when you are looking to sell. So, if you have a jar of gold dust from a panning trip, or a gold nugget that you want to sell, visit Rancho Gold & Jewelry today.