Amateur prospector digs up weighty gold nugget

• An amateur prospector has unearthed a 1,218-gram gold nugget worth $150,000 to $160,000 at spot prices near Tibooburra in outback New South Wales.
• Video of the find, posted to Facebook by Broken Hill Prospecting Supplies, has been viewed more than a million times.
• Gold has slid about a quarter from its January record to $5,773 an ounce, as rising interest rates weigh on the metal.

An amateur prospector has filmed the moment he pulled a gold nugget weighing more than a kilogram from the red dirt of outback New South Wales.

The prospector nicknamed the nugget the “Tibooburra Spud”, and found it in mid-October on Mount Stuart station near Tibooburra.

The nugget weighed 1,218 grams, which testing found to contain around 940 grams worth of gold, putting its value at spot prices between $150,000 and $160,000.

The six-figure find comes as gold trades about a quarter below its January record, though Greg Spangler, a prospecting supplies business owner in the outback mining city of Broken Hill, says high prices are drawing more people into the hobby.

Video of the dig, posted to Facebook by Broken Hill Prospecting Supplies, shows the prospector following a “faint signal at the top” on his metal detector.

He says he had dug up “that many bullet shells, that much rubbish” before striking the nugget, which turned up “not even that deep.”

At first, he hopes it isn’t a painted rock, before declaring it solid gold.

“As I say, keep persisting,” he tells the camera.

“It might have been on the first or second scrape I just seen this bright yellow dot in the centre of the hole,” the prospector, who wished to remain anonymous, told ABC News.

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The prospector told the ABC he plans to sell the nugget to a collector for up to $200,000.

Rates weigh on gold

Rising interest rates and a stronger Australian dollar have taken the shine off gold for local investors, The Money Edition reported last week.

The precious metal hit a record high of around $7,698 on January 28, but has since slid about a quarter to $5,773, down 11.7 per cent this year, according to GoldPrice.org data.

Resurgent inflation, fuelled partly by soaring energy costs after US and Iranian hostilities broke out at the end of February, has pushed the US Federal Reserve to hike rates once and the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) to lift rates four times this year.

Gold pays no yield, so higher rates tend to dull its appeal.