History’s Most Amazing Gold Discoveries
What Will You Find?
When you go looking for gold, you will usually find items that contain very small quantities of it. You might find a picture frame that is covered with gold leaf, a printed circuit board that has gold-covered contact pins, or a pair of gold-plated eyeglass frames.
We are not knocking those finds, because gold is gold. And if you can find enough small items and send them to Specialty Metals Smelters and Refiners, they can put a lot of money in your pocket . . . so keep looking and collecting them.
But then there are other kinds of gold discoveries that have been made through history. We are talking about discoveries of vast, and very valuable, quantities of gold. Here are some of the biggest in history.
King Tut’s Tomb
If you have seen pictures of the interior of this tomb, discovered by archaeologist Howard Carter in 1923, you know just how much dazzling gold was there. But what you might not know is that, probably more than in any other archaeological site ever discovered, an awful lot of it was actually pure gold.
Did you realize, for example, that King Tut’s famous face mask contained a total of 22 pounds of gold? That’s not a typo, it contained 22 pounds of gold! And there were many other gold items in the tomb as well: plates, shields, knife hilts, and jewelry. (There were also wooden items covered with gold leaf, but why focus on them when the centerpiece was a single mask that contained 22 pounds of gold?)
The Welcome Stranger Gold Nugget
This immense gold nugget, just about the biggest ever found, was discovered in Australia in 1869 by a man named John Deason. It contains about 2,284 Troy ounces of gold. Over the years, nuggets of similar size have been discovered around the world in places like the Yukon and Russia. So if prospecting in streams and rock faces appeals to you, don’t stop looking.
The Panagyurishte Treasure
Back in 1949, three brothers in Bulgaria found this buried treasure that contained gold items – such as solid gold drinking cups – that dated from the 4th Century BC. All in all, their discovery contained more than 13 pounds of solid gold.
The Great Gold Robbery of 1855
Okay, this wasn’t exactly a discovery of gold. It was one of the biggest gold thefts in history. It happened in England and France in 1855, when 91 kilograms of gold was stolen. What a story! A company shipped chests of gold from London to Paris but when the cases arrived and were opened, it was discovered that the gold had been replaced with lead! The crime was eventually solved, but not all the gold was ever recovered.
What Will You Find?
Few of us gold hunters will ever discover quantities of gold like those. But that doesn’t mean we should stop looking and collecting small quantities of gold that can really add up.
We encourage you to send your gold treasures to Specialty Metals Smelters and Refiners for testing, recycling and prompt payment. Call us at 800-426-2344 to learn more.
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