By
Staff Writer
Published March 4, 2007
Silverado Gold Mines Ltd. found a rare large gold nugget at its Nolan Creek gold mine north of the Arctic Circle, the company announced last week.
The gold-bearing rock containing a 13.
78 troy ounce nugget and several smaller nuggets appeared on the floor of the mine s Mary s East Tunnel after a controlled blast.
Silverado CEO Garry Anselmo said the nugget was probably the fifth largest his company has found in the Nolan project, located 280 miles north of Fairbanks near Wiseman, a historic mining camp off the Dalton Highway.
The nugget is far from record-breaking.
The largest nugget ever found in Alaska is the Alaska Centennial Nugget extracted accidentally by miner Barry Clay in 1998 near Ruby. The nugget weighed 294.1 troy ounces.
Because gold nuggets are so rare, they are valued differently than straight gold. An impure nugget can sell for more than its weight in pure gold.
The wonderful thing about nuggets is that everybody s taste differs a bit, said Cat Callaway in the Fairbanks office of Oxford Assaying Refining.
Some people want the bright shiny stuff; some people want the dull stuff.
Callaway said less than 1 percent of all gold is in nugget form, and, of that, even less is jewelry quality.
Of the various qualities collectors look for in a nugget, one of the most important is character, which comes from the unique look of a nugget and the creative things it might resemble.
Callaway mentioned a gold collector in Texas who announced 15 years ago that he would pay $1 million for a nugget in the shape of his state. Anselmo said he owns one nugget that looks exactly like a mastodon, and another that weighs exactly 1 ounce, both unique qualities that attract buyers.
Alaskan nuggets often have a lot of character because permafrost keeps the nugget from traveling and becoming smoothed down, Anselmo said.
Although the nugget is valuable, Silverado won t try to sell it just yet because the company believes it can tell them more about the source of the gold found so far through placer mining.
Silverado has been searching for the mother lode at its Nolan property for years. The gold-rich landscape was created by a landslide, and miners have been slowly trying to backtrack and find where the ore began.
It s uphill and it s not far away, Anselmo said.
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