weight = 1/3 kilo or 11 troy ounces This important gold specimen is one of those real rarities you couldn't dream of making better if you could cast the darned thing. The COLOR is phenomenal - unusually pure and golden without the slight darkness that some large golds from this mine can possess. It features a truly arborescent cluster of upright gold crystals, very elegant in form, perched atop quartz matrix. It is not repaired or molded in any way. This is 100% natural! Specimens of this size and quality are VERY , VERY RARE. This particular piece was sold over 25 years ago and has resided in a private collection overseas ever since...and I can tell you that such specimens were then and certainly are now extremely uncommon on the market (i know of just a few of this magnitude). This beast weighs in at 336 grams or 1/3 kilo, which is equal to about 12 ounces or about 11 troy ounces (gold standard weight).

An incredibly elegant piece with sharp crystallography, with real crystals and not the "crystalline" style found most often in California. This is a dramatic, arborescent-looking specimen that just has so much character for the size, it stands out even among larger and pricier golds.

I was shocked at the heft of this beautiful, brassy nugget, coming in at 44 grams in mass. It is a VERY bright, natural crystallized nugget, with complex but rounded faces all around. We think it clearly shows that it was once a large solid crystal, with a litle sidecar, and then was naturally rounded in a streambed. It is, again, shockingly hefty for what seemed a little nugget, and it really impresses when held for that reason as well as visually. Purchased from an old prospector who found this in Alaska in the 1970s.

These sharp, complex gold crystals showing complex hoppered crystallization, have become a modern classic that stand among the great gold specimens of all time. Very few specimens like these giants have been found at other locales (most notably Alta Floresta in Brazil a few years ago) , not for the combination of size and sharpness both. This particular, large crystal is a superb example, complete all around, with particularly equant "fins" radiating out from the middle axis. It is a full miniature and until recently was in the noted collection of Gene Meieran of Phoenix, AZ. I obtained it from him in exchange in Tucson of 2007. Gene is himself a gold specialist, and so the fact that this was one of his several examples from here adds a bit of confidence to my estimation of its quality. I feel confident knowing that he had so much more opportunity, context, and knowledge base than I, as a serious gold collector, when he picked this specimen. He was able to examine these and purchase several of the finest when they were coming out in the mid 1990s (mostly), in part through his friend, dealer Wayne Thompson. This particular specimen was long in the Meieran collection and in fact was exhibited in a well-known combination exhibition of native elements (gold, silver, platinum, copper) that was on view at the Tucson show some years ago. Today, such specimens are hard to come by on the open market. I have handled and seen several, ranging into the 100k range, quickly appear and sell through the normal mineral market. A few examples from this find were valued at 300-500k and placed in public auction through a Coin-specialist auction house around 2007 - and sold quite well. So, in context of the ones I have seen sell both privately and publicly, I feel this is a very fine quality miniature, important enough to command a higher price, that is offered at a fair price respecting the fair exchange in which I obtained it from the collector who owned it.