News
ENLARGE
An Australian man is crying fraud over the story of a massive gold nugget claimed to have been found in Nevada County.
Murray Cox, who said he is a prospector from Victoria, Australia, claims a 9-pound nugget found in Nevada County outside of the Town of Washington in April 2010 is actually a nugget he and friend Reg Wilson found in southeastern Australia in 1987.
“Oh yes, I'm 100 percent sure,” Cox told The Union in a phone interview Monday. “Actually, 110 percent.”
Cox noticed a recent photograph and story in a precious metals magazine about the nugget's sale in March for more than $400,000, he said.
“I realized straight away that that was the nugget we found,” Cox said.
The nugget was sold in Sacramento by Reno-based Holabird Kagin Americana, an auction house that agreed to sell the nugget for a San Francisco businessman who identified himself to The Union as Jim Sanders. Attempts to contact Sanders have been unsuccessful.
According to a San Francisco Chronicle article in April, geologists were planning to survey the 180-acre property where Sanders claimed to find the nugget. Geologists planned to survey the property to determine how much gold was present before Sanders put it up for sale, according to the Chronicle article.
Word of the fraud claim reached Holabird-Kagin owner Fred Holabird over the weekend, and he is trying to investigate the matter, he said.
“We're asking a team of scientists (one from the U.S., another from Australia) to take a look at it and compare it to others from California and Australia,” Holabird said. “We're trying to uncover the truth.”
The nugget's size and look are more in common with those found in California than Australia, Holabird said.
“For 150 years Mother Nature has told us that those nuggets came from the California Mother Lode,” he said. “But sometimes she plays tricks on us.”
Cox traces the history of the nugget only a step beyond he and Wilson's discovery of it, when Wilson in “1989 or 1990” sold it to an Arizona-based assayer named “Rattlesnake John.” After that he lost track of the nugget, he said.
Holabird hopes to get permission from the buyer, whose name has not been disclosed, to have the gold examined as quickly as possible, he said.
Murray Cox, who said he is a prospector from Victoria, Australia, claims a 9-pound nugget found in Nevada County outside of the Town of Washington in April 2010 is actually a nugget he and friend Reg Wilson found in southeastern Australia in 1987.
“Oh yes, I'm 100 percent sure,” Cox told The Union in a phone interview Monday. “Actually, 110 percent.”
Cox noticed a recent photograph and story in a precious metals magazine about the nugget's sale in March for more than $400,000, he said.
“I realized straight away that that was the nugget we found,” Cox said.
The nugget was sold in Sacramento by Reno-based Holabird Kagin Americana, an auction house that agreed to sell the nugget for a San Francisco businessman who identified himself to The Union as Jim Sanders. Attempts to contact Sanders have been unsuccessful.
According to a San Francisco Chronicle article in April, geologists were planning to survey the 180-acre property where Sanders claimed to find the nugget. Geologists planned to survey the property to determine how much gold was present before Sanders put it up for sale, according to the Chronicle article.
Word of the fraud claim reached Holabird-Kagin owner Fred Holabird over the weekend, and he is trying to investigate the matter, he said.
“We're asking a team of scientists (one from the U.S., another from Australia) to take a look at it and compare it to others from California and Australia,” Holabird said. “We're trying to uncover the truth.”
The nugget's size and look are more in common with those found in California than Australia, Holabird said.
“For 150 years Mother Nature has told us that those nuggets came from the California Mother Lode,” he said. “But sometimes she plays tricks on us.”
Cox traces the history of the nugget only a step beyond he and Wilson's discovery of it, when Wilson in “1989 or 1990” sold it to an Arizona-based assayer named “Rattlesnake John.” After that he lost track of the nugget, he said.
Holabird hopes to get permission from the buyer, whose name has not been disclosed, to have the gold examined as quickly as possible, he said.
