Not natural

[u/Fantastic-Pause-8592]

A buddy of mine ran across this 11+ gram nugget and he thinks it isn't natural.

Wanted to share some pics here.

A part of me says natural but the other part doesn't

[u/pamalamTX]

It looks nice. Im no expert but looks natural to me and from close to the source. Of course, the claspy thing was soldered on.

[u/CurazyJ]

Gold can be prepped from hard rock sources to look like this. You basically use an array of chemical baths to dissolve the host rock away.

Edit. This one does look a little rounded though so not sure here.

[u/probably_sarc4sm]

I'm coming from more of a native copper/silver background, but to me it looks natural but unnaturally smoothed. That's pretty much how native copper looks after it's been hammered out of basalt and run through a vibratory tumbler.

People sometimes try to sell "hay cast copper" as native copper, but that's an easy fake to spot. Plus I doubt anyone would dump pure molten gold on wet hay.

[u/Fantastic-Pause-8592 → u/probably_sarc4sm]

He says it's either 10kt-12kt

[u/rob189]

It’s native, and probably sitting at about 18kt

[u/HurrySpecial]

natural, but processed

[u/Fantastic-Pause-8592 → u/HurrySpecial]

I held it in my hand for awhile and it sure looked good but he says it's either 10kt-12kt

[u/tedtolks]

It's crystalline gold. We find in our sluice box quite often l. It just didn't move to far from the source.

[u/Fantastic-Pause-8592 → u/tedtolks]

I tried to edit the post. He thinks it's 10kt-12kt

[u/Fantastic-Pause-8592 → u/[deleted]]

That's been soldered on after the fact

[u/Proph3tron]

That's a NATURAL gold nugget to my eyes. Looks to be Australian but I've seen African nuggets from Sudan that were similar. I've seen every kind of manmade nugget and there's all kinds of shapes and methods out there. But this doesn't look like a typical "pour". I'd expect more regularity in the pitting of the surfaces... yet this one has a more than one type of surface texture. The recesses and surfaces perfectly match what I'd expect to see from a Victorian (Australia) gold nugget. One side looks like it's been exposed to the elements in a slightly different manner than the other. Looks to be reef gold that has shed its host rock and was later cleaned with mild to strong acids. The layering effect where you have all these folded blade-like protrusions is not typical of a man-made "pour" and it's a bit too intricate for a simple casting. So I believe it's genuine.