An Australian prospector has discovered a massive 145-ounce gold nugget worth more than $250,000. 
 
 Dubbed ‘Friday’s Joy’, the nugget was found with a Minelab metal detector in an already work-over area at the southern edge of central Victoria’s Golden Triangle, an area well known for yielding gold, finding the top of the nugget only around 30cm below the ground. 
 
 The prospector who found the nugget wanted to stay anonymous. 
 
 “I thought it was rubbish at first, maybe an old horseshoe,” the man said,“I was in total disbelief as I didn’t think nuggets of this size were still around.” 
 
 An avid prospector – having prospected for more than ten years – the man had an agreement with his other gold prospecting enthusiast friends to split the proceeds on any large gold item found when they went prospecting together. 
 
 Upon the find, he was unsure of what to do at first. 
 
 “It’s like catching a big fish and not knowing what to do with it,” he said. 
 
 “I washed it in water, covered it in aluminium foil and kept it in my oven on the first night.” 
 
 The man did not intend to quit his job and retire, instead aiming to buy a van and travel around Australia, sightseeing and prospecting. 
 
 The nugget is currently in a bank vault, with a replica in construction. Plans for an auction are also underway. 
 
 Minelab’s regional sales and marketing director Fraser Kendall said the company was thrilled a customer made such a discovery. 
 
 “He was prospecting in an area that others had clearly worked over and this just goes to show that there’s plenty of gold still coming out of Victoria,” he said. 
 
 Kendall added that the nugget was on par with the 159.3 ounce ‘Cindy’s Pride’, and surpassed prospector Mick Brown’s 87-ounce ‘Fair Dinkum’ gold nugget found last year near the Wedderburn, around 200km north of Melbourne; it was later auctioned for $175,000. ||||| As geeks, we get excited about phones that are 10 per cent faster than their competitors, and camera sensors that capture 20 per cent more light. That technological arms race is equally ferocious in the metal detector world, as crazy as that sounds, and avid hobbyists can spend serious money on new toys that they compare with their mates. Sometimes, though, it pays off — like for one (anonymous) Aussie gold-digger that found a 4.1-kilo nugget in Victoria's Golden Triangle. 
 
 Informally named "Friday's Joy", the nugget will go up for auction and is expected to net more than $250,000 — the same value that the (relatively) well-known Cindy's Pride, one of the largest single gold deposits ever found in Australia, is worth. The 145-ounce nugget was actually the second one the wisely-wants-to-remain-anonymous prospector found, but it was a damn sight larger than the 9-ounce speck that drew him to the location originally. 
 
 Looking for the tech angle? This news comes to us by way of Minelab, the Aussie company that makes the GPZ 7000 — apparently the "next level of gold detection" according to Minelab's website — and a wide range of other gold and treasure detectors. The GPZ is supposedly "equipped with Minelab’s exclusive, groundbreaking, Zero Voltage Transmission (ZVT) technology and state-of-the-art features", and "offers the deepest ground penetration and represents the most significant advancement in gold detecting technologies in years". Hey, if it's found a $250,000 piece of gold, you've convinced us. 
 
 And apparently gold detecting is a more lucrative hobby than we thought, too; a prospector called Mick Brown found a 2.7-kilogram nugget worth $175,000 that he called "Fair Dinkum" last year, also with a Minelab detector. Maybe we should hang up our keyboards and invest in a metal detector instead. [Minelab] ||||| Name of finder, location of find kept secret 
 
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 PARADISE >> A dream by its nature is usually etherial and vaporous, but that is not the case for Bob Van Camp of Paradise. 
 
 For Van Camp, at least, this one dream is 5.18 standard pounds of shimmering, nearly pure, California gold. 
 
 Van Camp did not find the nugget, but within two hours of its discovery in July he was holding it in his hand. 
 
 The name of the finder is being kept secret, and the location of its discovery is being kept vague, just that it was found in the foothills in Butte County on public land in an area that was "worked" during the original Gold Rush. 
 
 Van Camp said the finder, who he calls Mr. Smith," would not even tell him precisely where he found the nugget, which is about the size and shape on a adult's hand and about an inch thick. 
 
 Van Camp earns his living working for a major rice grower, but he is known by gold prospectors because he runs a metal detector dealership. In the prospecting community he is known as "Digger Bob." 
 
 He is quick to point out that neither he nor Mr. Smith has the nugget in their possession. Digger Bob says the specimen, which he and Smith have been calling the "Butte Nugget," has been placed with Kagin's, a numismatic firm and auction house in Tiburon. 
 
 "If you have larceny in your heart, you are out of luck," he said. 
 
 Kagin's will have a nationwide unveiling of the Butte Nugget at the end of this month. 
 
 In a brief video he produced (http://goo.gl/ppYUL7), Van Camp, holding the nugget in his hand, says the "pre-sale estimates put this as going for between $250,000 and $400,000. 
 
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 "You're looking at a quarter of a million dollars in gold that I am holding in my hand right now. Now that is retirement for sure," he says. 
 
 Gold is measured in troy ounces, which are slightly heavier than standard ounces. The official weight of the Butte Nugget is 75 troy ounces. 
 
 Van Camp said Mr. Smith had been using a metal detector to search on the day he discovered the monster, and had found a few small nuggets. Then his detector came back with an extremely strong signal. 
 
 Mr. Smith told him his first thought was that there was "a big piece of trash" in the ground, possibly a piece of pipe or a horseshoe. He was fearful that trash would mask the signal of surrounding nuggets, so he decided to dig it out. 
 
 About 12 inches down in the soil, he found the nugget. 
 
 Van Camp says the Butte Nugget is the second largest extant placer gold nugget in California. The biggest nugget is the 100 troy ounce "Mojave Nugget." 
 
 Both of these nuggets amount to little more than pebbles compared to gigantic 54-pound Dogtown Nugget that was discovered in 1859 on the slopes of Sawmill Peak. 
 
 Van Camp said the Dogtown Nugget isn't on the list of current monsters because it was melted down and no longer exists in its original form. 
 
 He said the July discovery proves that life-changing gold is still out there to be found and he urged people to continue to hold onto the dream. 
 
 "Follow the three Ps: persistence, patience and perseverance. Keep at it. Keep the dream alive." 
 
 Contact reporter Roger H. Aylworth at 896-7762.
– Wednesday saw what could be the world's largest-ever pearl; Thursday, a massive gold nugget weighing in at around 9 pounds. Found in central Victoria's Golden Triangle in Australia by an explorer who wishes to stay anonymous, per ABC.net.au, the gleaming chunk of precious metal, estimated to be worth up to $190,000, was found 12 inches below the surface using what Gizmodo Australia calls a $7,600 Minelab metal detector known as the "next level of gold detection." "I thought it was rubbish at first, maybe an old horseshoe," says the prospector, who's been scouting for buried treasure in his spare time for 10 years with a group of friends, per 9News. But as he dug deeper, the finder of the nugget now being called "Friday's Joy" realized he hadn't just stumbled across some junkyard-worthy detritus. The prospector, who had found a 9-ounce gold nugget the previous day, initially wasn't sure what to do with this substantially larger find—discovered, incidentally, in a location that had already been "worked over," a Minelab rep tells AustraliaMining.com—so he rinsed it off with water, wrapped it tinfoil, and stuck it in his oven for the night. For now, the gold piece remains secure in a bank vault until it can be sold at auction, and the prospector, who has promised to split the proceeds with his metal-detecting group, is planning to use his share to buy a van so he can travel around his home continent. His lucrative new lucky charm is still far from being the world's biggest: Per the Discovery Channel, that honor goes to the 158-pound "Welcome Stranger" nugget found in Dunolly, Victoria, in 1869. (Once found in a plane toilet: 32 gold nuggets.)