Open this photo in gallery Gold expert Leon Kirk, from Gold Panning Supplies UK, holds a 85.7-gram the nugget worth upwards of £50,000. The finder, who wants to remain anonymous, found the precious lump while diving in a Scottish river. Paul Jacobs/Executive Pictures

Scotland is bracing for an influx of fortune seekers after a gold-panning enthusiast found an 85.7-gram nugget lying in a river bed. It’s believed to be the largest nugget ever found in Britain and the discovery has set off a flurry of interest among gold bugs.

“My phone has been ringing off the hook,” said Leon Kirk, who sells gold-panning equipment in Glasgow and knows the man who found the nugget. “To get something that’s nearly 86 grams is massive for this country.”

Mr. Kirk said the man, dubbed “Mr. Lucky,” wants to remain anonymous and won’t reveal where he found the treasure, which is believed to be worth more than £50,000 ($85,900). He’s had it for more than a year but was too afraid to come forward until now.

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“He slowly got more confident and he approached me for advice,” said Mr. Kirk, who urged him to make the finding public. Mr. Kirk has had a chance to examine the nugget, which he described as “off the Richter scale” for gold panning. “To hold it was very nice but to drop it into the palm of your hand was unbelievable,” he said. “You wouldn’t believe how heavy it feels.”

Gold is a rare commodity in Scotland and there hasn’t been any significant gold-mining activity in about 400 years. That’s beginning to change as more deposits are discovered and gold panning becomes an increasingly popular hobby. An Australian company, Scotgold Resources Ltd., is about to open the first commercial gold mine in Scotland near Loch Lomond and the company is exploring another potential mine site in the Grampian Highlands. One key reason for the renaissance is price. It can fetch a premium of up to four times the spot market price, which is currently around US$1,225 an ounce.

The record-sized nugget was found using a popular technique in Scotland called “sniping,” which is essentially snorkelling down shallow rivers and streams, looking for gold along the bottom. Mr. Kirk released a statement from the finder, who has been sniping for about 10 years. “I was following a crack in the bedrock and found around two grams of fine gold,” he said.

“This led to a pocket, where I uncovered the nugget. I called over my friend to have a look and we both assumed it to be five grams to seven grams. It wasn’t until I removed it that we realized how big it was. I took off my glove and picked it up, jumped out of the water and screamed, ‘Bingo’ to my friend.”

Neil Clark, a University of Glasgow geologist who has studied the history of gold in Scotland, said the finding was remarkable. “Normally, you’d say this is a once-in-a-lifetime discovery. But this is once in about 15 lifetimes,” he said. “This is maybe once in 500 years.”

The nugget is likely to fuel the growing interest in Scottish gold. Mr. Kirk runs monthly classes for gold-panning beginners in Wanlockhead, a village south of Glasgow that’s become something of a mecca for gold panning. The five-hour course costs £95 ($163) and it regularly sells out (a few years ago, a tourist from Vancouver pulled up an 18-gram nugget on his first panning trip). In May, hundreds of people came to Wanlockhead for the British gold-panning championships and last year the village played host to the world panning championships, which drew 10,000 participants from 20 countries.

“It’s a great hobby. People are fascinated to find gold,” said Mr. Kirk, who also operates Gold Panning Supplies UK and sells his own line of panning equipment. He’s now bracing for an onslaught in the wake of the nugget find. “You just don’t know with something like this. There are people that disbelieve it and people who will be desperate to come out and make their millions. You’ll get all sorts of people.”

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Looking for gold in Scotland isn’t easy. A law dating back to 1649 gives landowners the right to all minerals on their property and anything found on public land typically belongs to the Crown. However, gold prospectors can generally search rivers and streams and keep whatever they find, so long as they don’t dig too far down. Many large estates also sell licences for gold panning on their property.

It’s not clear what the nugget finder will do with it, but Mr. Kirk has encouraged him to cut a deal with a museum. “I hope they do some sort of deal with him, for everyone to see it,” he said.

David Johnson, who runs a gold-panning website, said he can understand why the finder wants to stay out of the limelight. Mr. Johnson is a panning diehard who lives in Liverpool but travels roughly 800 kilometres to pan for gold in Scotland. He said serious gold panners don’t want to talk up their finds, for fear others will take prime spots. “Let’s be honest, if you went up there and you found a nice lump of gold, would you tell anyone?” he said. “I would tell someone but I would tell someone that it was in a different area.”

Tyndrum Cononish gold mine Edinburgh Glasgow Wanlockhead Panning area SCOTLAND Dalradian metamorphic area with gold potential ENGLAND tHE GLOBE AND MAIL SOURCE: SCOTGOLD; GOOGLE MAPS Tyndrum Scotgold Grampian Project Cononish gold mine Edinburgh Glasgow Scotgold tenement boundary Wanlockhead SCOTLAND Panning area Dalradian metamorphic area with gold potential ENGLAND tHE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: SCOTGOLD; GOOGLE MAPS Tyndrum Cononish gold mine Scotgold Grampian Project Edinburgh Glasgow Wanlockhead Scotgold tenement boundary SCOTLAND Panning area Dalradian metamorphic area with gold potential ENGLAND JOHN SOPINSKI/THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: SCOTGOLD; GOOGLE MAPS



