6-pound gold nugget is rock star of S.F. antique show

The 6.07-pound gold “Butte Nugget” is held in San Francisco on Oct. 23, 2014. The 6.07-pound gold “Butte Nugget” is held in San Francisco on Oct. 23, 2014. Photo: Kevin Fagan/The Chronicle / Kevin Fagan/The Chronicle Photo: Kevin Fagan/The Chronicle / Kevin Fagan/The Chronicle Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close 6-pound gold nugget is rock star of S.F. antique show 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

Of all the fancy things snaring stares Thursday at the decidedly fancy San Francisco Fall Antiques Show, the one attracting the most buzz was the crudest, the goldest and by far the oldest.

It was the 6.07-pound “Butte Nugget,” believed to be the biggest gold chunk dug up in Gold Rush country in modern times. Ever since the existence of this whopper was revealed in The Chronicle this week, people all over California have been itching to get a look at it.

Thursday’s opening day at Fort Mason of the annual antiques show, the longest-running and most prestigious on the West Coast, offered that chance. And the place went as bananas as can be expected at a showplace where the finely attired drop hundreds of thousands of dollars on old chairs and the like.

“I heard about it this morning, and I just had to come see it,” said 30-year-old Bill Hung of Oakland, inching toward the nugget’s display case with the kind of reticence usually reserved for sacred statues. He sucked in his breath as his gaze fell upon the yellow chunk.

It sat in bright light beneath glass, a glob of smoothness about 7 inches by 4 inches pocked with tiny holes and bits of the mineral it was formed in. The rock is called the Butte Nugget because when a gold-hunter dug it out of the ground in July, he did so in a rugged part of Butte County.

“Selfie!” Hung erupted, and pulled out his smartphone.

'Wow’

Numismatist David McCarthy, manning the booth for gold middleman Don Kagin of Tiburon, beamed. “Want to hold it?” he asked.

“Wow,” answered Hung. Out came the nugget, and Hung’s hands dropped several inches in surprise when McCarthy gingerly deposited it there.

“It’s heavier than it looks, isn’t it?” McCarthy said.

“Wow,” Hung said again. “I don’t know what to say. It’s so precious, so organic. Wow.”

Location a secret

The nugget’s finder and the location where he found it are being kept secret by Kagin, who expects the nugget to fetch more than $350,000. Such discretion is standard, to prevent scammers and treasure-seekers from swarming.

If melted down as ordinary gold, the nugget might be worth only $85,000 or so — but its connection to the historic Gold Country is what thrusts the price into the stratosphere.

Kagin, a coin dealer, also brokered a gigantic nugget in 2011 whose owner claimed it was from the Gold Country, but which later turned out to have come from Australia. This time, he said, he has vetted the gold thoroughly and is confident it’s “for real.”

The Butte Nugget, formed in the Sierra Nevada at least 50 million years ago, was easily the oldest purely formed object in the room Thursday. And it was possibly the most apropos, considering the theme of this year’s antiques show is “The Rush of Gold” in homage to the 1849 Gold Rush.

Coins ignored

Also in the display case, alongside the nugget, were three of the 1,427 gold coins from the now-famed Saddle Ridge Hoard, discovered by a Gold Country couple last year in their backyard. Two-thirds of the hoard, the biggest buried treasure ever found in the U.S., has sold for more than $6 million since spring. The three coins in the case Thursday were worth a total of more than $1 million.

They didn’t get much attention, though. All eyes were on the rock.

“There’s really not that much out there that looks like this nugget,” McCarthy said. Bigger Gold Country nuggets are in museums, but none this large has apparently been sold privately in many decades.

“Something like this starts out crystalline millions of years ago, gets crushed and hammered by seismic and glacial activity and water, and eventually gets down to the lumpy, nuggety goodness everyone likes so much,” McCarthy said.

He held the piece of gold high. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” he said. Everyone around nodded. Some whistled appreciatively.

Serious shoppers

McCarthy said at least four people have expressed serious interest in buying the nugget, but he has no idea when money might change hands. One of those potential buyers stopped by Thursday for a peek.

“There’s gold and then there’s gold,” said the woman, who in the manner of most buyers of such things declined to give her name. “But there is nothing like that nugget anywhere. Nice piece.”

Kevin Fagan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: kfagan@sfchronicle.com