The gold nugget is the state in which gold is found naturally. They often appear in watercourses, which tend to concentrate and grow them. In placer mining one can find these gold nuggets but one can find nuggets in other places, like residual deposits with weathered gold veins, or in former mining operations areas, in tailing piles which remain from the gold mining dredges.

A lot of gold nuggets can appear as a result of small gold particles which weld together in rivers and streams. Since the gold in its pure form is soft, it can be welded together when there is impact, like it happens in rapids and waterfalls. Whenever there is pressure like that, the gold pieces can fuse together when they hit each other. In some cases gold nuggets can be like that from the time they were in the vein of gold and in other cases they are made by the action of rivers. Because gold is so malleable, it doesn’t go through brittle fractures in most cases.

Most of the gold nuggets that are found will vary in purity between 20 karats and 22 karats, which means a purity between 83% and 92%. There are some gold nuggets which are even more pure, those in Australia usually, which can go to 23 karats. The gold nuggets from Alaska on the other hand, are usually less pure in average. In order to find out quickly how pure a gold nugget is, you need to look at the richness of the orange/yellow content and how deep it is. When you hear about a nugget that it’s 850 fine, it means that 850 parts out of one thousand parts are gold. In most cases, the rest of the nugget is made from copper or silver.