Don Kagin proudly displayed a colossal 98.6-ounce gold nugget at the Chronicle studio in San Francisco with his partner Fred Holabird. The duo planned to auction off the extraordinary find in Sacramento on March 16, 2011. However, the astounding discovery turned out to be a deceptive imitation – not real gold, but a fake.
The gold chunk known as “The Washington Nugget” was supposedly discovered by Jim Sanders on his property near the Gold Rush town of Washington, Nevada County, and sold for $460,000. However, it turned out that the nugget was actually from Australia, not from Sanders’ land as originally claimed.
Murray Cox, an Australian prospector, identified the nugget as being identical to one he found near Melbourne in 1987, known as “The Orange Roughie.” This led to an investigation by coin dealer Don Kagin and mining geologist Fred Holabird, who confirmed the switcheroo.
Despite confidentiality agreements, the buyer of the nugget was reimbursed, and it was then sold for a lower price to a secondary bidder. Two smaller nuggets found on Sanders’ property were believed to be genuine and were not part of the investigation.
Cox mentioned that “The Orange Roughie” was sold in 1989, but how it ended up in Sanders’ possession remains a mystery. Kagin and Holabird are no longer representing Sanders in selling his land as a gold-rich property.
The entire incident has been resolved without any intention of pursuing fraud charges. The Sanders property declined to comment.
