Miners find two gold-filled rocks worth $11 million
“Once in a lifetime, just one blast brought in more than 11 million USD,” said miners in Western Australia after discovering two giant gold-filled rocks.
According to MSN, miners from RNC Minerals, Canada, have just found these two giant rocks in the area near the city of Kalgoorlie, both of which are made of quartz. The large rock weighs 95 kg, containing more than 2,400 ounces of gold (67 kg). The second rock weighs 63 kg and contains 1,600 ounces of gold (nearly 45 kg).
On the occasion, Professor Sam Spearing, from the Curtin School of Geology of Western Australia, Curtin University, said that the discovery was rare in the mining industry because the gold in the rock was only very small. People usually extracted at least 2g of gold per ton of rock in the form of gold nuggets, but the case of RNC Minerals mentioned above was an exception, which could reach 2,200g of gold per ton of rock.
"Finding two rocks filled with gold is very rare in modern mining history," Professor Spearing commented.
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| The large rock contained up to 67 kg of gold. |
According to Mr. Mark Selby, CEO of RNC Minerals, these two rocks were found at the Beta Hunt mine, near the town of Kalgoorlie, which is usually used to mine nickel, but miners found these two rocks in early September, which is something that few people expected.
Immediately after finding traces of gold near the surface in June, the company conducted exploration and found a 3-meter wide and 3-meter high gold vein 500 meters deep in the ground and finally discovered the two rocks mentioned above, which were brought to the surface 4 days later.
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Gold content at Beta Hunt mine. |
According to Mark Selby, if gold were extracted from these two rocks, it would cost about 15 million Canadian dollars or 11 million USD. The company will soon auction the largest rocks as collectibles.
