In April, a spectacular specimen featuring a 15cm-long plume of solid crystallised gold rising from a rocky matrix arrived at London’s Natural History Museum on loan from the Houston Museum of Natural Science. The exhibit is nicknamed “the Dragon” because of its similarity to the mythical creature.
“Being able to contrast the absolute perfection of its gold crystals with the tactile rounded crystals of the Latrobe nugget, displayed nearby, is a real treat for anyone inspired by the most noble of metals,” says a spokesperson for the Natural History Museum.
This rare piece, described by some as “the ‘Mona Lisa’ of the fine minerals world”, will be displayed for a year in the Vault gallery. The specimen was discovered in January 1998 by prospectors using a metal detector in the Colorado quartz mine in Mariposa County, at the southern end of the California gold belt.
The California “Mother Lode Belt”, a continuous system of gold-bearing quartz veins some 200km long, parallel to the Sierra Nevada mountains, gave rise to the gold rush in the 19th century. The region has produced some of the world’s finest crystallised examples; most were destined for the smelter, limiting the number of surviving historical specimens.
According to Alan Hart, former chief executive of the Gemmological Association and now a scientific associate at the Natural History Museum and a consultant at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, the Dragon is one of the rarest and most aesthetic crystallised gold specimens ever discovered.
In the growing fine minerals market, such crystalline gold specimens often sell for far more than the value of the gold by weight (the gold in the Dragon is estimated to weigh around seven ounces, according to Hart) because of their rarity, aesthetics and provenance.
Over time, Californian mines became lossmaking and slowly declined. But change is afoot. “With the rise of a thriving mineral market and superbly crystallised gold being so rare worldwide, older mines and adjacent areas have been revisited once again,” Hart says.
“Using new equipment, modern technology, alongside advances in mineral exploration, recovery and preparation, elusive new areas of gold are carefully extracted and prepared — sometimes giving us the most beautiful specimens.”
Daniel Trinchillo operates US-based Fine Minerals International and is described by Hart as a “tastemaker, one of the world’s top dealers in fine minerals, who has helped to elevate the sector”. An older fine crystalline gold specimen from the Eagle’s Nest mine and one from the Red Ledge mine, both in California, will feature in the natural history auction at Sotheby’s New York on July 16.
In 2018, Trinchillo bought the Eagle’s Nest mine in the Michigan Bluff mining district, Placer County, and spent six years bringing it back into operation from a state of disrepair. On February 14 2024, Eagle’s Nest Mining discovered around 100 specimens of crystalline gold in the Valentine’s Day pocket.
“We mined it for seven days, extracting just the one pocket, spent a year cleaning and preparing the specimens, which we do in-house at our lab, then brought them to market in Tucson and sold nearly all of them,” Trinchillo says.
Describing the haul, he says there were 20 extremely significant pieces, with probably five outstanding specimens, and the other 80 ranging in size from a quarter-dollar coin to a small apple. “However, the quality was not as exceptional as the top 20, which were truly outstanding,” he adds.
“The world has changed, and crystals are becoming desirable as art objects, trading for values that are approaching or exceeding that of fine art,” continues Trinchillo, who in 2022 made his debut at London’s Masterpiece art fair. He says crystalline gold specimens can sell for between $500,000 and $5mn, with the finest sometimes going for more than $15mn-$20mn.
“There’s momentum,” he says. “People that are collecting Picasso want to be collecting rhodochrosite, tourmaline, aquamarine, gold and so on.”
Elsewhere, crystalline gold specimens are exhibited to collectors and the trade at exhibitions throughout the year, including the Tucson Fine Mineral Show, the Munich Show, Mineral & Gem in Sainte-Marie-Aux-Mines in Alsace, and relative newcomer the Nanjing International Mineral, Gemstone and Fossil Expo, which is opening the Chinese market to western fine mineral tastes.
However, some of the finest examples of crystalline gold can also be found at fine mineral galleries, such as the one Trinchillo owns in Tucson, or auction houses such as Sotheby’s or Heritage Auctions, based in Dallas.
Last October, Heritage sold a specimen from the collection of Daniel R Kennedy that fetched $62,500. Another, known as “the Cobra” because of its shape, from the Mockingbird mine in Mariposa County, sold for $525,800 in June 2008. Such specimens exemplify what a mineral collector would want, says Craig Kissick, vice-president of Heritage’s nature and science department. The auction house also has a history of selling gold nuggets. Past sales include the 389.4 troy ounce “Boot of Cortez”, the largest surviving natural gold nugget ever found, sold in August 2008 for $1.31mn.
Gold nuggets are rare. Beautifully crystalline gold, often leafy gold, presented on a quartz matrix host stone with impressive definition and complex compositions, is even rarer.
Kissick, in addition to highlighting the significance that provenance adds to the value of such pieces, says: “The collecting of fine minerals has become very sophisticated over the last couple of decades. There are numerous quality publications, such as The Mineralogical Record and Rocks & Minerals, chronicling the hobby and business targeted to people who take it seriously, often investing large sums in finer specimens.
“Gold nuggets have a rather universal appeal, representing a more common form of the precious metal, but crystallised examples tend to be of interest to serious collectors who appreciate the ‘specimen value’ of such offerings.”