Gold Native gold nugget from Suriname or French Guiana

Discovery Zone 3°47’ North 54°04’ West This nugget comes from French Guiana, a French territory in the Amazon, or possibly from Suriname, a former Dutch colony. I collected it myself over thirty years ago on the Maroni River (Marowijne River) which separates French Guiana from Suriname, in an area named Papaichton, about half a day’s journey by dugout from the town of Maripasoula. At the time I was an gold prospector in French Guiana, and I worked mainly on the rivers, the Oyapock which forms the border with Brazil and the Maroni which borders Suriname. With my team we used a floating dredge that pumped sediments from the river bottom. These sediments were dumped onto a washing ramp (sluice) whose base was covered with a mat. The whole setup was mounted on a floating barge that also served as a living base with a kitchen and a dormitory. The gold-bearing nuggets and the heaviest sediments settled by gravity onto the mat, while the lighter sediments returned to the river. Gold nuggets visible on the surface of the mat were harvested by hand. The heavy sediments containing the flakes and gold powder were embedded in the bottom of the mat. From time to time this mat was washed to recover these heavy sediments. These sediments were then treated with a vibrating plate or a pan to recover the gold powder. The gold collected was then regularly sold in French Guiana or in Brazil. I kept the finest nuggets for my personal collection and I am now putting some of them up for sale. Although located in the Amazon (South America), French Guiana is an overseas French department. These nuggets are therefore French. However, some are Surinamese (Dutch) when the barge was closer to the shores of Suriname than to the shores of French Guiana. Indeed, the boundary between the two countries is only a virtual line at the center of the river. So French nuggets or Surinamese nuggets?… difficult to know precisely, it all depends on which side of this virtual line the barge was on the day they were collected. The gold from this region is fairly pure, generally with a fineness around 950 to 980 thousandths, which corresponds to 22.80 to 23.50 carats. Back then this artisanal mining was legal; now it is forbidden and gold exploitation is reserved for a few large industrial operations. French Guiana is now best known for the Kourou space base launching satellites into space. Of course, the photos truly correspond to the nugget being sold, and I am sending you exactly the nugget that appears in the photos. All photos were taken in natural daylight. I photographed this nugget as genuinely and precisely as possible using daylight. Please note that differences in screen settings and ambient lighting can lead to variations in color, saturation, and perceived tones. I offer fast, secure, discreet shipping in a sturdy C5 envelope (162 mm x 229 mm) by La Poste registered mail.

Estimate:$3,245.07

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