World's Largest Gold Nuggets

#1 Welcome Stranger nugget weighing in at 2316 oz., found on February 5th, 1869 in Moliagul, Victoria, Australia. It was discovered by John Deason and Richard Oates just 2 inches below the surface near a root of a tree in Bulldog Gully.  It measured 2 ft x 1.02 ft in size.  Due to the size of the nugget it could not be weighed on any scales at the time and had to be broken down into 3 smaller pieces.  It was melted down shortly after finding and only recreations of the nugget made from drawings exist.  One replica of the "Welcome Stranger" nugget can be found at the City Museum in Treasury Place, in Melbourne, Victoria.  The other replica is owned by descendants of John Deason.

Welcome Stranger 

#2 Pepita Canaa nugget weighing in at 2145 oz., found Sept 13, 1983 by miners at the Serra Pelada Mine in the State of Para, Brazil.  It currently resides in the Banco Central Museum in Brazil.

Pepita Canaa 

10 Biggest Gold Mines in the World

The following list draws from each of these sources, as well as others, and thus is not a simple duplication of any one group's rankings.

1. Grasberg Gold Mine -- This mine, which is in the Indonesian province of Papua, produced 2,025,000 ounces of gold, according to the annual report of Rio Tinto Plc. The mine is majority owned by Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. Besides gold, it also produces silver and copper.

Grasberg - Indonesia

2. Muruntau Gold Mine -- This mine, which is about 250 miles west of the capital in Uzbekistan, is believed to have produced approximately 1,800,000 ounces of gold last year. The project, which is an open-pit operation, is run by state-owned Navoi Mining and Metallurgical Combinat.

Muruntu - Uzbekistan 

3. Carlin-Nevada Complex -- This mine, which is in the U.S. state of Nevada, produced 1.735 million ounces in 2010. It is owned by Newmont Mining Corp. It includes both open-pit and underground operations.

Carlin-Nevada Complex 

Gold in Big Picture: Part 7 - Final

Gold bars are pictured at the Ginza Tanaka store in Tokyo October 23, 2009. (REUTERS/Issei Kato) 

Gold busts of (l-r) Chinese leaders President Hu Jintao, former president Jiang Zemin, late patriarch Deng Xiaoping and Mao Zedong, are displayed at a gold exhibition in Beijing, China on November 8, 2009. (WANG ZHAO/AFP/Getty Images)

Gold in Big Picture: Part 6

Illegal miners search for gold on the mountain of Tumpang Pitu in Banyuwangi, East Java, Indonesia on November 21, 2009. The mine has been in operation since June 2009 and local villagers have began protesting because the waste produced by the mine is polluting the environment. (REUTERS/Sigit Pamungkas)

Molten gold and flux used to remove impurities glows red hot as it is melted in an induction melting machine at Dvir & Stoler Refining in New York, U.S., on Monday, Jan. 4, 2010. (Daniel Acker/Bloomberg)

Gold in Big Picture: Part 5

Gold-plated Berlin Bear awards are lined up for the upcoming Berlinale International Film Festival at Noak bronze foundry in Berlin January 20, 2010. (REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch)

A carbon recovery circuit adsorbs gold in a sodium cyanide solution at the AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. Cripple Creek & Victor gold mine in Colorado on Thursday, Nov. 5, 2009. (Matthew Staver/Bloomberg)

Gold in Big Picture: Part 4

A Caterpillar Inc. mining truck moves along a road at the AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. Cripple Creek & Victor gold mine in Victor/Cripple Creek, Colorado, on Thursday, Nov. 5, 2009. AngloGold Ashanti Ltd., Africa's largest gold producer, purchased Golden Cycle Gold Corp. in January 2008 to gain full control of this mining site, its only active operation in the U.S. (Matthew Staver/Bloomberg)

A Christie's employee looks at a creation "Relief Eponge" by Yves Klein on display at the auction house in London, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2010. The gold sponge relief creation is to be auctioned at the "Post-war and Contemporary" sale on Feb. 11 with an estimated price of 5.7 to 8 million euros (US $8.2 to 11.4 million). (AP Photo/Sang Tan)

Gold in Big Picture: Part 3

A gold miner pushes a wheelbarrow to carry rocks which will be processed for gold in an artisanal mine in Abangares, north of San Jose, Costa Rica on December 9, 2009. Costa Rica is pushing to legalize a 600 informal miners of small-scale miners who scrape out tiny amounts of gold from abandoned mine shafts using dangerous and polluting techniques. (REUTERS/Juan Carlos Ulate)

Colombian gold prospectors mine for the precious metal on the river Dagau, Zaragoza province, Cauca, Colombia on November 17, 2009. About 8,000 gold prospectors work illegally on the Dagua river to support their families, local authorities said. (REUTERS/Jaime Saldarriaga)

Gold Mining - Gold Price is Raising

The city of Johannesburg located in South Africa was founded as a result of the Witwatersrand Gold Rush which resulted in the discovery of some of the largest gold deposits the world has ever seen. Gold fields located within the basin in the Free State and Gauteng provinces widely in strike and dip requiring some of the deepest mines in the world, with the Savuka and TauTona mines currently deepest gold mine in the world at 3,777 m. The Second Boer War of 1899-1901 between the British Empire and the Afrikaner Boers was at least partly over the rights of miners and gold gaining wealth in South Africa.

The entrance to an underground gold mine in Victoria, Australia

Other major producers are the United States, Australia, Russia and Peru. Mines in South Dakota and Nevada supply two-thirds of gold used in the United States. In South America, the controversial project Pascua Lama aims at exploitation of rich fields in the high mountains of Atacama Desert, at the border between Chile and Argentina. Today about one-quarter of the world gold output is estimated to originate from artisanal or small scale of mining.

Since the 1880s, South Africa was the source for a large proportion of the world's gold supply, with about 50% of all gold ever produced to be from South Africa. Production in 1970 accounted for 79% of world supply, which produces about 1,480 tonnes. Production for 2008 was 2,260 tonnes. In 2007 China (with 276 tonnes) overtook South Africa as the world's largest gold producer, the first time since 1905 that South Africa is not the greatest.

At the end of 2009, it is estimated that all the gold ever mined totaled 165,000 tonnes. Be represented by a cube with an edge length of about 20.28 meters. At $ 1600 per ounce, 165,000 metric tons of gold would have a value of $ 8.8 trillion.

Source: Wikipedia