Gold , Nugget from French Guiana or Suriname 2.118 grams- 2.12 g - (1)

Discovery Zone
3°47’ North
54°04’ West

This nugget comes from French Guiana, a French region in the Amazon, or possibly from Suriname, a former Dutch colony. I gathered it myself more than 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 boat ride 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 forms the border with Suriname.

With my team we used a floating sluice that pumped sediment from the bottom of the river. This sediment was poured onto a washing ramp (sluice) whose bottom was covered with a mat. The whole setup was mounted on a floating barge that also served as a living base with kitchen and dormitory. The visible gold nuggets and the heaviest sediments settled by gravity onto the mat, and the rest of the sediments returned to the river. The surface gold nuggets on the mat were harvested by hand. The heavy sediments containing gold flakes and 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 in powder form.

The gold collected was then regularly sold in French Guiana or in Brazil. I kept the finest nuggets for my personal collection and am now offering some for sale.

Although located in the Amazon (South America), French Guiana is a French overseas department. These nuggets are therefore French. However some are Surinamese (Dutch) when the barge was closer to the shores of Suriname than to French Guiana. Indeed, the boundary between the two countries is a simple virtual line in the middle 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 quite pure; typically its fineness is around 950 to 980 thousandths, which corresponds to 22.80 to 23.50 carats.

At the time, this kind of artisanal gold mining was allowed; now it is forbidden and gold mining is reserved for a few large industrial operations. French Guiana is now best known for the space base at Kourou, which launches satellites into space.

Of course, the photos genuinely correspond to the nugget for sale, and I am sending you exactly the nugget that is in the photos. All photos were taken under natural daylight. I photographed this nugget as honestly and precisely as possible using daylight. Please note that differences in screen settings and ambient lighting may lead to variations in color, saturation, and perceived tones.

I offer fast, secure, and discreet shipping in a durable envelope format C5 (162mm x 229mm) by La Poste,Registered Mail.