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Tenderfoot
February 4, 2008 Issue of Antique Week (national section) Dallas:
Although the price of gold hasn't struck the $1,000 mark a bidder at Heritage Auction Galleries paid nearly $4,000 an ounce for a 26 pound chuck of the precious metal - the fabled "Boot of Cortez". The Boot measuring nearly a foot long, is the largest surviving natural gold nugget to be found in the Western
Hemisphere. Originally found in the Sonora Desert near Caborca, Mexico in 1989
by a local man using a metal detector he'd just purchased from RADIO SHACK,
the rock sold at the auction for more than $1.5 million to an anonymous
American philanthropist. The nugget once displayed in the American Museum
of Natural History in New York City, is expected to be put on public display very
soon according to Jim Halperin, co-chairman of Heritage.
Although the price of gold hasn't struck the $1,000 mark a bidder at Heritage Auction Galleries paid nearly $4,000 an ounce for a 26 pound chuck of the precious metal - the fabled "Boot of Cortez". The Boot measuring nearly a foot long, is the largest surviving natural gold nugget to be found in the Western
Hemisphere. Originally found in the Sonora Desert near Caborca, Mexico in 1989
by a local man using a metal detector he'd just purchased from RADIO SHACK,
the rock sold at the auction for more than $1.5 million to an anonymous
American philanthropist. The nugget once displayed in the American Museum
of Natural History in New York City, is expected to be put on public display very
soon according to Jim Halperin, co-chairman of Heritage.
