FAMOUS GOLD

EXPLORING THE HARVARD COLLECTION

- BOB JONES

We have cherished gold since the first human picked up a yellow nugget. We have given it value, gone to the ends of the earth searching for it, and dug the deepest mines to collect it. People have acquired it just to own and admire it for its value, color, crystal form, and aesthetic beauty. You may think by now we would have dug all of this precious metal. Not so!

An amazing find on Father’s Day, 2018 in Western Australia added pounds and pounds of gold to the Earth’s still-growing horde. This is the first in a series of three articles wherein I will explore two great museum gold collections in the Harvard Mineralogical and Geological Museum and the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Also, we will also examine what Australian miners term a ‘miracle gold find,’ a true horde of gold in quartz.

Every major museum boasts a collection of crystallized gold. Among the more spectacular and better-known museum gold collections in America are not in California, but in Denver, Colorado and Cambridge, Massachusetts. In both instances, I was lucky enough to handle and photograph the best of these collections.

The Harvard’s Burrage Gold Collection is the focus of this article, and in Part Two (appearing in the February 2020 issue of Rock & Gem) I will describe the amazing Australian discovery of millions in gold in quartz, In Part Three, scheduled to be published in the March 2020 issue of Rock & Gem, we will return to museum collections to examine the marvelous crystallized gold collection, featured in the Denver Museum. If all goes well, the public will be able to see some of the Father’s Day gold from Australia once again, at the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show™.