12 Pound Gold Nugget Worth $315,000 Found Near Melbourne, Australia (Video)

A lucky prospector in Australia found a huge 12-pound gold nugget worth over $315,000.

"An amateur prospector found the nugget weighing 177 ounces, or 5.5 kilograms, with a metal detector just outside Ballarat in a popular area for prospecting," said the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Cordell Kent, the owner of The Mining Exchange Gold Shop in Ballarat, is looking for a buyer on behalf of the prospector, who wants to remain anonymous.

"We have 800 prospectors on our books and only a couple of those have ever found a nugget over 100 ounces," said Kent. "So there's only been one or two big pieces and they were found a long time ago."

Ballarat is in southern Australia, about 75 miles west of Melbourne, in the province of Victoria.

"A lot of people think Victoria's goldfields are dead and that there's none left," said Kent, "but he has worked in an area where a lot of people have worked in the past but he persisted and he's been rewarded."

"We are 162 years into the gold rush and it's never totally waned, it's just changed."

The find is a huge windfall for the prospector. "The current market value of the precious metal puts this nugget at a whopping value of around US$315,000," says Discovery.

"There's nothing like digging up money, it's good fun," said the prospector.

As for those hoping to join in on the fun, there's a lot of investment required first. "The gold detector used by the Ballarat prospector is reportedly a Minelab GPX-5000," said the Huffington Post. "We found a used one on eBay for $5,180."