To mark King Charles’ looming coronation New Zealand’s gift is to donate $1 million to Trees That Count - a plan for community groups to plant more than 100,000 native trees in his honour.
But back in 1911- to mark the ascension of Charles’ great-grandfather King George V - our gift was worth its weight in gold.
More than 99 ounces (nearly 3kg) of gold to be precise - the single largest nugget ever to be mined in New Zealand. And then the Royal family lost it.
What became known as the ‘Roddy Nugget’ was officially unearthed on September 10,
1909 in Ross, a small goldmining town about 27km south of Hokitika. The price of gold fluctuates daily but the giant nugget was worth around $312,000 in today’s money.
Except it’s impossible to value something that no one can find.
Sometime between 1911 and today the Roddy Nugget disappeared from Buckingham Palace. Multiple attempts to locate the missing gold have failed. What happened to this record-breaking piece of New Zealand’s geological history? And why did we give it away in the first place?
The accepted fate of New Zealand’s golden coronation gift is that it was melted down and turned into a tea set. Weekend Herald inquiries have turned up multiple references to that tea set - but we also found claims that the gold became, variously, a plate, knives and forks and, more simply, bullion.
What we couldn’t find? Concrete evidence that any of these alleged permutations existed in anything other than media reports.
