Gold nuggets

In reality, gold dust is far more common and associated with activities that occasional reveal nuggets. But gold dust presents a problem of transport in older videogames. Newer games make use of containers that the characters can carry, thus gold dust is starting to become a more popular item that nuggets in games.
Equipment to process dirt on an industrial scale, (essentially automated mass panning), lessens the likelihood of people handling the dust and occasional nuggets directly. Nuggets are usually processed along with the dust without being noticed. Nuggets do not hold the same fascination they did when minors used hand powered tools. However, significantly large nuggets (very, very, very, very, very, rare) can clog or get stuck in modern equipment where a person must manually remove them.

Gold nuggets are generally 83% to 92% pure gold. John Deason and Richard Oates found the largest ever gold nugget at Moliagul, Victoria, Australia in 1869. It was 2,520 troy ounces and about 90.63% pure. They named it the Wandering Stranger.