This Alaskan Husky sled dog pendant is custom-built around a 5.5-gram Alaska gold nugget from Eureka. It is handmade of 14k white gold, has blue sapphire eyes and a nugget nose. The whole piece weighs approximately 13.3 grams and is about an inch tall and just under an inch wide. This piece will come with a white color display chain, but would look fantastic on one of our 14k 2-tone chains, see the link below.

On any given day, local gold miners will come into our shop throughout the year with the gold nuggets they mined that season. We look through their stash and choose the very best nuggets to make into jewelry. These are natural pieces of “placer gold” which means they are mined by sifting through the sand and gravel of ancient rivers and streams around Alaska and the Klondike. Finding gold nuggets in their natural state is very rare. In fact, gold nuggets make up only 2% of all gold that is found. These nuggets themselves will vary in purity from about 75% to 95% pure gold, or 18k to 22k. Due to the fact that these pieces are completely natural, other minerals can sometimes be mixed in such as silver and platinum.

Most of the gold mined in the world is from “hard rock mining” where rock is crushed using big machines and small particles of gold are separated out. This is the most cost-efficient way to extract gold. The problem with this process is that it destroys these beautiful pieces of art. This means if stores like us stop buying this type of gold, this art will eventually be forgotten.