“The Hand of Faith is the biggest golden nugget inwards existence, the second-biggest ever discovered, and the biggest ever so found with a metal detector,” reads the written matter on the Golden Nugget Las Vegas’ website.
That’s all true, as far as we tin can tell. What’s belike a lie, though, is that it’s on showing at the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas.
What is on display beneath the signalize reading “World’s Largest Golden Nugget” — the physical object that hundreds of tourists submit selfies with every 24-hour interval — is, according to the casino’s own employees, a replica, a knockoff, a Hand of Fake.
Bad Faith
The Hand of Faith, nearly 62 pounds of vestal gold, was discovered in Sept 1980 by Aussie Kevin Hillier, who almost didn’t bother digging it up because he thought his brand unexampled metal demodulator was malfunctioning.
In 1981, Hillier sold the Hand of Faith for $1 meg to Golden Nugget Inc., which placed it on display inward downtown Las Vegas, inner what was so the company’s only casino.
Back inward 2014, Casino.org’s own Vital Vegas blogger Scott Roeben got the scoop shovel that the Golden Nugget had transferred the Hand of Faith to its then-new location inwards Biloxi, Miss. on May 1 of that year.
In the interim, the Las Vegas cassino relieve displayed a Hand of Faith — a stunt double. However, a cassino repp promised Roeben that the real business deal would takings to Vegas past the terminal of that summer.
“Apparently, this whole loaning-out operation is a pretty vulgar occurrence,” Roeben wrote at the time, “as the same thing happened when a Golden Nugget opened in Atlantic Ocean City inward 2012.” (That location no yearner maintains a Hand of Faith display.)
So Where’s the Real One Now?
On Mar 22, 2024, Casino.org contacted a front-desk factor at the Las Vegas Golden Nugget. She also claimed that the Hand of Faith on showing on that point was fool’s gold.
Asked how she knew for sure, she replied, “because my manager simply told me.”
That leaves II other electric current Golden Nuggets with Hand of Faith displays: Biloxi and Laughlin, Nev. Like the showing inward Las Vegas, neither has a signal indicating that theirs is a replica.
Casino.org contacted front end desk agents inward both locations, and that’s where this story took an unexpected turn…
Both agents admitted that, as far as they knew, their Hand of Faiths were replicas.
What’s Happening Here?
According to Roeben, it’s noneffervescent on video display inwards Biloxi because, according to his source, no getting even spark off ever so occurred. This was due to the larger-than-expected cost of shipping and insuring the nugget’s number 1 get off — to a greater extent than $1 million.
Therefore, the factor inwards Biloxi was either mistaken or lying to us.
However, it’s also possible that the genuine nugget is plump for inwards Vegas, or that it gets on a regular basis shuffled among the three displays as component of a behemoth case game.
As for what customer-facing employees know, perhaps they’re kept inwards the dark to forbid an privileged job. (The nugget’s electric current estimated value is $3.5 million. Though the warmth would live too vivid to resell the stolen gilded inward such a familiar form, it could certainly liquified mastered for an estimated $1.5 one thousand thousand return.)
Or maybe all trine exhibits are sham and the world’s largest halcyon nugget is no more yearner on showing anywhere. Maybe insuring it got to be the world’s largest expense.
Casino.org asked the Golden Nugget’s public dealings department to follow unobjectionable and discover which two, or perhaps three, of its tercet Hand of Faith displays are liars.
It came as no appall that our e-mail wasn’t returned in clip for this story.
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