Help me come up with a reason my 6 year old can’t sell his ‘gold’ nugget

[GloriousTuga]

My 6 year old has a lump of fools gold he believes to be real gold. He’s desperate to sell it to make money. I’ve tried to dissuade him by talking about how gold goes up in value over time but no joy.

can anyone help me create a narrative as to why he shouldn’t sell it without bursting his bubble about the ‘real gold’? The pestering is too much!

As the legal owner, he can't sell it until he is an adult. Law to stop children being taken advantage of.

Use it as an early lesson about scam avoidance and quality verification. Take him to a jeweller's shop with it to "get it valued" so that he can sell it online with the right name and even maybe a little note of its provenance. If you have a local jewellers shop that you could pre-brief on your plan, all the better!

How much money does a six year old think is a lot of money for it? Could he not have a fiver and be happy?

Sadly not - his older brother helped him weigh it and lookup cost of gold per gram, so he’s expecting about a grand!

🤣😂🫶👆

Why can't you explain it's not real gold? Just curious because my DC knew about fools gold at that age after going to some Welsh gold mines and having a go at panning for gold.

Surely his older brother knows it's not gold?

Tell him it’s FOOLS gold

I mean it's sweet he thinks it's real but it sounds like it's getting a bit silly now.

If he truly thinks it's worth a thousand pounds, you need to tell him it's a toy.

His older brother is suspicious but isn’t sure (he’s only 8)

In that case it's definitely getting silly.

Just tell him it's not real.

Yeah you have to explain to him and his brother that it’s not gold!

At 8 I knew exactly what fools gold was

Be honest with him.

Don't tell him it's 'fools gold' but tell him it's a nice nugget of iron pyrite, which it is.

Tell him the truth? I don't know why you wouldn't.

Where did he get it from?

He will feel much worse thinking he has something worth all that money and not being able to sell it, than the short lived disappointment of learning it’s not real.

We went to visit a decommissioned gold mine and he did the kids tour and they ‘found it’. So he was sold the story that it was gold from the outset unfortunately. But you’re all making me think I do need to burst the bubble as he’s getting increasingly upset with me about it

Tell him you’ve searched online and discovered that’s it’s fools gold / iron pyrite and therefore not worth as much as he thinks. But who told him it was real gold in the first place? Where did he get it from?

it’s pretty mean to string a 6 and 8 year old along to believe something like this.

Perhaps you could help him getting his specimen identified by experts:
https://www.rockwatch.org.uk/fabulous-finds/fossil-identification-form/

Why have you allowed this to go one this long??
You should have told him it’s not worth anything the minute he asked to sell it!

I think it's time for a geology lesson.

I cross posted with you OP.

I think it’s pretty poor of the gold mine tour to let kids think they had found real gold.

They should be saying - ooh yes good find but now let us tell you about what this really is. Because if it was real gold it would be worth xx and we wouldn’t be allowing people to take it home. But lucky you, you can keep this “find”.

Is it because I’m northern that I can’t even imagine things getting this far without some straight talking? 😬