Slumach’s Gold

Aunt Mandy (Amanda Charnley), Peter Pierre’s daughter, told Donald Waite in 1972 that Slumach sold the equivalent of a half a ten-pound sugar bag of gold to a storekeeper in New Westminster for $27. Click here to read the interview.  It was the only gold Slumach took out according to Aunt Mandy’s story.
Gold weighs 18 times more than sugar and half a 10-pound sugar bag full of the stuff would have weighed  90 pounds  or about 40 kilograms. Unbelievable.
Based on the gold price of $18.94 per troy ounce (31 grams) of that time these $27.00 would have been the value of not more than 44.33 grams. The shopkeeper would have paid less than that of course. The amount of gold Slumach would have sold him would have been within reasonable limits--say 100 grams. That of course if Slumach ever found and sold gold at all!