Gold!

One kilo of gold is worth about $39,000 today. Lets say your character needs $45,000 a year to survive.

Six gold pieces ain't gonna cut it.

Well, we're not talking 'pieces' here. We're talking kilos. Say ten years. Happy middle class life. 15 kilos of gold. That's over 33 lbs.

Perhaps instead he could discover an artifact or painting that's worth a million or two?

ColdWintersNight said:

So, for anyone who has any gold knowledge, I have a character that found six gold pieces, thick ones. And I have him say "I can retire with these!" Buuuuut then I thought, off six? Is that possible? And that's in today's time. How much gold can someone have and use it to retire if they exchanged it for real money?

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By pieces, do you mean gold coins? It looks like it when you say thick. Well, I'll assume that is what you mean in the rest of my answer.

If it is contemporary, it depends very much on which gold coins he has found. Bear in mind that all gold coins is worth at least as much as their weight in gold. (And as far as I know all gold coins are actually worth more than that.) Some gold coins are worth large sums of money. I googled "most valuable gold coins", and this list came up as one of the first results.

So, if you are indeed talking about gold coins in a modern setting, you can set the value at more or less whatever the story needs.
If the story is set in historical times, you need to do some research. I think in some cases you're talking about gold coins being worth significantly more than a year's salary for a worker.
Should I be misunderstanding you, and you do not mean coins, then there's gold price by weight, and I think that would be more complicated. You have to decide on how much money your character would need for survival a year, how good they would be at investing the initial lump sum, etc. Again, what fits your story. If you need the character to be able to retire, maybe gems of some kind would be a better solution?

Whatever it's worth it has to be carried.

Adding to Weirdmage's comment, nuggets are typically worth more than the melt weight. I assume for the same reason that a nice quartz crystal fetches more than a similar weight of silica sand.

Generally, the bigger the nugget the better, but who knows what kind of things people who buy nuggets look for? Maybe he could find a nugget shaped like Jesus, or one that's naturally heart-shaped.

ColdWintersNight said:

Buuuuut then I thought, off six? Is that possible?

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Sure. Not from gold content, but from collector value. Six gold pieces with the image of Emperor Claudius Moronicus, with only three known to exist at this time, and they could be worth plenty. Six gold pieces with holes shot in them by Wild Bill Hickock in a shooting demonstration? Six gold pieces minted by the Confederate States the day Lee surrendered at Appomattox?

What do you need for your story?

Jeff

Note that if this is the present day, establishing provenance for his find could be a headache and could potentially get in him legal trouble.

Imagine if he finds out the coins were looted by the Nazis, for example?