Help Identify Rocks Full of gold stuff

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Hi,

This rock set the metal detector off, i head when you have green in a rock , its good for gold, This rock has gold colour all through it, but I'm not sure if it is pyrite or gold. I'm thinking maybe gold and pyrite may form in different ways. this seems to be lots of small pieces throughout the rock

please click on the photo boxes to view, some reason its not showing them

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The top one could have Gold in it.....the second one is more than likely Pyrite, Gold doesn't glimmer, the third not sure it looks like silver but does it crumble? Is that crushed from the piece you showed?
 
I moved your posts to a location where you may get some more answers to on mineral identification. Top specimen looks to be a mix if pyrite and other copper sulphides given the copper oxides, maybe chalcocite. Second pic of the quartz I'd say your are looking at banks of sericite mica, and the last most probably also pyrite. :)
 
The last one is silver in colour, can that still be pyrite.

No, i didn't crush it, i found a pocket of this silver material, there were a few balls and allot of this in a sandy form
 
First lot of pics to me looks like Arsenopyrite , Third lot of pics looks like Galena and Quartz+ Pyrites in all samples... With-out knowing where they came from.... very difficult, but they all look like Silver/Lead/Zinc based Minerals to me. May-be some Copper Minerals too..... Found on an old Silver Mine area? Are they quite Heavy for their size?

.. On the Emmaville Gemfest, I was a Field Trip Guide to Webs Consols Silver mine and the Specimens that were collected there all look like yours do.... The similarities in what you have and what I have are Very much the same.... Sorry I can't post pics...no camera. :rolleyes: ... I will ask my Daughter if she can Tomorrow...... :Y:

LoneWolf....
 
I don't know much about silver and lead, but was thinking it might be, especially with that dark material in the first set of pics.

I know there is a process to crush and process the stuff so u can try to get the silver out of it(if it's there), but lm guessing it's not easy and not likely to be worth it money wise unless u have lots more of it. Still might be a fun thing to try to get silver out of it just to see if you can. Just make sure u do it in a very very well ventilated area and read up about the process and the risks if your going to.
 
Yeah Matt80 there is a process where you can get any silver out. BUT, it involves some very nasty chemicals and not something I would advise for a newbie. Also, the chemicals can be expensive and can be difficult to get depending on where you live.

I do these sort of projects but there is no way in the world I would try to explain them to someone on a forum such as this. Just too bloody dangerous for someone not learned in chemistry.

Sorry to be a dampener, but I hate to see people get hurt (or worse).

Cheers
Bill
 
A simple first test is with a multimeter over small outcrops of what looks like gold. If it's sub 1 ohm it may be gold. Will likely be many k-ohms maybe Meg-ohms otherwise on pyrites etc..
 
Looks like mostly pyrite in first shots, fine white mica in next lot, could be other sulphide minerals in some later but not much looking like gold. Remember to carry a pocket knofe with a tiny blade (I have one 2 cm long that I hang on a leather thong around my neck with a hand lens and a short bar magnet). Scratch gold - soft like lead, yellow powder. Scratch pyrite - darkish to near black, not yellow powder, much harder to scratch. With a tiny knife point (or needle) and scratching under a hand lens, you can do this with quite tiny specks. Arsenopyrite is hard and not yellow powder, stibnite or molybdenite are very soft like gold (but also not yellow powder - dark), Chalcopyrite is in-between in hardness but not yellow powder, more a dark greenish shade usually. Not many things scratch to give yellow powder unless they look "earthy" (eg the oxides of some elements like some ochres of molybdenum, antimony etc). Another clue is to look (with your hand lens) to see if the outside of a mineral seems to be altering to another mineral - gold does not do that, all other sulphide minerals or native elements do (although not in reqally fresh, unweathered rock). Chalcopyrite weathers to blue and green azurite and malachite, arsenopurite to blackish ?asbolite (from memory), pyrite to brownish to orange-brown iron oxides, molybdenite and stibnite to yellow, white and grey ochres.
 
An alternative to get the same colour powders is to scratch the mineral on white broken porcelain (not glossy) - problem is that you need a larger bit of mineral and some are harder than porcelain (very hard minerals can be scratched with quartz, which is harder than steel, or even topaz or a diamond point as in a glass-cutter). Same colour powder as with a knife - we call it the "streak" colour, from streaking it on porcelain. Many simple mineralogy books list things like hardness, streak, colour, lustre (lustre can be a sheen on the surface like a pearl, glassy, earthy etc). You'll soon get the hang of it - but carry a 10x and if possible also 20x hand lense, glass not plastic and in the case of the 10x at least 1.5 cm in diameter (too small does not give you a wide enough view - you can then zero in on a particular mineral with the 20x which are usually a bit smaller diameter for cost reasons). Things look so different under a hand lense - like looking down on top of a building from a plane versus looking at the rivets in the sheet metal roof from a few cm away :)
 

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