Ore Identification Help?

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Jul 25, 2016
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Hey all,

I'm new to metal detecting, and I found a couple of fist size nuggets of this ore bellow a old timers gold mine.
Heaps of iron stone around but this stuff is none magnetic, heavy like holding gold and is hard as hell to crack with a hammer.
The outside is corroded from pyrite rust and the inside is grey silver solid reflective micro crystalline structure. Thinking solid mineral of some type, but as I said I'm new to all this, what do I do with this??????
Your knowledge would be greatly appreciated.
1624611806_ore_1.jpg

1624611807_ore_2.jpg

1624611808_ore_3.jpg
 
I'm not very knowledgeable on this stuff but we do have some Manganese mines over here with a rock that looks quite like that. It has a bright shinny surface that reflects blue in the sun.

What would I do with it? It ends up in the display cabinet along with the other few thousand mystery items :)
 
cheers for the reply, I'm leading hopefully towards high grade silver ore as they make the metal detector go crazy.
Might have to grind them up and melt them to see what the go is.
 
Dodgygoose said:
cheers for the reply, I'm leading hopefully towards high grade silver ore as they make the metal detector go crazy.
Might have to grind them up and melt them to see what the go is.

Silver ore could only be detected if it contained natural metallic silver, which would be visible in the host rock (usually as grey veins in white quartz). However most silver ores are sulphides, which are non-metallic and therefore undetectable.
 
Hardness number? Streak? specific gravity? Do you mean it is not magnetic at all?
Photos alone are not adequate for identification (but it is not a silver mineral).
 

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