Native copper nuggets, or ?

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OzzieAu

I’m a bloke
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I found these copper nuggets in Kapunda SA.
I would like to know if they are natural or smelted from copper ore.. is there anyway of telling?
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Very nice specimens there. I know you can get native copper nuggets but can't comment on those. I have a specimen of copper showing on a rock also...but from an area that has mines in the vicinity.
 
Kapunda mine was the first commercial copper mine in Australia.
I detected these solid copper slugs in some spoil piles with my Nokta Simplex near the railway station. They sounded off with the purest high tone signal that you could imagine.
If only gold sounded like that with a vlf.... :p
 
I took to the bigger smooth nugget with the dremmel and fine sandpaper..... it almost looks like the real thing :goldnugget:
I reckon it will look good hanging on a nice chain.
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Hopefully one day Ill walk over a golden one that size. :playful:
 
OzzieAu said:
Kapunda mine was the first commercial copper mine in Australia.
I detected these solid copper slugs in some spoil piles with my Nokta Simplex near the railway station. They sounded off with the purest high tone signal that you could imagine.
If only gold sounded like that with a vlf.... :p

There was no mining near the railway station (nor a smelter), so perhaps you are speaking in a more general way in terms of location? Anything there would have been moved there. Difficult to tell if natural or not. From memory the smelter was a fairly small one-storey affair south from the nunnery on the eastern side of the mine, so well away from the railway line (no longer visible when I was there nearly 50 years ago). I drilled Kapunda for a year in about 1973-4 I think.
 
The smelter was behind Jt Johnson and sons (directly opposite car park), So if you found it there it is probably not natural native copper.
 
Found them here... not too far away from your smelter location. They could have been spilled while being transferred to rail wagons.
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