Five unmounted
micros reflect not only microscopic native gold in quartz, but significant
mineralogical history. The five specimens were collected at one of the numerous
small gold mining operations active in the late 1800's and early 1900's at
Monroe in Union County, North Carolina. The specimens were trimmed, packaged,
and presumably collected by the late Bill Yost of Philadelphia, a 1999 inductee into the Micromounters Hall of Fame. One of his
legacies was the internationally popular Yost Trimmer he invented and then manufactured for use on small specimens. We acquired the above pictured box with its contents at auction during the
2025 Desautels Micromount Symposium in Baltimore. The box as shown in the
first two photographs contains the five specimens of native gold in quartz. The three smallest of these specimens are encased in a gelatin capsule between two
slightly larger pieces as shown in the second image. Each of these three appear as photomicrographs in our 3rd, 4th, and 5th images. Notably, every one of these three
encapsuled specimens shows more gold than
either of two larger pieces shown to the left of the capsule in the box. and pictured as a photomicrographs in the 6th and 7th images.