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GOLD QUARTZ MINI SPECIMENS
For collectors of native gold, here's something from an old prospector's poke. I count nineteen (19) of these mini specimens. As you should be able to see, some are practically all-gold. Others have red-stained quartz attached to them. They're all from the same batch of ore. You'll not get your money's
worth in gold, but they're the genuine article, not rocks with golden
aspirations; fabricated leaverites made to look like real gold specimens. Each of these contains high-purity, naturally-occurring, VG (visible gold). The 'naturally-occurring' part is important. It means no human hand 'salted' the Au, Mother Nature did. I'd say forty-five years of mining and working with gold qualifies me to know the difference. Can I always tell? Not really. I'm forever blown away with how authentic some replicas can be made to look. There's some doozies out there; fakes which require serious, in-depth, scientific analysis to distinguish from the Real Mccoy. Dealers have shown me uncannily-cast nuggets which looked incredibly natural. The same goes with faux GQ i.e. gold quartz specimen. If
you're looking for killer bullion deals, these little chunks of high
grade may not be it, but native gold enthusiasts who understand these are genuine may appreciate adding them to their collections. Please check my feedback for non-authenticity issues. You won't find any. Specimen weight, COMBINED: .64 Gram - 10 Grains Sizes - 2 up to 5 mm long, each piece Weight Conversions: S & H Combined shipping offered. For multiple item purchases, please request an invoice (from the seller) when you buy more than one item.
U.S. BUYERS
S & H is $6.00 (Shipping costs are up. Sorry about that. USPS tracking to all U.S. destinations). Combined shipping offered. ATTN: INTERNATIONAL BIDDERS INTNL. BUYERS S&H - $17.00 (via First Class Parcel)
PAYMENTS Payment must be made within 7 days from close of auction. We ship as soon as funds clear. If you have questions, please ask them before bidding.
REFUNDS
We leave no stones un-turned insuring our customers get what they bargained for. If you're not satisfied with this item, contact me. Then, if the problem can't be resolved, return product within 30 days in 'as purchased' condition for a full refund (S & H included. For those who know the ups and downs of the precious metals market, this is a heck of a deal. Buy it and if the market drops dramatically in the next 30 days, you can return it for what you paid for it. That's a pretty cool insurance policy for precious metal buyers. I think most specimen buyers, however, are more interested in these rocks for their intrinsic beauty and collectability than they are for their gold content. MINES, CLAIMS, HIGH-GRADERS, AND GOLD RUSH TOWNS This isn't run-of-the-mill ore. Quartz/calcite/carbonate rock containing visible gold is considered specimen-grade; much richer than what miners typically extract from hard rock mines. Ore assaying much less than an ounce of gold per ton is more the norm. Producing tonnages of specimen grade rock would make miners extremely popular in the local saloons; at least for a little while. Many lode districts produce high grade as placer float, chunks of surficial quartz 'floating' away from it's mother vein. Of a similar nature is pocket gold, still partnered with the parent rock, but in close-to-the-surface outcroppings. These epithermal deposits are characterized by the presence of 'caprock', oxidized iron and stony gangue within which gold is mixed. It’s a well-known fact, or secret (depending on who you ask), that during Gold Rushes, when an opportunity presented itself, miners sometimes engaged in high-grading. They, in essence, purloined rock directly from the mines in which they were working. Doesn't that sound only natural; practical even all things considered? Miners, after all, weren't rich men. They were only manual laborers working their tails off for slave wages in dangerously-brutal conditions. Once rich specimens were discovered by workers inside mines and secreted away, likely as not many were later thrown into dolly-pots and pounded up. In this manner, miners liberated the gold themselves leaving no clues behind of where ore originated. After the gold was separated from worthless gangue (ore rock), it could be melted, weighed, assayed, and sold. Other miners, and one can only speculate on the particulars, probably brought high grade in to local assayers and assorted venture capitalists. Metallurgists and chemists who, in addition to determining the quality of gold and the tenor of ores tested inside different mines, may have pursued sidelines like purchasing high grade ore (rock like this) in private dealings. Other town merchants, given the opportunity, might also have gotten in on the action. One could surmise that likely as not every merchant in these flourishing boomtowns would, by this time, have learned plenty about the ins and outs of gold and the mining thereof. Chances are, they knew the miners, what diggings were being worked by whom, and how well different mines and claims were faring. It stands to reason the majority of towns-folk and business-owners were acquainted with claim owners, mine owners, and other operators working the region. One might think that as stake-holders, all interested parties in the community would be well-informed about local claims and mines, their statuses and ongoing production, ownership, mining technologies, buying and selling gold, processing ores, refining gold, assaying gold, et al.
THE UPSIDE-DOWN RIVER Back
in the winter of 1979, I jumped in my Econoline, departed from
Illinois, and high-tailed it for Arizona. Touching down in Tucson, I hit
the books and, the following spring, struck out for the Bradshaw Mtns. During the next three summers, I tried scratching out a living from
the Hassayampa River's red beds. Take it from me, that's some mighty
inhospitable country, but a good place for a beginner to get acquainted
with prospecting for gold. Thank you, Hal Ray! R.I.P. old friend. Well,
long story short, I never struck it rich there, but living outdoors in
the Bradshaws led me to adventure most folks will only ever dream about.
The Hassayampa was known as the upside-down river. It ran through a
deep canyon located approximately four miles east of Nowhere aka
Wilhoit. During expeditions into the bush, I examined hundreds of rocks
connected with quartz outcroppings, prospect pits, and old mine sites.
You'd think this being gold country, somewhere was a chunk of high grade
with my name on it. There's an old cliche which goes 'Gold's
undisputably where you find it and nowhere else.' Since beginning my
search, I've discovered an immutable truth about gold which is more factually-correct. Just
because you haven't found it yet doesn't mean it's not still hidden
somewhere in your vicinity. Youtube miners already in it make finding
gold look easy, don't they? "Look, here's a target!" Mark my word. The
earth's a big place and gold remains a relatively-rare substance (if
you're not swimming in the stuff, that is). Pocket-hunters
in gold country sometimes stumble onto 'blowouts' - rich quartz and
oxidized-ironstone-caprock lenses practically oozing gold right at the
surface. Within any expanse of exposed quartz, maybe one or two zones
along an entire vein yield bonanza pockets - every prospector's dream.
Before running off to explore those exposed outcroppings in your
backyard, be advised not all quartz is auriferous (gold-bearing). If
placer's been unearthed in the fields, valleys, and creeks below those
veins, maybe you're in luck. Old diggings and stacked-up rock piles are
favorable signs; sure-fire indicators gold was mined in the vicinity.
Sometimes, a discrete (all by itself) eluvial placer occurs directly
below a pocket. In the Arizona desert, I've mined them at a few
locations. Two of my own claims carried this eluvial-type gold. Pockets
generally 'pinch out' quickly or the quartz vein returns to being
low-tenor. This means ore assays taken from these veins won't show much
Au content. In pocket country, you may also have rich pockets still
entombed by the country rock at indeterminate intervals/depths below
exposed, surface pockets. One of my claims had those.
If there's one lesson about prospecting a guy who's been there might pass on, it’s "go where the gold is, not where it isn't". Lesson number two - "live an honorable life." Gold of Eldorado 3-10-13
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