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Miner Finds Diamond While Looking For Gold Near Foresthill, California


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A California woman says she found a 1½ carat diamond while mining gold near the Sierra Nevada foothills town of Foresthill.

“I was like ‘Oh, my god, I found a diamond,’  ” said Jillian Kelly.

Kelly, 49, left her Silicon Valley career to take up mining 10 years ago and wrote ‘The Miracle Miner: My Life as a Female Gold Miner.” The uncut semi-clear pebble-sized stone is about width of a dainty pinky finger.

The rest of the story with photos at The Sacramento Bee

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Looks like a diamond to meee.. Doesn't look all that bad color-wise from here either.. Of course...

Dang, the price of testers sure has come down..! Paid a bit over $100 about 20 years ago for basically the same unit..

Here's the thing about that type of tester though: They're really not designed to work on un-cut stones.. They're designed to measure the refractivity / refractiveness in/of cut stones.. If you watched the vid you'll notice how the LEDs were bouncing back-n-forth along the length of the readout between the red and yellow.. That tester held to a cut diamond would have shot all the way toward the tip and held steady on a green LED.. Held against paste it would have moved maybe one or two notches at most, if at all..

The same holds true with rough (as shown in the vid) but to a much lesser degree, seldom making it to the green yet reacting enough to confirm an ID.. That was about as good a reaction as it gets on uncut rough (actually much faster than on ours, which I'll attribute to newer circuitry -- never have seen "bouncing" that fast before,) with non-diamond barely moving.. They work well enough I'd rather have one than not, especially for under twenty bucks..

* NOTE: Testing of our unit performed at Crater Of Diamonds, including on stones Diamond James would carry with him in a film canister back when he was still alive to hawk to tourists who absolutely couldn't go home empty handed..

Swamp

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While real diamonds were found in California, I dont think what this lady found is one. The picture in the article is decent and I am about 90% sure this is a small quartz crystal. I've seen a lot of raw diamonds, and this just does not look like one, though it does look like quartz.

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I'm with Chris. A simple test is to look at at text through it. Or even a straight line, or some sort of edge. If you can see it, it's not a diamond. You can't see through diamonds. Also, it doesn't have the luster of a raw diamond.

jim

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Some rough diamonds can be seen through. Its a minority, but some can, so that's not really a good test. Check this link for images of rough diamonds.
https://www.google.com/search?q=google+rough+diamond+images&safe=active&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwihkpKb3fLVAhVS3mMKHTZsAsAQsAQIJw&biw=1280&bih=915

There are a few non-diamonds in there, with at least one quartz crystal, but there are a load of real rough diamond images.

Chris

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Thanks, Chris. I was under the impression that while you might see through one, you can't read text or see a straight line through one.

Jim

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https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-identify-rough-diamonds-like-pro-conrad-kruger

One of the images in the link Chris posted was from the above site -- "how to identify rough diamonds like a pro".  I have no idea if what is said there is accurate so maybe some of you could verify.

 

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I read the article and thought to myself - This is from the perspective of a diamond cutter - only they call the dodecahedral faces "grain" - and sure enough I looked at the author's name and it said "master diamond cutter". There is nothing wrong with the article but it fails to note important things a layperson would use to identify a diamond, including hardness. Sapphire is hardness 9 and will easily scratch quartz at hardness 7. It will do nothing to a diamond. Note that all the crystals in the Fake diamond picture are all quartz crystals.

Years ago I had a guy bring me a quartz crystal he acquired. It was the size of an egg and very clean and clear. He was convinced it was a diamond of great value. I told him it was quartz and he refused to believe me. I explained to him the characteristics of why it was a quartz crystal. He still refused to believe. I told him he could think whatever he liked but if he wanted me to identify it, I had already done that and he left.

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