New Photo For One And Done

[Condor]

Thanks for all the kind words.  When I'm not out detecting I live vicariously for other people's prospecting adventures.  I'm glad we have an active forum to share this hobby.

I played around with my camera and photo editing to try and get a close up of the rock matrix on the nugget.  Still not so good but maybe some of you experts can figure it out and give me an idea where to look for the vein.  The nuggets I found last year all had the same matrix attached.   There are hundreds of quartz veins in the area, but I haven't found any gold with obvious quartz attached.

[Condor]

I played with the camera a bit more.  One photo dry nugget, one photo wet.  The wet photo makes the matrix look like some quartz hidden in the black rock.  I dunno, give me some ideas

[jasong]

I occasionally find nuggets with a blackish material too in Arizona. The closest for mine was some sort of manganese oxide like psilomelane or pyrolusite, but I don't think that's it because none of mine react with HCl, do yours? I almost think some of mine might just be hornblende now or something, really not sure but might be some starting guesses for your mineral anyways.

A good place to get some ideas to start is to look at mindat and find what sorts of associated minerals are in the mines in the areas you prospect and then do various tests (streak, hardness, acid, etc) to narrow the possibilities down.

Watching with curiosity...

[DDancer]

Quartz, quartzite, hematite and related minerals with some chalcedony possible.  I'd not concern myself with it unless you want to burn it out then it'll take a couple of acids.  Or just high heat and some sulfuric then chip the small stuff.  Not unusual to find things so... more common than not the bigger the piece.  Good find.

[Breakofday]

Way back when the Australian gold fields became world news ,they were rushed by hopefuls from all over the world. Along with them were the veteran 49ers from California . They realised that the geological foundations were similar and were able to locate the mother loads by first locating the "indicator" which nearly always ran roughly north and south. Apart from variations in bedding I would assume the the geological patterns would be similar all over the world where quarts dykes are exposed. Hope this and a couple of pics help in your hunt.   Gold don't come easy it seams.⛏.     Chris

[jasong]

Hey Condor, did you do any tests on your black material?

After further analysis of my own, which are similar to yours, I think they must be the black crystalline form of limonite or geothite and the crystalline form is just more resistant to acid so I didn't see a fizz.

Mine streak more similar to Goethite. I think the brown stuff on your nugget is too, so it seems like a likely guess that's what the black crystalline stuff is as well. Might be a pseudomorph of something like pyrite originally (look for empty casts with a loupe).

Gives you something to look for when prospecting for the source vein anyways if it checks out.

[Condor]

Jasong,

I stuck mine in a weak acid bath of CLR and it did not fiz very much like your experience.  This gold came from the predominately silver and lead areas of Yuma county.  Gold was a by-product during smelting but obviously a few veinlets of gold must have formed, just never rich enough to interest the drywashers.  A fellow prospector and I will explore the box canyon tomorrow.  Fingers crossed.

[beatup]

Nice gold Steve,good luck out at the canyon.