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Blind Lead...


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I hit this pocket out hunting along a contact zone. I think it is  native silver, but there have been no historical accounts of silver being found, only platinum and gold. Upon inspection with the microscope I can see gold popping out in a couple places. The large nugget was on the top of a vein of decomposing calcite and quartz, you can see on one side where the rock fell apart leaving some interesting formations. The large piece is 3/4 of a ounce and the foil like piece, that was found downhill, is about a 1/4 ounce. So this is most likely silver but anybody ever see platinum gold ore? The pieces came out very clean with very little magnesium oxide coating. The only thing that has my mind wandering is the fact that the source of platinum has never been found in the area, no historical accounts of silver being found and it came out of the ground really clean. Anybody see anything like this while out hunting for pocket gold?

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If you just showed me the pictures with no back story attached I would say melted aluminum. I have fished globs like that out around campfire sites many a time. Melted lead/zinc from batteries is also common. So question number one - is it heavy for the size?

Some Common Ore Test Procedures

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It's pretty heavy for its size 3/4 ounce but it has about 20% calcite inside the metal. The white material on the microscope image is rock matrix. Also it was attached to a calcite/ quartz vein I pulled about 15 pieces of the crumble vein material underneath that also has the silver metal in it. I though it was junk at first but i chopped it out of bed rock and it appears to have calcite that grew within the metal.  

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You called it Steve just a hunk of junk. This had me fooled it even melted around quartz and other local rocks, some of the aluminum even melted and dripped around quartz and made it look like some kind of ore. I picked up a precious metal test kit  from scientific supply and was able to quickly determine this is junk. oh well I'll keep looking for the good stuff.

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