Not Fool's Gold But It Once Fooled Me

[Mac]

Introducing my first-ever encounter with "fool's gold" -- not pyrite, that's at least pretty easily ruled out -- instead, mica schist with quartz, that is "pretending to be gold on quartz" ha. Yes, some rocks are a really big tease to the novice mind; in this case, it was me who was the fool that got fooled by the non-fools gold. I think this find was in the mid to late 70's ...  by far, this piece looks more like gold than any pyrite I've ever found. Did you keep or do you have a photo of, or a story to tell as regards, what rock first fooled you? Or were you savvy about gold/ non-gold from the start?  

[GB_Amateur]

5 hours ago, Mac said:

Or were you savvy about gold/ non-gold from the start?

Anyone who answers 'yes' I'm going to be suspicious of.  "If gold were plentiful it wouldn't be worth searching for.  If it were easy to find everyone would be doing it."  (I put that in quotes because hundreds of people have said it, and thousands if not millions have thought it.)

[Mac]

1 hour ago, GB_Amateur said:

easy to find

yes, the top two most often heard lines are something like "how easy it must be to find gold with a detector" and the insinuations of how "rich I am going to be from 'all the gold' I find" ... ya, I say, that's why I drive a 2001 truck, all the wealth from gold haha 

[Steve Herschbach]

I have to admit that learning to pan as a kid and having an eye for the stuff early on left me hard to fool. Nothing really looks like gold and I only question myself when examining a near microscopic color in a rock with a lens. A small fracture in quartz with a little stain perhaps making just the right look but too small to tell.

Mica is the worst. I used to get people bring bottles of it in that they had laboriously panned. That is quite a feat since it is about the lightest mineral you can find and it is almost neutral in water and floats on top of the sand, ready to leave the pan. And it only looks like gold when the sun hits its flat surface at the right angle. Easily picked apart with a pin. Yet some people would argue with me and tell me I was wrong when I gave them the bad news. They had so much effort into collecting that bottle they did not want to face reality. I think too many people have heard about gold floating on water and use that bit of information to excuse mica floating out of a pan.

Pyrite will rust in water and the cubic, hackly structure gives it away. It looks brassy to my eye, not like gold. Now chalcopyrite in rock can have more the right color, but again it lacks that rounded globular thing gold has going for it and just does not look right to me.

[geof_junk]

You might think something is gold but you know gold is gold not something else if you can see it.I once got a target that every one (including professional prospectors) thought it was a large square iron nut.I had the first model Whites Gold Master detector and came across it along side a foot deep contour to stop soil erosion. There was a detector scrap about a foot from it, I wonder where it would discriminate out. At full disc it was still there so I picked it up and knew straight away it was gold. Everyone said it steel nut but changed their view when I dropped in their hand. What a beautiful 2 oz  nugget came out of that matrix I nearly walked away from it.?