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Gold Seeker

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  1. 32 minutes ago, GB_Amateur said:

    When you rub mercury on a 95% copper cent, it doesn't clean off a layer of tarnished copper alloy, leaving a fresh clean copper surface.  Instead it leaves a white metal coating on the coin.

    Not sure what you're trying to say...but mercury does dissolve gold and silver as well as many other metals, but you're correct about copper and some other metals because manganese, copper and zinc are resistant in being dissolved/forming an amalgam with mercury. 

    "Mercury dissolves many metals such as gold and silver to form amalgams. Iron is an exception, and iron flasks have traditionally been used to trade mercury. Several other first row transition metals with the exception of manganese, copper and zinc are also resistant in forming amalgams. Other elements that do not readily form amalgams with mercury include platinum."

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_(element)

  2. I did a little reading on silver and mercury, silver and mercury will form an amalgam, just like it will with gold, the mercury will dissolve the gold until it reaches a saturation point and it's does the same with silver, so when he put mercury on the SL quarter it dissolved a bit of the surface silver which left the quarter shiny.

    Here's video where the guy does the same with a 1953 silver quarter, you can see the amalgam forming as he rubs it off and eventually he cleans the quarter with a cloth and it looks pretty close to a new quarter albeit with some loss of surface silver.

    I wouldn't recommend doing this with a silver coin especially if it's a rare date that you may want to get graded because it will lower the grade from the loss of silver and the grading service may very will be able to tell what was done to the coin...or maybe they won't be able to tell but I wouldn't risk it with a rare date.

    And also as mentioned and as we all know or should know breathing the mercury fumes is not good!!

     

  3. 2 hours ago, BMc said:

    Thanks a lot everyone. Later the same day that I had found the (highly tarnished) quarter, I stopped in at JW's Prospecting Supplies in Prescott Valley and showed J.W. the quarter.  Without saying anything, he immediately pulled out some Mercury and started melting it onto the coin to make it shiny and new looking.

     I was a little concerned and taken aback about that because if it altered the coins appearance it might affect the value. At that point however; I wasn't worrying about value since everyone in the store including myself, one customer, and Scott Johnson an employee, had all run out the back door to trying to avoid the Mercury fumes. :yikes:  After a few minutes, we came back inside and sure enough, the quarter looked freshly minted! 

    First I've heard of using mercury to cleanup a silver coin, please post a photo of how it looks now.

  4. 2 hours ago, NCtoad said:

    That’s about the timeframe I was thinking of too.  Do you know when fineness stamps started showing up on rings?

    In 1906 the United States government passed the "National Gold and Silver Stamping Act.", however there isn't a law that actually requires that gold/silver to have a purity/quality mark..but the law does require that any gold/silver that does have a purity/quality mark MUST be fairly accurate and even more accurate since an update in 1981, and any marked gold/silver must also have a "Hallmark/Makers mark" accompanying the purity mark or the purity mark is mute and may not be accurate.

    Here's a little more info...

    https://www.stuller.com/articles/view/national-gold-and-silver-marking-act/

  5. On 2/26/2022 at 11:20 AM, locator said:

    Hello GB_Amateur. This video was very helpful to me in understanding the process.

     

    I knew how this process works already...but I thoroughly enjoyed the video!

    There is one bit that is untrue....the reason the gold bars are tapered, he said it was so a man couldn't grip it easily to pick it up.....why would anyone be worried about someone picking it up, it had to be picked up to move it around, the true reason was so that the bar would drop out of the mold easily after the bar was poured and cooled.

  6. 10 hours ago, F350Platinum said:

    Here's a fun fact about the knife, it was made in 2001. Don't know how long it's been in the ground but it wasn't on top.

    https://www.buckknives.com/about-knives/how-old/

    If you zoom the photo you can see the mark that corresponds to the chart.

    It's old enough to drink. 😀

    Well that explains how the knife got in the field, it's got drunk on it's birthday and passed out in the field!!

  7. 6 hours ago, GB_Amateur said:

    I also watched one just after the holidays(?), but don't know if it's the same one you saw.  I thought it was on PBS but I later searched and couldn't find it.  Maybe on the Discovery Network or History Channel or National Geographic.  It was 2 hours long, with the second hour being mostly about the difficulties of food being brought from long distances (particularly inter-continental).  But it definitely sounds like the one you describe, although there is basically one chain reaction (with multiple components) so could easily be two documentaries paralleling.  After seeing that I was surprised things are going as smoothly as they are.  (I'm sure it's worse in some places, and for some products that don't impact me.)

    I think Dilek indicated shipment by air (but I may be getting mixed up with other videos) so maybe that is less bottlenecked, at least Europe-->USA.  How are the XP shipments coming over?

    It was on the Discovery Channel.

  8. 17 hours ago, tvanwho said:

    In gold mining books pertaining to the Carolinas, they constantly talk about saprolites, weathered loose bed rock, containing rich gold, that they dug out with only shovels.

    Many of the southeastern states that have gold have gold in saprolite, especially Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama and as mentioned the Carolinas.

  9. 10 hours ago, NCtoad said:

    When something like this is found in the UK isn’t the finder only entitled to half the value of the item found?   Or is that for multiple coins found (a hoard)?

    From my understanding, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but if several coins or historic items were found together it's considered a "hoard" then the rest of the coins/treasure if any at the site would excavated, researched, etc. and then be appraised and then museums would bid on them and the finder would get the money, if found on private land and the finder had permission the then the finder and land owner split the money, if no permission was granted then the landowner gets all the money, if found on public land the finder gets all the money.

    When only one coin or historic item is found it isn't considered a hoard and the finder can sell it themselves and to whomever they please for however much they can get for it.

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