An Auriferous Anecdote

[Jim McCulloch]

One day, Jimmy Sierra and I were operating a booth at a gold show. Two guys came up, and one asked me for the formula for Aqua Regia. I gave him the formula, and he thanked me. I asked him what he was going to use it for, and he said he was going to use it to burn the quartz off some really nice gold specimens that he had. I told him that was the wrong thing to do, to remove quartz requires Hydrofluoric acid, not Aqua Regia, which would dissolve the gold.

The men began to scorn and belittle me. No matter what I would say, these guys did not listen to me. To them,  I was an idiot.

Suddenly, Jimmy piped up and said to me "Jimmy, Jimmy, you are always getting it wrong. They're right, yes, Aqua Regia is what you use to remove the quartz from gold specimens." He then directed them to the chemical dealer across the aisle, whom he knew stocked the ingredients to make Aqua Regia.

I have often wondered how using Aqua Regia to remove quartz from gold worked out for them... 

[flakmagnet]

Like we say Jim, the difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits.

good story...

[geof_junk]

If he had a lot he could go to this site to get his mess recovered. 

 

....LINK....

[Aureous]

On 10/24/2023 at 8:30 AM, Jim McCulloch said:

Suddenly, Jimmy piped up and said to me "Jimmy, Jimmy, you are always getting it wrong. They're right, yes, Aqua Regia is what you use to remove the quartz from gold specimens."

Funny about that, Jim Normandi often said wacky things in his latter years...possibly another case of that mentioned here. I was thinking perhaps he meant "A way to remove gold from your quartz specimens" instead lol 😁