Garnet question from a Gold prospector

[AlwaysBusyJ]

Okay everyone, I'm in unfamiliar territory here... I usually stay on the gold prospecting side of the forum, but I have a question thats probably better answered by this crowd. I was panning down some concentrates from my last trip at the river. I removed most of the lighter material, but just above the black sand was a layer of what I thought looked like pink sand. I was a little confused at first, until I took out a magnifying glass and inspected it... Looks to me like it's actually hundreds if not thousands of tiny garnets!

Now, I'm used to seeing a large number of garnets in my concentrates, but I've never seen anything close to this amount. Most of them are really tiny, I classified everything down to 1/8 already and the majority are much smaller than that. I know tiny rough garnets aren't really worth anything, but considering the volume of what I'm finding, would it be worth trying to save them? And is it an indicator that there may be larger specimens in the area, or is it common to find such a large amount mixed in river gravel without larger ones in the area? Also, if they are worth saving does anyone know any tricks to separating them from the other sand and materials? I found all of these caught in my gold cube, but I noticed a ton of them washed out of the bottom of it as well, but I'm not sure if I want to go through all the trouble of digging through buckets of dirt trying to seperate these things out. Any advice about this is appreciated!

 

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[Eu_citzen]

Nah, not worth saving. If they are larger and have a nice crystal shape then you can save them. Still won't make you a fortune, though.

 

[oldbrundogg]

Hey Busy, so funny I wanted to ask the same question so thanks for asking. I've been picking out the bigger chips for awhile, I know they aren't worth much, but it's pretty and my wife does ceramics thought we might try to use it in that or if I can get a glass blower to try to use it.
Anyway I just use a tea strainer to get down to the size I'm willing to deal with other than that I haven't found a method to sort. Oh yeah, use magnet to get rid of some material.
OBD

garnets are in the vial on the left

 

[NJnuggetpirate]

View attachment 755502Hey Busy, so funny I wanted to ask the same question so thanks for asking. I've been picking out the bigger chips for awhile, I know they aren't worth much, but it's pretty and my wife does ceramics thought we might try to use it in that or if I can get a glass blower to try to use it.
Anyway I just use a tea strainer to get down to the size I'm willing to deal with other than that I haven't found a method to sort. Oh yeah, use magnet to get rid of some material.
OBD

garnets are in the vial on the left

the last vial on the right is that clear quartz crystals

 

[goldenIrishman]

There are some Garnets that are worth a lot of money but those are the green ones that are VERY rare. They can go for $1,000s per caret. What you're describing is what's usually refereed to "Garnet sands" and is pretty much only good for making sand paper with.

We get tons of nice Garnets here and I'm saving them up for some arts/crafts projects I've got in mind. I figure if they're not worth much on their own that I'll make them worth something by working them into some suncatcher designs I've got in mind.

 

[NJnuggetpirate]

There are some Garnets that are worth a lot of money but those are the green ones that are VERY rare. They can go for $1,000s per caret. What you're describing is what's usually refereed to "Garnet sands" and is pretty much only good for making sand paper with.

We get tons of nice Garnets here and I'm saving them up for some arts/crafts projects I've got in mind. I figure if they're not worth much on their own that I'll make them worth something by working them into some suncatcher designs I've got in mind.

Irishman how do you make the suncatchers