🥇 BANNER Gold Nail found

NeoTokyo

NeoTokyo

Bronze Member
Aug 27, 2012
1,803
1,581
Redding
🥇 Banner finds
1
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Eyes - Nokta FORS Gold - Fisher Gold Bug II
Primary Interest:
Prospecting
Heya everyone!

So I found a gold nail today.
Yup!
It was bound to happen, thousands of regular iron nails and I finally find a gold nail. LOL
I never expected this!

My scale says it weighs .3 grams.

I posted the picture on a Facebook chat that I was in and was given some great information about its possible origins.

I was told that it could have come from an ornate Chinese Box used to keep important items in.
This nail was found a couple hundred yards upstream where I found my Chinese coin.


Tell me what you guys think. :)

Gold Nail closeup.jpg

IMG_9021.JPG
 

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What makes this nail "gold"?

It looks similar to gold but gold is a horrible material to make a nail from - I know because I tried it years ago in my jewelery business. The nail shape is what you would expect from a machine cut nail (rectangular head). Who would machine cut gold into nails? ??? That would be an expensive and wasteful use of gold.

I have seen similar cut nails in antique doll furniture but they are made of brass. Trunk nails used for attaching leather or fabric to a wood frame used very similar cut brass nails. These are really common in some places. They are still available today in very small sizes like these:

smalltrunktacknails.jpg


I hope it is gold for Neo's sake. A gold nail would be a real prize and a mystery worth solving. I'm just puzzled why he thinks it is gold.

Heavy Pans
 

it appears too light to be solid gold, but im sure you can find out its makeup and history without too much effort. that is a cool find. if it is gold ill vote banner without hesitation
 

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Putting all common sense aside, and thinking like the majority of us folk here who tend to see the glass half full before someone comes along and drinks it down.. It sure does look like gold, looks just as much as gold as the gold surrounding it. Now sure that doesn't mean a hole heck of a lot, but man it sure looks promising that it could very well be gold and that in itself along with how it was found is pretty deserving of kudos in my book, Very cool find Neo!
 

Ok, now paying devils advocate.. Another plausible possibility could be that it's a eroded square nail that has been electro plated with gold.. Not sure how a rusty nail would take to the process, but generally it's not that hard to do with the right equipment.. But still I want to believe and will continue that it's a gold nail it's just too neat!
 

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I blew that thing up until it fills the screen and man it sure looks real, the color matches the surrounding gold. But gold in a river doesn't rot or pit. So it had to be plated, but why would you plate an already pitted nail. Looks like a horseshoe nail to me, wasn't one of the Roman Emperor's known for having his horses shod with gold shoes and nails? And no I am not implying Neo's nail is from a Romans horse, lol! How long is it Neo?
 

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HOLY COW! 21 notifications of "Likes" given since I last logged in!
Nice to see that you guys like it. :D

Thanks everyone for the Nominations for Banner, it didn't even cross my mind as a potential banner find. :)

I did place one of my hard drive Rare Earth magnets on it to see if it stuck, nothing, just fell off.

The staining is very common on gold in our area due to all the iron that hangs out with it.

I too am a little baffled by the beaten look of it, doesn't look like any normal gold ware to me.

When I head into town tomorrow I will take it in to be Streak Tested.

.3 grams does seem a little light, the picker to the left is .1 grams, though this is on a cheap Harbor Freight scale and doesn't do hundredths decimals.

Thanks again for the interest everyone. :)

Oregon Viking I will be selling bottles here very soon, I am catching up on a few other orders first and had to re-stock the Miners cache.
I just went out and bought 18 more Large 12oz bottles, when the glue is cured I should have 12 of those ready for sale here.
They are a little more expensive than the Harbor Freight 8oz bottles but are larger and don't require cutting the back half of the tube off and they also offer better springback after squeezing and more volume.
I may still offer the 8oz bottles but there isn't going to be a price difference because the main cost of the bottle is in the tube of which I buy in bulk to try to reduce the cost.

The new bottles are condiment bottles but they are the only ones that I have found that are clear, have the right lid and have enough spring to the plastic to work.
The ones at Walmart and other national stores just didn't seal well, didn't have the right lid and were usually Red or Yellow.
These new bottles are from a Wholesale company that caters to Restaurants and stores that resell impulse buy foods (Gas station food.)

It was a great find; it fit the bill perfectly.

IMG_9030.JPG
 

Double post
 

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Edit: I just scraped the tip with a razor blade and it was soft and easy to scratch.
I scratched a little off and its still gold under that.

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True, that could be. :)
You never know what someone is going to do.

Its crazy that its still intact.

Oh and I forgot to add this earlier.

The total length is exactly 18mm.
 

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Nice, I have never seen those before but it looks like a close match.

I will make sure that they use weaker acids first on the scratch test.
Chucks coin is pretty cool and will test stuff for you without pressure to buy it.
 

What ever it is, it is for sure a awesome find, and worthy of a banner. Congrats..
 

find someone with a XRF analyzer spectrometer.
 

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An XRF won't tell you what the nail is made of, it will only tell you what the outside is made of. Even the best XRF units will only penetrate a few micrometers into a gold plated item.

XRF is good for determining the composition quality of a known homogenous sample like an assay button but pretty much worthless for determining the composition of an unknown sample like a plated piece of jewelery or a rock sample. You can know the quality of the metal plating with XRF but the base metal is masked by the plating on the outside. The rock sample results will only show the composition of the surface minerals. Large high power Xray Florescence machines will go deeper but the handheld units don't put out enough energy to penetrate more than a fraction of a millimeter.

Accurate fire assays are done by smelting the object and measuring the resulting melt material. In this case that would destroy the object. XRF is useful for a quick look at surface composition but in no way can they be used to produce fire assay quality results.

I hadn't thought of the possibility of the nail being a lost jewelery piece. That's very plausible. The nail doesn't resemble a horseshoe nail but jewelers often take artistic license. A simple streak test with acid should reveal what sort of metal it is.

In either case it's an interesting find. Thanks for sharing Neo. I'll look forward to finding out whether it's gold or not. :thumbsup:

Heavy Pans
 

Great find ! You can take it to a Gold store and they can give it several tests to determine if it is gold. They might just test it for fun as you are not selling it.
 

Wow ! , I'm really interested to find out what this is - Seems like you have gold there . I'm delighted to see Natural gold up
there on the Banner too- Congratulations !
 

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Could be silver, gold, platinum or is it just a pyrite.....?

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