GOLD NUGGET!!

cyberdan

Silver Member
Dec 12, 2006
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Very Northern Left Coast
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XLT & Bigfoot
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All Treasure Hunting
A lady is getting together several pieces of gold for me to buy. She gave me a preview of things she has found so far, about 6 pieces. She said she has a lot more and her mom has a few too.

One of the pieces I saw last night is a raw gold nugget her dad found many years ago in northern CA. It is about the size and shape of the eraser and metal cap on a pencil and it has a quartz inclusion about 25% of the piece. It had already been made into a pendant.

I will test it to make sure it is not pyrite but need to know if all raw gold is 24K? I am not going to pay extra just because it is raw, I may try to sell it based on that.

I will have to guess how much to discount my offer based on quartz VS gold. Is quartz roughly 50% is weight compared to the same amount of gold? The whole thing probabley isn't more than 5gr.
 

Most nugget form gold in Ca is about 22kt. No 24kt gold exists in nature. I can't help you on the weight issue, but there is a formula you can use that uses water and displacement for the weight of the gold in the quartz. Hope this helps.
 

I ran across an 18k ring not too long ago that had a huge piece of smoky topaz. It was about 1"x3/4"x1/2" so I knew it weighed a good bit. The seller was pretty firm on their price & wouldn't let me take the stone out of the ring. Total weight of the ring was about 12 dwt. I ended up getting some quartz crystals, guesstimating an amount of them equal to the stone in the ring, weighing that & adding in a safety margin. I bought the ring & the stome weighed about 1 dwt less than I thought so I came out ok.

In your situation I'd be concerned that there was more quartz there than is visible.
 

[ I will test it to make sure it is not pyrite but need to know if all raw gold is 24K? I am not going to pay extra just because it is raw, I may try to sell it based on that.

I will have to guess how much to discount my offer based on quartz VS gold. Is quartz roughly 50% is weight compared to the same amount of gold? The whole thing probabley isn't more than 5gr.

[/quote]

I saw a Discovery Channel program about Georgia's gold. It said that the gold found there is almost 24kt.... Found more about it here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Gold_Belt

Good luck with your buying, sounds exciting!
Bill
 

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