Missouri River Sapphires and gold picture of the years booty

sapphire miner

Jr. Member
Jan 20, 2010
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Missouri River Sapphires and gold picture of the year's booty

I am the owner of sapphire mining property in Montana.
This is a picture of some of the sapphires and gold I mined last year.
These stones come in all colors and shades, though often they will be lighter in the rough.
Many of these stones are color changing, once cut they produce a great variety of tints.
The stones I recovered are from 2.5 mm to +12.5 mm. Approximately 7 each stones at 3 to 3.5mm per ct.
Stones around 6+ mm are over 3 ct's, the price will start at somewhere around $200.00 per gram or $40.00 per ct
depending on quality and color. The stones I mine do not need to be heat treated, they are all natural and
more rare than diamonds. Compare the price of these sapphires to that of gold per gram at $200.00 to over $400.00
per gram for large quality green and other colors. Please see price lists in Lapidary Journal and other stone buyers guides.
 

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Re: Missouri River Sapphires and gold picture of the year's booty

They are beautiful.

Out of all the jewelry I've bought for my wife over the years, I like her sapphire ring the best.

I would love to have your job.

Welcome to Treasurenet

Paul
 

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Re: Missouri River Sapphires and gold picture of the year's booty

i love sapphires too, are they all gem quality? no inclusions. cool.
 

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Re: Missouri River Sapphires and gold picture of the year's booty

Most all of these stones are gem quality, I have pulled out about 1300 ct of culls
 

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Re: Missouri River Sapphires and gold picture of the year's booty

Thanks Paul
Here is another photo enjoy.
I will post a photo of the culls later.
Neal
 

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Re: Missouri River Sapphires and gold picture of the year's booty

sapphire miner, question for you, i thought red sapphires were called rubys, all other colors sapphires. all corrundum, same hardness, educate me please, not trying to be a wise arse.
 

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Re: Missouri River Sapphires and gold picture of the year's booty

Marinedad,
You are correct sapphire is corundum and red being the rarest of all colors is ruby. I have found only several small rubies,
however I find red garnets of several different shades. I have found several excellent quality small padparadscha - pinkish-orange to orange-pink hues with a look of fire radiating from the stones. I dream of the day I might find a large one, as I believe this to be the best of all, and natural too.

Here is the photo of the culls or bad stoned I removed, I am sure some could be cabed.
 

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Re: Missouri River Sapphires and gold picture of the year's booty

sapphire miner, is yours a pay to dig site or do you sell these? how do you mine them? dig and screen, sluice.
 

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Re: Missouri River Sapphires and gold picture of the year's booty

:coffee2: Kool
 

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Re: Missouri River Sapphires and gold picture of the year's booty

I am happy to say I have both a hand dig property and a large scale property over 100 acres.
I have mined by hand on my belly, to using equipment. I have built and designed two separate large plants.
I dig, pre screen, then haul to the plant for prossing
I have hand built two jigs one 30'' and one 42'' both duplex jig beds, I have 5 jigs in the plant,
three 42'' duplex primary and a 30'' secondary duplex and a round 20'' Tertiary jig then to the concentrator
and to the secondary gold retension bowl. I pre screen the material before feeding the plant, some loss does occur,
but the throughput of target material more than makes up for it. The El dorado bar is said to have no less than 2,000 oz of Sapphires
per acre. Let me break that down 5 ct to the gram x 31.1 = 155.5 ct to the oz x 2,000 = 311,000 ct's per acre. Mining a ten foot pay layer averages out to be about 59.9 ct's per yard. Sounds easy but water, ponds, plant, equipment, ??? ???
 

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Re: Missouri River Sapphires and gold picture of the year's booty

holy cow, nice operation
 

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If that is an advertisement disguised as a post it should be moved to Classifieds or for sale or something.
 

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