Possible Garnets?

[Duckwalk]

I have recently taken up prospecting as part of my daily life. while sluicing and panning for gold i keep coming across these rocks that are ALWAYS round ranging in sizes bigger than BBs to tiny round balls ending up in my black sands when panning. i will post a picture later tonight but im pretty sure they are garnet. They are all brown and are round as stated above. any ideas?

 

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[mamabear]

Really need pics to ID. sorry. If they are garnet I would look into selling them to a new age type person/store. They believe in different healing properties with different stones including brown garnets.

 

[TheHarleyMan2]

Garnet will look like black glass amounst black sands in your cons. What you can do to see if it is garnet is hold it up in the air with tweezers or something to hold them with towards the sun light or putting it over a bright light and it will illuminate the red color indicating it is garnet. Garnet DOES come in many colors except green, (but it will be a transparent color), commonly red is most favorable and used garnet. Usually when I go out and pan for gold and I always find the little gems along with my heavy cons. Keep them as some can be good jewelry grade, especially the bigger ones. You can have someone who makes jewelry and cut gems they can determine which ones are jewelry grade. You can sell them but garnets are not that valuable but my feel is a few bucks is better than no bucks!

 

[Buckshotnc]

Sounds like garnets, here in Western North Carolina most in streams are reddish or brown and usually in with your concentrates.

 

[Duckwalk]

That's about the best I can do. Hope this answer the question!

 

[DDancer]

Hard to tell in the picture, might try a picture with the samples on a white background. I would say its garnet. Panned a lot of it.

Garnets do come in a variety of colors but as said most are red and deep purple/black. Usually glassy in appearance smaller crystals tend to survive travel down stream while larger ones break up into chips unless your finding them near their source. Small crystals tend to stay round and larger chips are often blockish in shape.

I doubt you will find any of the green or blue varieties but yellow and brown occur in many places as well. I've known some people to collect them and keep the bits in small flasks with mineral oil or water. Kinda neat to look at on the window sill

 

[huntsman53]

Yep, they look like impure Pyrope Garnets! They are the same as the one's we find most of the time while panning in North Carolina.


Frank

 

[Duckwalk]

do you ever see gold show up in them? i get flashes of gold sometimes in them so ive been saving them. is this just mica?

 

[DDancer]

No, never seen gold in them but in the black sands with them. The flashes maybe itty bitty bits of mica stuck to them or just micro fractures in the crystals.

 

[huntsman53]

No, never seen gold in them but in the black sands with them. The flashes maybe itty bitty bits of mica stuck to them or just micro fractures in the crystals.

I agree! I have also seen Pyrope Garnets with bits of Mica attached to them. At the same time though, quite a few precious and semi-precious Gem specimens and crystals have been found with Gold on and/or inside them, so it is possible that Pyrope Garnets could have Gold on or in them or both!


Frank