What is it?

[Fishermanjuice]

So, I was metal detecting a park here in Pittsburgh tonight and found this. I am used to finding old rusty iron slag. This is not slag, or at least not the same as I often find. I initially thought I saw silver because it came out of the ground with flecks still shiny, which is not the same for rusty slag. It seems to almost have "chunks" of "crystal-like-shaped" metal mixed into what I think is a natural rock. It definitely has a lot of iron in it, but there are flecks of something else that doesn't rust. The only cleaning done on this was with a tooth brush, and although the pictures don't do it justice, it definitely sparkles in spots. I found this with my minelab x-terra 305. It gets a -4 reading (iron) when I wave over it, so it is at least mostly iron. Is this what iron ore looks like before smelting? What shiny metal would be mixed in?

Cheers
Fishermanjuice

 

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[HutSiteDigger]

Looks like it is got some lead in it?

 

[Fishermanjuice]

I'm not sure. It is magnetic, so I think it is definitely iron. The shiny stuff is too shiny for lead, but the general color of the metal outside of the few rusty spots and shiny spots does have a lead-ish color to it.

 

[Fishermanjuice]

After looking at images of iron ore in google, I am thinking it is a piece of un-smelted iron ore. It is pretty neat looking so I will probably hold onto it.