RED PLANET GOLD QUARTZ SPECIMEN 1.89 GRAM

Description: NATIVE GOLD SPECIMEN from CALIFORNIA Ruler is 1/4" wide (6 mm). U.S. 10 cent coin is 17 mm in diameter. Specimen weight: 29.3 Grains (Troy) - 1.89 Gram Size: 14.6X11.6X5.3 mm Here's a reddish pebble from one of California's mining districts. This baby's stuffed with gold. Here, you see how precious metal looks inside it's host rock, in this case quartz. The matrix is unlike any other gold quartz I've seen. The gold intrusions are naturally-occurring. They're not salted gold, mica, pyrite, or glittery rock (generally the result of light reflecting off micaceous rock). Amazing how many dealers try to take advantage of an optical illusion. Be assured "everything that glitters is not gold". For many years, placer-mining was my trade. When not mining, I was working with gold fashioning nuggets into jewelry. My pipe dream, back then, was to find a desert wash full of rocks like this one. When you spend time in gold country, there's always the possibility a person might accidentally stumble on a bonanza. "Some men go searching for rivers of gold. Write about their busy lives as the stories unfold." (from Rivers of Gold by myself, Gene Ralph) U.S. SHIPPING - $5.00 (includes USPS tracking to all U.S. destinations) INTERNATIONAL CUSTOMERS S&H $16.00 FAST REFUND OFFERED (If, for any reason, you're not happy with this item). Contact me indicating you wish to return the item. As soon as it's received by me and everything's as it should be, you'll be issued a refund. I poured through old mining dumps for years looking at orange-yellow-rusty rock through a loupe, but I never found a piece with visible gold. This specimen comes from one of the many gold deposits discovered in The Golden State of California, U.S.A. Weight Conversions: 15.43 GRAINS = 1 GRAM 31.103 GRAMS = 1 TROY OUNCE 24 GRAINS = 1 PENNYWEIGHT (DWT) 20 DWT = 1 TROY OUNCE 480 GRAINS = 1 TROY OUNCE S&H Discounted for combined shipments. PAYMENTS For U.S. buyers: We accept paypal For intnl. customers: We accept paypal. Pay securely with www.paypal. Payment must be made within 7 days from close of auction. We ship as soon as funds clear. If you have questions, please ask them before bidding. REFUNDS We leave no stones un-turned insuring our customers get what they bargained for. If you're not satisfied with this item, contact me. Then, if the problem can't be fixed, return product within 30 days in 'as purchased' condition for a full refund WHAT IS PAYDIRT? With present-day gold prices, some of the ground rules have changed. 'Paydirt’ isn't what it used to be. These days, a hard-working individual can do well working dirt old timers like me would have abandoned twenty years ago. Otherwise, many things about gold mining haven't changed one iota. Gold has to be in the ground. There's still no easy ounces. The 49ers left a lot of the filthy stuff, but if some claim's been pummeled by a succession of miners, there may not be enough left to justify some prudent man expending time, money, and effort trying to find and recover it. So there's more to proving up, i.e. assessing a claim, than meets the eye. Past mining activity should be taken into account. Today's miners, or yesterday's, still have to prove enough gold remains on a property to start up an operation. How does he accomplish this? He can's unless the property is fully accessible. The reality is most claims are acquired without knowing what's there. A prospector needs to physically open up every conceivable zone where gold-bearing alluvium might reside so it can be tested. If he's unable to, there's no way to know if he has a bona fide gold mine or is only throwing capital away on some worthless 'money pit'. Testing programs must be analytically thorough. In my travels, I have yet to witness a comprehensive mineralogical evaluation of the entire sedimentary mass. When viewed in that light, quantitative and qualitative bulk sampling is a crucial next phase. In their haste to get rich quick, miners often skip these elements entirely. Once 'boots are on the ground', it only takes a cursory look at many properties to see that extensive testing poses major challenges. Who cares what all those loose, unconsolidated rocks laying around might have inside them, eh? After all, we're only after the gold we can see, the 'free gold', right? Yep. That's pretty much the way she goes. O.K. then. Lets stick with only trying to recover the gold we can see then. In a hundred and fifty years, the interval since some property was last mined, any major drainages flowing through it, whether wetland or bone dry, may have witnessed a hundred and fifty flood stages, landslides, forest fires, various excavations including extensive mining not readily noticeable today. That 150 year duration represents a heap of natural reclamation and revegetation. Remote leads, even old relic diggings from earlier days, easily elude a quick discovery. Who knows how thorough the old timers were when it's impossible even to tell where they actually mined? On some mining properties, it's often a pleasant surprise when you discover how truly sloppy and inefficient the old timers were. Some promoters sell claims usually say something like “feel free to come and test our claim”. While such offers are certainly better than none, running a few test pans or buckets of dirt along the shore won't prove how much minable gold remains. It’s been my experience that easy-to-find-gold is often just a teaser planted there by Mother Nature. She's known to play tricks confusing an easily-duped prospector. After recent flood waters recede, it's possible a skimpy stringer of color is left behind. Some blundering prospector walks down to water’s edge with his gold pan, scratches out a crack, and ‘voila’. Yeller! A brief but oh so exciting eureka moment unfolds. Then too, it wouldn’t be the first time a claim was salted by some cagy promoter. Under-sampling can cause inaccurate appraisals which, in the long run, actually do more harm than good. In mountainous terrain, placer gold deposits, and the formations which hold them, are deceptively difficult to locate. Many formations with minable values defy representative testing. Rock piles, massive boulders, trees, boulder packs, root systems, deep, water-filled pools, high benches, thick vegetation; bottom-lands with boo coo overburden; there's no limit to the obstacles nature throws in a groping prospector’s path. It’s likely this gold-bearing ground he's looking for, often difficult to predict, is submerged beneath the water table of a creek or river. On active drainages with running water, this is very often the case. Pray tell, how do you test ground like that? With an excavator, pick and shovel, suction dredge? Maybe in a perfect miner’s world, you could. Pay dirt might lie buried far back within some ancient Tertiary or Quaternary terrace high up on the side of a canyon wall. Gold has little trouble going undetected especially when it's covered by ten to thirty feet of overburden and heavy forestation. Do you see the challenges? Wherever you are, the erratic, elusive nature of pay-streaks add complexity after complexity to the act of finding a minable deposit. Here is where being a bona fide prospector enters the picture. Through both analysis (testing) and the process of elimination (finding out where the gold isn't), a persistent digger eventually figures out whether he has a bona fide gold mine or only ‘the shaft’. It all begins with want-to. Then comes access, an approved plan of operations, tools, savvyness, and a willingness to dig like a gopher until you either do or don't find that pile of gold you're after. Regardless of how many times a claim’s been worked, invariably, a little color's left behind. Perhaps there’s enough to satisfy the novice, recreational miner’s itch, just not enough to pay dividends to the more-demanding, occupational miner. A bit of leftover ‘color’ found at the beginning of a project causes excessive, dare I say irrational exuberance. I know from first-hand experience. It happens a lot. Finding a trace of gold leads to throwing everything you’ve got into a project; a claim, perhaps, with no serious potential at all. This scenario happens more often than you might think. The biggest questions for the weary prospector to answer are, "can you find it?", “have you found it?”, "can you work it?", and "will it pay?" In the lower 48 states, if you plan on mining B.L.M. or Forest Service-administered lands, there will be a heap of regulatory hurdles to overcome. Quite often, these are insurmountable. New rules pertaining to water usage have broken the will of many a prudent, well-meaning miner. No matter how grandiose one’s aspirations or how promising the property, right out of the gate, red tape can sabotage everything. Knowing, in advance, whether or not government agencies will approve a plan of operations authorizing preliminary sampling with mining to follow is an absolute must. Why bother to buy or stake mineral rights to a claim if the powers aren’t going to allow prospecting or mining? "Can you find it?", “Have you found it?”, "Can you work it?", and "Will it pay?" During my years of placer-mining, I considered one pennyweight (24 Grains) a good day's production. I hear you laughing and that’s o.k. To be clear, there were plenty of days when I mined a lot more than 1/20th of an oz. Then, there were all the other days. The vast majority of hardscrabble, lone-wolf mining types from whatever era you mention earned little more than subsistence wages if that. That's a reality I can relate to. One pennyweight of gold is one twentieth of an ounce. I doubt most of you could even conceive of working for such chump change. But that was then, this is now. During the 1980s and 1990s when I mined, gold was worth only a fraction (1/4) what it is today. Much depends on an individual’s perspective, how much he needs to survive, and what calculations are used to show profit. Through the period 1981 thru 1997, as a mining claim owner who enjoyed the outdoor lifestyle and loved digging for gold, I had no trouble getting by on 1/20th of an ounce of gold per day. A little fresh ‘shine’ added daily to your vial makes all the sweat and toil seem worthwhile. "Can you find it?", “Have you found it?”, "Can you work it?", and "Will it pay?" How successful your mining venture is ultimately depends on some of the variables mentioned in this essay. This is gold mining, after all, so ‘success’ is a relative term. Only you know for sure whether you’re ahead of the game or not. Maybe you’re a person who doesn’t need money to be happy. Could be you only ‘want a little gold mine to call your own.’ Possibly, from your unique perspective, it’s more about the freedom and the independence. If it’s your claim, you’re the one who does the cleanups and gets to weigh up the gold. At least, I hope you're the one. Only you know what’s needed or how much his buyer is paying when gold is sold. Small scale placer miners tend to be a very individualistic lot. Every miner has to define for him or herself what constitutes success, profit, and failure. Here are the most important questions you will need to answer. "Can you find it?", “have you found it?”, "can you work it?", and "will it pay?" author: Gene Ralph LAW OF THE YUKON "From my ruthless throne, I have ruled alone for a million years and a day;Hugging my mighty treasure, waiting for man to come; Till he swept like a turbid torrent, and after him swept - the scum". Words of Robert Service Thanks for checking out our digs. Gold of Eldorado 8-13-17

Price: 185 USD

Location: Banks, Oregon

End Time: 2024-12-01T03:00:54.000Z

Shipping Cost: 5 USD