WHITE GOLD QUARTZ SPECIMEN 1.33 GRAMS NATURAL CALIFORNIA GOLD IN QUARTZ

Description: NATIVE GOLD QUARTZ SPECIMEN from CALIFORNIA Ruler is 1/4" wide (6 mm). U.S. 10 cent coin is 17 mm in diameter. Specimen weight: 20.6 Grains (Troy) - 1.33 Grams Size: 14.6X12.4X5.5 mm Check out this fresh listing. Small wonder folks follow the Golden Fleece. Seeing unions of gold and quartz like this, one appreciates the lure. It's smaller than lots of rocks you see in this category. Unlike those monster leaverites (leave it right there), this one doesn't disappoint. It's not a rock with golden aspirations, this one actually shows VG , visible gold. Oro (Au) and silicon dioxide (quartz) crystallize inside fissures, faults, and cracks to form gold veins. In many mining districts, rich chunks of rock and gold vein material break off and slowly begin their descent. Eventually, the can travel great distances from their individual sources. Considering the Mother Lode's range and enormity, most likely the vein this specimen originated from was (or is) part of that auriferous belt. No, you won't get your money's worth in Au. That's because you're purchasing a specimen, not bullion, not coinage nor jewelry. This rock shows visible gold placed there naturally, not by some human hand. U.S. SHIPPING - $4.00 (shipped via 1st Class) 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. Hydrothermal solutions carrying gold and silica crystallized into veins of gold quartz. This specimen comes from one of the many vein systems sourcing the immense placer deposits of the Sierra Nevada Mtns, the famed Mother Lode. 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 Check any and all Gold of Eldorado feedback for disputes arising from non-authenticity of the specimens I sell. You won't find any. I deal in native minerals with visible gold, not replicas, not 'paint ons'. I don't peddle 'simulated' specimens made with minute amounts of gold or no real gold at all. No fake nuggets here, folks. I've personally bought stuff with gold painted on it. Also purchased here have been 'natural gold quartz' specimens with tiny chunks of placer glued into vugs. All of my advertised specimens, slabs, cabochons, gold ores et al are authentic and contain native gold and/or are composed almost entirely of gold (i.e. gold nuggets, gold flakes, wire gold specimens). The purity of this gold will vary, but if it's from California, you can count on the percentage being high, an est. 80 to 90% pure. For comparision, a 14K gold wedding band is 58% pure gold. The origin of this rich specimen is, perhaps, an undiscovered vein somewhere in the Sierra Nevada Mtns. of California. MY OLD STOMPING GROUNDS Some books refer to the placer deposits of Trinity County as THE FATHER LODE. Back in the late 1970s, the price of gold had briefly risen to $1000 an ounce. Naturally, this caused a new gold rush as miners from my generation moved in for their piece of the action. Eons before any diggers arrived, erosion washed gold-bearing sediments down on an immense scale. In the process, ancient lakes and riverbeds became repositories for precious metal. Many elevated fragments of these old deposits were left stranded up in the hills surrounding the Shasta-Trinity Alps. In the beginning, the 49ers attacked them with picks and shovels. This created quite a commotion. Then, along came another generation of miners who lay seige to them with ‘Giants’ (hydraulic water cannons). Using this new technology, mountains of gravel were displaced and the land ravaged. The argonauts, always hungry for gold, were fairly thorough. Nowadays, it's hard to find any ancient Tertiary or Quaternary gravel-beds in the region. If you wanted to see what remained from an old hydraulic operation, go visit the LA GRANGE MINE just west of the Oregon Mountain summit. Now, the mine's just a large, empty pit. It lies just a few miles from Weaverville alongside infamous highway 299. That must have been quite the mining epoch with thousands of gold-seekers traveling about digging up any gold-bearing gravel they could find. Mountains of boulders and hundreds of old mining cuts attest to the miner's robust efforts to get rich. Gold deposits were blasted down or dug up over a territory encompassing roughly 50 to 75 square miles. Bucket-line dredges also created quite a stir. These floating barges turned most of the local river and creek-bottoms upside down gobbling up gold found near bedrock. Squeezed in or out amongst these larger workforces were the uncountable minion of small-scale, independent miners. They came rushing in from the four corners of the earth, every cut and color, with picksaxes, shovels, rockers, gold pans, and long toms. Towns sprang up. The vestiges of a polite society grew from these gnarly roots of maddened humanity. Over time, miners discovered that "while poor men work, a rich man keeps all the gold" (from my song, California Fever). Merchants, saloon-keeps, freighters, painted ladies, and unscrupulous swindlers thrived. A few hardy argonauts may have struck it rich, but likely as not only a handful. It’s possible that many earned a living off their gold finds though probably not much of one considering the high cost of goods and services. What a colorful era that must have been. Now, with today's soaring prices, look for a whole new breed of adventure-seeker and fortune hunter to scour those same hills and valleys all over again. You might as well try your hand. Who knows, you might find something bigger than 'a frog’s hair'. So, in the late 1970s, due to the brief, but dramatic increase in gold's value, Trinity County crawled with prospectors. I worked the Shasta-Trinity Alps for four seasons. As with any difficult outdoor occupation, mining came with it’s own special set of perils. Thankfully, I survived several and lived to tell my tale. Believe me, the four summers I worked there was quite an adventure. Initially, the idea of dredging on the bottom of a 30 foot deep river wasn’t especially attractive. It took some daring-do, but after accepting fear as part of the risk-reward equation; once those feelings were overcome, working underwater became addictive. Taking the plunge, quite literally, opened up new opportunities for me. Up-sizing to a larger dredge seemed the logical way to go since so many big dredges were seeing impressive cleanups. There was a word-of-mouth communication pipeline which kept everyone along the river informed of how well different operations were faring. Working a succession of four, five, six, and eight inch dredges, I continued to learn the ropes. When not dredging, I reverted to metal detecting and more-traditional, small scale mining methods like sluicing, panning, dry-washing, even running a rocker box. During that period, the dredging community threw together every manner of prototype imaginable. I saw some bizarre contraptions assembled on land and shoved into the water. Some sank in short order. Everyone was after their slice of pie in the sky. This, after all, was a gold rush, so a whole flock of Rube Goldbergs had swooped in with their crazy inventions. It was amazing to see all that sophistication and lack thereof applied to this task of sucking gravel up from a river bottom. Mining encampments proliferated all up and down the river; most connected with dredging operations somewhere. Not all mining activity, however, was confined to Trinity River canyon and the main channel. Heading into the hills, I would stumble onto makeshift hootches in the remotest places. Many old hydraulic cuts were inhabited by diggers whose goal was survival, plain and simple. What little gold they scraped off the already-pummelled bedrock amounted to no more than a subsistence. Today, we might call that entrepreneurship. Thirty five years ago, I viewed it as ekeing out beer and tobacco money from worked-over ground. Here was a social dynamic not unlike that which existed a hundred years earlier. One might conclude this faction of the mining community was nothing but misfits, dropouts, guys on the lam. I found them, for the better part, to be honest, genial fellows; maybe guys down-on-their-luck preferring a quiet reclusive life in the woods to white-collar society's frenetic, fast-paced world. Thanks for checking out our digs. Gold of Eldorado 8-13-17

Price: 45 USD

Location: Banks, Oregon

End Time: 2024-11-23T21:41:46.000Z

Shipping Cost: 4 USD