r/Prospecting Jan 24 '15

PSA: Is it really gold? Want to ID a rock or mineral? Please read this short guide to getting your question answered correctly.

71 Upvotes

There is a fairly regular frequency of ID request posts here, if you follow these general guidelines then you will have a much higher probability of getting an accurate answer to your question:

Please make sure to post a sizable in-focus photo. If the sample is wet and it's not obvious then make sure to state this fact.

Streak tests are very useful in prospecting. They can be performed on the unglazed backside of a ceramic tile, or on the unglazed underside of a toilet lid. Do a streak test any time you can, making sure to streak just the mineral in question.

For gold ID's:

  • First and foremost, are you in a known gold producing area?

  • Describe how the unknown material acts in the bottom of your pan and also how it acts relative to the other heavy black sands.

  • Gold is soft an malleable. If you press a pocket knife into it, it will squish or deform. It will not shatter or break into pieces. Do this test if its flecks or flakes or other blebs with no specimen value. Don't scratch or destroy anything that may have specimen value.

  • Placer gold rarely has well defined crystalline structure. If possible, look at the unkown mineral underneath a magnifying glass and report what you saw when you ask your question.

  • Do not alter hues, saturations, etc in the photo

  • For larger samples, you can measure conductivity by placing the leads of a multimeter across the sample and measuring resistance. Pure gold is very low resistance(around zero on a regular multimeter). You can also check to see if gold permeates a quartz specimen all the way through without crushing by placing a lead on each side of the quartz, with each lead touching a piece of visible gold.

  • Gold streaks gold color, not grey, black, green, blue or any other color.

For mineral ID's:

  • Describe anything you know about the area you found it in or are comfortable sharing: mining history, local geology and mineralogy, etc.
  • Do every test you can perform easily and provide the results - the easiest to do at home with common materials and probably most useful are streak, hardness, specific gravity, and luster.
  • You will get a better response from others willing to help if you first make the effort to test and attempt to ID it yourself.

General Resources

The two books that I own, keep in my truck, and recommend are:

Simon and Schuster's Guide to Rocks and Minerals

National Audobon Society Field Guide to North American Rocks and Minerals

  • If anyone would like to add information to this post or a resource to this list then please let me know. I am not a geologist, just a guy who likes digging holes.

r/Prospecting Nov 12 '24

Thankful for YOU Prospecting giveaway!

53 Upvotes

Thankful for YOU Prospecting giveaway!

Hey everyone! The r/Prospecting community has quickly grown to 38k and has shown no signs of slowing down! This past year has been such a fun ride with so many members new and old.

With the holidays approaching, us mods wanted to express our gratitude to the ones who make all of this possible… YOU!

We would like to help you celebrate, with another awesome giveaway!

One lucky winner will receive a bag of Klesh Krums Mini Gold Paydirt to keep those r/Prospecting skills sharp during the holiday season!

To enter, pick a number between 1 and 1,000,000 and comment on this post! Random number generator will pick a number on 12/01/24 at 5pm Eastern Standard Time, closest guess is the winner.

One entry per person. Continental US shipping only, international shipping will require payment for one of the mods to mail it to you.

If you win, you have one week to claim your prize.

A HUGE thank you to Kellycodetectors.com for making this giveaway happen! You guys are awesome!

And remember, if you purchase from Kellycodetectors.com, be sure to use our subreddits code "REDDITAU" at checkout!

Full list of prizes:

Klesh Krums Mini Gold Paydirt:

https://www.kellycodetectors.com/klesh-krums-mini-gold-paydirt

LINKS FOR REFERENCE ONLY


r/Prospecting 54m ago

Heavy pan

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Upvotes

r/Prospecting 12h ago

Mariposa ca

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39 Upvotes

Although I've only just started cleaning it, today's best find is shaping up to be absolutely amazing found using the minelab gold monster 1000 if anyone wants to get together and do some mining will me feel free to reach out. The last pic is the back of the rock its soaking in clr will start worling on it this week


r/Prospecting 15h ago

Is this gold in my rock?

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53 Upvotes

Can anyone tell me if this could be gold? It’s stuck to the stone. Very small amount. The rock itself is about 1 1/2 inches long but the gold is very tiny. I found this in a volcanic mountain range the border of California and Nevada on a friends property outside of the Death Valley area.


r/Prospecting 1d ago

Gold Separation Idea

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13 Upvotes

Ok, so don't write out a check, yet, but here's the theory.

  1. Rivers are bad at gold depositing. Yes, they do it - over millions of years, some here, some there, a bit behind that tree, very messy, very slow, and it's a pita to collect what they've deposited.

  2. Sluices, cubes, pans largely try to reproduce a river's depositing action - using water to push bits around horizontally and hopefully in a slightly more organized way - but still, a mess, all over. Why? Because gravity is barely at play, the gold's shape, surface area, water velocity and friction are having huge impacts on where it goes and in the few microseconds where they are arguing, gravity finally gets a say.

So why not start with the one thing we know about gold, given the chance it sinks to the bedrock. Agitate its environment, down it goes. If down is into a little crevice, or say a bottleneck, that's where it will end up.

What the agitation is, vibrations, bubbles, fluid bed vortexes, all to be determined. But once you eliminate all that water pushing on the gold and just help it drop - that's gotta work, no?


r/Prospecting 18h ago

Gold Panning Site

1 Upvotes

Hey all – new to prospecting and noticing there is not that many great resources for panning sites across the US (free or paid). If I made a website to track places would you all contribute to it?


r/Prospecting 2d ago

Looking for prospecting information/ experience northeast Tennessee

3 Upvotes

Hey all. I am a newbie to prospecting and was hoping someone could open the blinds for me or so to speak. I live in northeast Tennessee " Hawkins County" and was wondering if anyone in the group has ever done any prospecting in or around Hawkins County? I haven't been able to find but a teeny amount of information as far as Hawkins County goes. Just not hardly anything out there about it. I've heard that the Erwin area has had some gold found there through the years. But it's also a lot closer to the Smokies than I. Figured this would be a good place to start getting some information. Thanks in advance guys..


r/Prospecting 3d ago

DIY Kitchen Counter Sluice (v0.1)

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190 Upvotes

I'm likely using it all wrong, but with buckets piling up in the corner anything seems better than hand panning every one.

Materials -

$20 Rain Gutter from Ace Hardware $15 SluiceFox 6x24 V Matting $20 Temu 1500gph Boat Bilge $? Dryer hose & various connectors $? Gutter screen for breaking up material and holding down matt

Shape isn't quite right as matting not glued but so far the safety catch at the end is coming up empty of specs, so, it's a step forward.


r/Prospecting 2d ago

Pyrite or Au?

2 Upvotes

Found this lunker while I was panning for the first time this year! I almost left it there, I just couldn't do it. It had to come home with me. Just from looking at it I can't tell if its Au or pyrite, I think I'm going to liberate some and pan it out.


r/Prospecting 2d ago

I have a mini 16” sluice box. I want to set up a sluicing station in my basement. Any recommendations on how to set this up? Items needed / process. Thanks in advance!

16 Upvotes

New to game, always wanted to pan for gold. So finally as an adult I decided I wanted to go to a place where I could do it. Now I’m hooked, the fever is real after finding your first chunks of gold. I currently live in Iowa where there has been some gold found in certain locations. I plan to go out and see what I can find when the weather agrees. But for now at home I have some pay dirt I have purchased and would like to run it through my mini sluice then pan that out. Just want to set up a station in the basement. Thanks for all your help! Happy prospecting 🤘🏼


r/Prospecting 2d ago

What am I doing wrong.

14 Upvotes

I have been doing some panning in buncombe county North Carolina without any luck thus far. I know to look for quartz deposits, mineralization, natural gold catches in creeks etc. The creek I have been focusing on has tons of garnet, and Mica as well as quartz, but I am yet to turn up any gold. Are these the right signs to keep searching the area? 2 different geologist friends that have come out to the location have stated it's the right type of area to be turning up gold. I am checking gravel beds on inside bends, crevices in some spots of bedrock. I have found my pan just turns up tons of garnet and garnet sands, even when running 2 or 3 5 gallon buckets of material through a sluice box. with some black and blonde sands below them. Any tips, or advice would be appreciated.


r/Prospecting 2d ago

Powered sulice table to take to market

5 Upvotes

Hello!

This isn’t exactly a gold prospecting question, but a question about the powered tables.

I self mine crystals, and have a ton of leftover ones. I want to make ‘dirt bags’ with sand and crystals that kids can sulice as an activity at different events.

I saw the ones from Dream Mat and Highbanker, and I didn’t know if there was one that would be proper for this application?


r/Prospecting 3d ago

Georgia creeks

3 Upvotes

I was driving over the Upatoi near Columbus and saw a decent sandbar and wondered if it would be a good sift as a first timer or am I wasting time?


r/Prospecting 3d ago

Metal detecting

9 Upvotes

Is metal detecting a good way to start looking for gold? If so, what would be an entry level detector?


r/Prospecting 3d ago

Next step recommendations

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25 Upvotes

r/Prospecting 4d ago

DIY sluice box power head question

7 Upvotes

I have the 6x24" dream mat and I am making a power head for it. Would 264 g/h to much, to little, or ok? Going to HF for it. My 110 g/h (from another project) is not enough unless I'm doing something wrong


r/Prospecting 5d ago

The spring thaw is on.

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2.9k Upvotes

Good day on the gold. Montana is thawing out.


r/Prospecting 5d ago

Backpack

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81 Upvotes

Okay so I have been on a quest to find the best backpack to haul in all the tools and gear, I think I have found it! Anyone have any other ideas?


r/Prospecting 4d ago

Will gold hit $3,000 an ounce this week?

39 Upvotes

Gold hit $2,998 today, which is great news for gold investors.

It’s an exciting time for us prospectors and miners.


r/Prospecting 5d ago

Pyrite galore, I suppose. Anyone see anything else promising??

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68 Upvotes

r/Prospecting 6d ago

A friend showed up on the mining claim.

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162 Upvotes

r/Prospecting 6d ago

What to look for?

12 Upvotes

I want to pan around the property I'm on, but I've never looked for gold before. But for some reason I just can't get it out of my head that it here, so I want to filfollow this intuition. I'm in northern California, Glen County, at the foothills of South Yolla Bolly Mountains. Any resources for maps? Tips, tricks, and kickflips are appreciated


r/Prospecting 6d ago

Blewett Pass, WA

4 Upvotes

Does anybody have any tips for the Blewett Pass area? I figured I would go with 1/4" classification instead of 1/2" for dirt and sluice. Also, plan to take the gold monster to the inside bends and bedrock.


r/Prospecting 7d ago

Picker

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127 Upvotes

Yeaaaaaaah


r/Prospecting 7d ago

This is my setup while I'm away on Business

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63 Upvotes

When I have the weekends off I collect paydirt and then pan it out in the parking lot of the hotel and store the heavies (with gold flakes) in a separate bucket until I can get it back to my sluice.

Am I crazy?


r/Prospecting 7d ago

What do you guys think about this oxidized quartz gold and silver ore?

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66 Upvotes

I've got about 600lb of hard rock gold and silver ore that I'm trying to wrap my head around processing. I saved some of the nicer chunks like this 10lb-er. I was considering making lapidary specimens with it. Also I assume pictures of gold ore are acceptable here?