Platnum found washing up on beach

[imafishingnutt]

A reliable friend told me today that detectorists have been finding hunks of platnum washing up on the beach in tillimook by Garibaldi anyone heard of this.
apperently its in the raw form and they think it was broke loose by a fault shift.
Hmmmm

 

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[pcolaboy]

How can something as heavy as platinum simply wash up onto shore like that? Not doubting the story...just curious.

Pcola

 

[Real de Tayopa Tropical Tramp]

HI" Erosion of the bottom materiel on the shore side will gradually move it in the dirrection of the prevaiing wave action

Don Jose de La Mancha.

 

[matador]

This reply may be flamed as ignorant but I'm moved to reply as to how anything so heavy could wash up. As an Oregonian and a visitor to that beach frequently and having seen it in winter, well, I think that just about anything can be thrown on shore by those waves and the wave action. It can be very very heavy, and just a few weeks ago were some severe storms that could have moved all kinds of things from who knows where. There are numerous wrecks all along the coast as well that may have broken up. A winter storm in the pacific northwest can be a very impressive thing.
And thats all just my 2 cents worth!
Cheers!

 

[Highwater]

I used to live on the Oregon coast. There IS platinum on the beach in small amounts, along with very fine gold. Southern Oregon beaches have fine gold mixed in the black sand just the same as Nome Alaska does, only about half the amount. They say if you can make an ounce a day at nome then you can make 1/2 ounce on the southern Oregon beaches. It is just like any beach where you would hunt for coins or jewelry, you have to wait for a storm to cut the beach. The prize is always there, you just can't get to it until the a storm removes the lighter stuff. When you find heavy concentrations of black sand you will also find very fine gold and some platinum. I have taken a lot of black sand off the beach just south of Garibaldi a few miles and took it home to a small concentrating table in my garage where I would concentrate it down as far as I could and look at it through a stereo microscope. The gold is very beautiful, but very fine. It is really hard to remove from the black sand unless you prep it and use mercury and it takes a lot of this fine gold to work up an ounce. during the depression a few hardy souls would work the beach during and after the storms. It often blows 80 - 100 mph during the storms around the headlands. It is a tough working environment, but you have to work fast because before long the light sand will come in and cover the beach and it gets harder to find the black sand with each incoming tide. My brother and I would fly the coast and look for the heavy concentrates of black sand, then take our "beach box" to the best spot we could get to on our Honda carrier and work an area for as long as we could. We would find a spring coming out ot the side of a hill and flume the water to the beach box. It was a great adventure and we always got some gold, but the the good profit days were scattered over the winter. All the elements had to be in place and you had to be at the right place at the right time to get the big prize. The rest of the time was mostly gas money. Of course with the price of gold the way it is I can guess that there are many people getting geared up to hit the beach this winter. It is legal to do, as long as you don't use any motorized equipment. If you can get enough good high grade concentrates to make it worth while you can send it into a refinery and have them seperate the gold and platinum, but you have to have a lot of it to come out good as they charge more for seperating than they do for just knocking out the gold and you get paid much sooner if you don't wait for seperation. I kind of doubt that they are taking detectors down to the beach and finding platium nuggets, but anything is possible. I would sure like to know where this information came from.

 

[wwwtimmcp]

mel fisher found out that some of his silver bars had platinum in them. the spaniards had originally thought platinum was a junk metal and more than a few new world smelters were ripping off the king by adding platinum to the silver bars.

the king eventually found out about it and threatened death to anyone doing so. years later the king told the smelters to ship the raw material home to see if anything good could be done with it. there very well could be a lost galleon with raw platinum aboard her.