Metallic Rock/Mineral - need help identifying!!

Alexprice30

Newbie
Feb 5, 2020
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Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
I am in utility construction and I dig holes for a living. I find all kinds of things and have a general knowledge of gems, minerals, and rocks but i have never found anything like this before..
Info:
Found in Piedmont region of North Carolina
High specific gravity (very dense)
Was mostly black until cleaned, now appears to be gold/silver colored
Relatively soft, similar hardness to copper or silver
Not magnetic
 

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Alexprice30

Newbie
Feb 5, 2020
3
3
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
Still hoping someone will chime in with some knowledge on this.
Update: Soaked this overnight in some vinegar and scrubbed it down and you can clearly see a small bit of gold included streaking on one side. Next step is to drop by a pawn shop to have it tested I guess
 

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Red-Coat

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Dec 23, 2019
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The lack of answers may be because it's really tough to reliably identify many rocks and minerals from pictures and brief descriptions. It looks like it might be native silver. That would certainly be non-magnetic, dense, soft, tarnish to black but polish up bright, and often occurs in association with smaller amounts of gold, copper or pyrite that create a golden tinge or are present as veins/streaks.

Here's a chunk of native silver (with accessory skutterudite and erythrite) from my collection for comparison of typical appearance when silver is in massive form.

Silver (Native).JPG

It wouldn't be an unexpected find in certain areas of North Carolina since there are multiple reported localities and also some areas where silver was mined. These are the locations from the 'Mindat' database.

North Carolina.jpg

Getting it tested is the next logical step... and then going back to see if you can find any more if you get a favourable result. Good luck on both counts.
 

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