Other minerals and metals

[sidvail]

How often do you look for other minerals and metals while you're panning or sluicing?

Being new to this I still find ALL the stuff in my classifier fascinating. Is any of this treasure? I've read that garnets, diamonds, platinum, etc are also found while placer mining - depending on your location. Is this anything you all actively search for while prospecting?

What can I expect ( or what should I look for ) in the Sierra Nevada's? Anything good?

I understand garnets and emeralds glow brightly under a UV light.

I found some pretty interesting looking stuff on my trip to Auburn last weekend.

 

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[Hemisteve]

Along with gold, the hobby of studying rocks, minerals, and fossils can be quite addicting. It can really eat up your life in a good way. I haven't been to a
Movie theater in over 10 years, but i'll tell you with confidence that Plush, Ore. is THE prime location for sunstones. btw, who is Beyonce?

Yep,
Been there. You can get a bag of yellow in no time but the red takes some digging.

 

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[AlwaysBusyJ]

Out in Washington state I find tons of small garnet in my concentrates. I used to try picking them all out but there were so many and so small I got frustrated with them and eventually just started tossing them out along with everything else. I did a tiny bit of research on them and found that you can in fact sell them however for the small ones you'd normally find in your pan you would most likely get very little for them. Now if your seeing larger pieces or even chunks then you should definitely keep those! The color change garnets are worth a good bit more as well. here's a site with a decent chart of precious stone prices: Gemstone standard prices: Garnet malaia value charts To the right side it lists the price per carat of each variation of the gem. I would think very small rough stones probably are not worth the effort unless you're willing to collect a whole bunch of them and sell them together. Any bigger special looking rocks, well you might as well keep em and take a closer look later, you never know you might get lucky!

 

[sidvail]

AlwaysBusyJ

Awesome site. Just what I was looking for.

Thanks.

 

[AlwaysBusyJ]

Glad I could help!

 

[goldenIrishman]

So, it seems my problems have been solved. I no longer have to wonder over what rock is what. My 4 year old niece can tell me with certainty, "Uncle Sid, that's gold! We put that right here."

She then takes them rock by rock (out of my pan while I'm working) and separates them into piles. And of course, the ugly rocks are never gold

Gee... Sounds just like my Better Halfs' 6 year old grandaughter! I guess if it's pretty to them at that age it's worth keeping. At least she's not out chasing boys (yet!!!) If we have our way she'll grow up panning and will insist that her boyfriends at least know Gold from Pyrite!

 

[AlwaysBusyJ]

Kids are great, so enthusiastic . A family walked by this weekend while I was panning, and two young kids run down to the river after seeing my gold pan exclaiming "oh my goodness there's gold here, look everywhere" as they started picking up rocks as fast as they could. And another little kid came over, picked up a pan, and demanded to be taught how to find gold! I wish I still had their level of energy.

 

[DesertNuggets]

Kids are great, so enthusiastic . A family walked by this weekend while I was panning, and two young kids run down to the river after seeing my gold pan exclaiming "oh my goodness there's gold here, look everywhere" as they started picking up rocks as fast as they could. And another little kid came over, picked up a pan, and demanded to be taught how to find gold! I wish I still had their level of energy.

Hahaha!