Pocket Gold

[nickinCA]

I have heard that recovering pocket gold is now one of the top ways to find gold these days. Pocket gold is gold that has eroded from its vein but has not reached the river or stream yet. Has anyone tried prospecting for pocket gold? What if you go to an old mine and search downhill from it? Thanks.

 

[patches63]

read jack londons all gold canyon.he did good research on this one.

 

[Astrobouncer]

Thanks for the heads up I wasn't really aware of this. However, that sounds like how I work anyway, so its not like I passed anything up. Heck I go crazy every time I find any vein, quartz especially.

 

[Goldwasher]

if you find quarts its a lode,if you find gold in it its a vein, if its eroded its eluvial no watercourse yet, when it hits the creek its aluvial placer, aluvium.thats your mini geology lesson for the day..

 

[nickinCA]

Thanks yep the eluvial is what Im talking about.

 

[Goodyguy]

if you find quarts its a lode,if you find gold in it its a vein, if its eroded its eluvial no watercourse yet, when it hits the creek its aluvial placer, aluvium.thats your mini geology lesson for the day..

Lesson 2

Here are some of the different forms Gold takes.

Nuggets - a lump of gold in nugget form
Pickers - a small piece of gold just large enough to pick up
Fines - very small pieces of gold too small to pick up
Dust - very very fine pieces of gold
Flour - the finest of all that can still be seen naked eye
Crystalline - one of nature's rarest forms of gold
Wire - a crystalline form of gold shaped like wire
Ribbon - another crystalline form in a ribbon shape
Scales - another crystalline form
Mustard - A spongy type of free gold found in the gossan above gold-silver-telluridedeposits

I am sure I missed some, so feel free to add to the list, add a description if you do, please.

GG~

 

[kuger]

There is "Pocket",hardrocking too.Following a lead to where it it "pockets",and pays ya!!!

 

[nickinCA]

Thanks for the replies. Does pocket gold usually have quartz attached to it? Ive heard that it can have unusual shapes which make it worth more than spot.

 

[Tank69]

lesson #3 the uneducated version .....gold is purdy

 

[Hoser John]

REAL pocket gold is usually absolutelt black, rusty absolutely nasty lookn' stuff UNTIL it's put into sodium hypochlorite(bleach)--THEN it yellows up with agitation. Robert Ballytyne(sp) wrote a great manual I used to sell titles-How to find Pocket gold. In exacting detail he explains how to follow nasty ugly grossin(gossin sp) down to great casches of pocket gold. To make a extremely long story short-I found a great pocket in mariposa and blew it up over 100's a acres in a rainstorm as I didn't know what it was. A ol'miner in the pizza joint took a cig pack I scraped some into as a memorial to my stupidity ,put bleach in a pan and instant beautiful gold. Dumb mistake #20087654 in 50+ years a minin'-John

 

[strickman]

hey john bet you never got over that one. i never knew pocket gold would be like that.i've always heard about pockets but never acually seen one.but have found occassional black gold.please tell more

 

[Hoser John]

As soon as dredgn' season is done/get caught I'll have time to go through boxes/find and email info ifn' I ain't in the pokey -John

 

[kuger]

REAL pocket gold is usually absolutelt black, rusty absolutely nasty lookn' stuff UNTIL it's put into sodium hypochlorite(bleach)--THEN it yellows up with agitation. Robert Ballytyne(sp) wrote a great manual I used to sell titles-How to find Pocket gold. In exacting detail he explains how to follow nasty ugly grossin(gossin sp) down to great casches of pocket gold. To make a extremely long story short-I found a great pocket in mariposa and blew it up over 100's a acres in a rainstorm as I didn't know what it was. A ol'miner in the pizza joint took a cig pack I scraped some into as a memorial to my stupidity ,put bleach in a pan and instant beautiful gold. Dumb mistake #20087654 in 50+ years a minin'-John

So John,are you saying the stuff I have been digging out of quartz and isnt black isnt REAL gold

 

[Astrobouncer]

Speaking of gossan stains, I do have a question about those. Do they stain the ground brown too or just the rock?

 

[TAKODA]

There is "Pocket",hardrocking too.Following a lead to where it it "pockets",and pays ya!!!

Roger that .

 

[kuger]

There is "Pocket",hardrocking too.Following a lead to where it it "pockets",and pays ya!!!

Roger that .

 

[kuger]

I agree,there are Placer Pockets,Hardrock pockets,etc. etc.,Some hard rock mines were in areas that the gold had a tendency to pocket,in other areas it didnt.Also some areas the gold is in gossan,it can be black,orange,heck in our SPOT it is encased in red clay........its still REAL POCKET GOLD!

 

[nickinCA]

And theres also "gold pockets" which i think are similar to "pocket gold"

 

[Hoser John]

Gold pockets=pretty gold----------pocket gold USUALLY(for every rule mother nature made a million exceptions) is ugly red,nasty,black crumbly weird lookn' and without a oxidizer is hard to tell. In Deadwood Janes claims in deadwood the placer nuggets(up to pounders)were also covered in a pitch black coating too. Senior moment can't remember the exact composition as she had some analyized by AA John

 

[Goldwasher]

the old timers believed that pockets came in threes for each pocket, meaning if you find a fissure and locate a pocket within desimated bedrock or in say in decomposing hemetite pockets like found in the inyo mtns of eastern california that the top pocket was just the beginning and you must make sure to keep going cause if you find the third pocket thats the rich one. so the question, if you find a lot of placer gold in a catch is it a pocket, or a concentracion?What ive read about "pocket" gold from the early use of the term is free milling eluvial gold in concentrations found within fissures and decomposing "country" or bedrock.