Please help me ID this Rock/Metal nugget

[Carson Coin Master]

OK so found this metal detecting in central California this summer. from first look I thought it was iron pyrite but it is a silver almost platinum color i have never seen iron pyrite this color before. It also has a mix of gold coloring in the rock. it's dimensions are 5 inches long and about 3 1/2 inches around and weighs a whopping 2.88 pounds. is there anyone on here that is a gemologist or geologist of some sort that can help identify this rock and if so what are we looking at in terms of what it is worth? thanks for looking

 

[ArJuna]

I immediate recognized it as iron pyrite (aka. Fools gold). I have found many specimens just like that in Nevada.

 

[traderoftreasures]

galena almost looks like a big ol' chunk of silica that is man made that i have.

 

[Carson Coin Master]

I immediate recognized it as iron pyrite (aka. Fools gold). I have found many specimens just like that in Nevada.

well update on the rock I took it to the geology dept at the university and had the professor look at it for a few days. it is NOT! iron pyrite. It is for sure what some have thought it is Galena.

 

[adam h]

well update on the rock I took it to the geology dept at the university and had the professor look at it for a few days. it is NOT! iron pyrite. It is for sure what some have thought it is Galena.

It looks like sperrylite to me. Valuable. Nice find

 

[adam h]

It looks like sperrylite to me. Valuable. Nice find

Be aware that sperrylite is about half arsenic and half platinum.. But the aresenic is quite poisonous. Not to be messed with too much

 

[zak_0]

Oh wow I've got a rock just like that and I've been really trying to figure out what it is!!

 

[zak_0]

I've actually been doing some research on a rock that is exactly a like this that my great grandmother found in California as well! Turns out that it's a meteorite because it has no specific crystal structure. If you look closely to your specimen you can probably see some of "cubic crystals" aren't cubic at all and are rounded. This means that it was incased in other rock and it as a core. The shiny metallic look is the metal core cooked from outer space and the metal could be anything. So far the chance of it being platinum is 50-50. .

 

[tamrock]

Arsenopyrite....

Bingo!

 

[zak_0]

Here's a picture of mine. It's about the width of a soda can and has a heavy weight to it like yours. My other guess on what it might be is cobalt metal. Cobalt tarnishes very slowly into a golden hew and eventually becomes blue-green.

 

[TRILLIONAIRELMER]

IS THERE ANYONE WHO CAN HELP ME IDENTIFY THIS ROCK?

 

[TRILLIONAIRELMER]

I HAVE THIS IN MY POSITION AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT IS THIS

 

[TRILLIONAIRELMER]

MY EMAIL: trillionairelmer@gmail.com

 

[tamrock]

Galena such as this could hold value in lead, zinc, silver and iron pyrite and will even harbor traces of gold in some cases. Did you find a source of this or maybe your digging around an old mine tailings pile?. I use to go a search specimens in the old tailings in Leadville, Colorado and for 12 bucks a pound the assayer who was then in Fairplay, Colorado would tell me what all it was worth. Best I found was 8 oz. silver, point very little gold and a whole lot of lead per ton value. Thing was it didn't take a whole lot of cube's of this type of heavy rock to reach a ton of ore.