So i bought 3 and a half, 50 gallon barrels, of 2 life collections..need help on id?

[Margaretnoel]

So i bought three and a half fifty gallon barrels from this older fellow who said "back 25 years ago i bought these off of a few fellows who had been collecting them all their lives from many different places" I am still sorting through. But, i am kinda lost at what a lot of them are? i have guesses but mostly no idea. ive came to the obvious conclusions that there is fortification, dendritic type agates petrified wood, mahogany obsidian, moss agate , some thundereggs, and a bunch of who knows what..so here is a random few just to see if there is any ideas. how can you tell types of plume? without knowing location of where it was found? how can you figure out quality? or what makes one "worth" more than another? how do you sort a collection of hundreds of rocks....? oofda. i think in some of the pictures you can see a taste of what im working with in the background...btw i have cut some of them so you can see them better? others were already cut, or not cut at all ect..but none of them are slabs..only just cut in half or just cut off enough to see what was inside..

 

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[BIGSCOTT]

really cool

 

[ToddsPoint]

Looks like you have a treasure trove of rocks. 3 barrels? You could spend the rest of your days selling them on ebay. I'd bet you'd do good too. Gary

 

[Kray Gelder]

A lot of nice cutting material, stuff you could find 50 years ago, but it's mostly been found by now.

 

[BIGSCOTT]

You sayin somebody found all the rock's?

 

[stdenis_jd]

aw man as a lapidary I wish I lived near you. I'd take a bunch of that off your hands lol

 

[Kray Gelder]

You sayin somebody found all the rock's?

Yeah right. LOL. No, but it used to be popular to search the arid country in Wash. and Oregon, and just pick this stuff up off of the surface.

 

[Margaretnoel]

Yeah I thought so too, to bad I have no idea what names to list them as..or what price to ask..?

 

[Margaretnoel]

Yeah now I just need a grinder..or polisher.. All I have is an auto feed slab saw and a diamond belt sander with no belt. :-/

 

[Margaretnoel]

Dang I am not good at this forum thing .I think I'm deleting peoples posts when I try to reply. Ugh.

 

[Margaretnoel]

aw man as a lapidary I wish I lived near you. I'd take a bunch of that off your hands lol

I'd share! if someone came and taught me some lapidary skills. Or trade me for a grinder... Haha. I mean what else am I gonna do with all these..other than lately making everyone around my house mad at me when they attempt to try to navigate across the deck or yard..and parts of the house..

 

[hvacker]

Great excuse to join a rock club before you grind up a museum specimen.
Rough rocks are also sold.

 

[stdenis_jd]

yeah if you can figure out shipping, and figure out what these are worth you could make some $$

Everything I've learned about lapidary came from years of research and studying online. A few internet friends here and there...took me a few months of research to get started and kept at it.

5th pic looks like labradorite - does it shimmer and show awesome colors at different angles?
The green one is probably chrysocolla in matrix. Streak test on the green parts should be light green.
The one right after it is an awesome kind of plume agate, maybe flame agate?
The one after that is blue lace agate
2nd to last pic - some kind of moss agate, likely from Oregon

Pretty much everything you have there are various types of agates. Agates aren't my specialty but there's people out there who can identify just about every type and likely locale.

hvacker's advice on joining a rock club is 100% the best idea for you though. DO IT

 

[stdenis_jd]

This one you posted is interesting though, looks like a calcite nodule but it could be several other things.

Can you do a hardness and acid test on it?

 

[Margaretnoel]

yeah if you can figure out shipping, and figure out what these are worth you could make some $$

Everything I've learned about lapidary came from years of research and studying online. A few internet friends here and there...took me a few months of research to get started and kept at it.

5th pic looks like labradorite - does it shimmer and show awesome colors at different angles?
The green one is probably chrysocolla in matrix. Streak test on the green parts should be light green.
The one right after it is an awesome kind of plume agate, maybe flame agate?
The one after that is blue lace agate
2nd to last pic - some kind of moss agate, likely from Oregon

Pretty much everything you have there are various types of agates. Agates aren't my specialty but there's people out there who can identify just about every type and likely locale.

hvacker's advice on joining a rock club is 100% the best idea for you though. DO IT

Thank you! Yes about 5th labradorite..I have a huge slab I can badly lift along with a bunch of other sizes. It does shine some very pretty silvers and sapphire colored blue flakes and chunks of color.
Would you happen to recognize any of these?? There's so many its hard to just pick a few to ask about. There's even quite a lot of fossil/bone lookin things.. There is one picture here i think its the last one,I'm curious if its copper or gold ore? It looked like some sort of copper or something to me..but some have more gold coloring, some have more deep red coppery color. ..I have large chunks and small chunks of it, along with some similar ones with green color and quarts..

 

[stdenis_jd]

1) quartz, but I would cut it and see what's inside. The "rind" indicates agate.
2) bauxite?
3) another moss agate
4) see #3
5) chert/jasper
6) quartz
7) not sure. Looks like asphalt/concrete but don't hold me to that
8) looks like a nice botryoidal blue chalcedony. Pretty nice specimen
9) gonna venture a guess at a partially eroded rhyolite
10) another guess of rhyolite
11) would like a better pic, closer and more focused. Those red crystals are interesting but when I zoom in they blur out. Very unlikely that it's copper or gold, I'm thinking possibly garnets

 

[Jyorsky]

Sent you a private message...John

 

[Margaretnoel]

AMstdenis_jd
1) quartz, but I would cut it and see what's inside. The "rind" indicates agate.
2) bauxite?
3) another moss agate
4) see #3
5) chert/jasper
6) quartz
7) not sure. Looks like asphalt/concrete but don't hold me to that
8) looks like a nice botryoidal blue chalcedony. Pretty nice specimen
9) gonna venture a guess at a partially eroded rhyolite
10) another guess of rhyolite
11) would like a better pic, closer and more focused. Those red crystals are interesting but when I zoom in they blur out. Very unlikely that it's copper or gold, I'm thinking possibly garnets


[/B]OK so here are some more of the last one..the crystals are very opaque. No light going through at all. The yellowy gold looking stuff and the red crystals mix throughout the different rocks..some seem like veins of it and some are just completely covered.. The host rock seems very quartz filled on some and others it seems to show a very dark almost greenish/iron/heavy solid material that is compacted together..and when I scrape it with anything harder, like a knife or end of a screwdriver, what comes off it is like a sandy gravely texture that is chunks and flakes of a metallic yellowy/and or a metallic burnt redish color..its weird. Ive never seen anything like it.

 

[stdenis_jd]

Not too sure about the green on the 2nd to last picture - chromium mica? Chloritized quartz? ...the green is the most interesting to me mainly because I can't put a finger on it

The reddish material looks like iron stained quartz, the gold is fools gold aka pyrite - if it's just flaking off, take a flake of it and rub it on unglazed porcelain and it should leave a grayish streak. If it leaves a gold streak....it's gold 8) but I doubt it. Look up chalcopyrite, looks like there's some of that too