Does this rock contain gold? A friend of a friend of my car mechanic owns an old gold mine. Apparently, he is interested in having someone come and look at his property to find some likely spots for excavation. In exchange, we will get to keep any gold that we find! This location was supposedly once a very good gold producing location long ago. I was given this sample rock from the area, which I showed to Dave for analysis.
In this rock, Dave sees lots of white quartz with iron staining, and also some darker banding of heavier metals. The white quartz also has little holes and vesicles in it where Dave says the gold often grows. However, you can't see it well from the photo, but the darker banding on this rock is very thin and mostly on the surface. Dave says we need to look for rocks with thicker dark bands and layers of schist (schist once was old river bottom). These are all technical details which I only half understand!
So does this rock have gold in it? According to Dave, this rock is NOT an excellent candidate for gold in itself, and is probably not worth bothering with. But wait!?! Didn't he see all that shiny gold colored sparkle in the cracks and fissures of this rock? Sure he did, but unfortunately, that's just gold colored mica flakes, a common gold lookalike. They peel off in large flakes when gently probed. Darn! However, Dave does feel this rock is indicative of a potentially interesting general location for gold hunting that would be worth further exploration. Hopefully, my mechanic will get back to me eventually with more information on this site!
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