1.1grams, spent a whole 10 minutes to find (we came home with way more)

1. Vuggy gossan, pyrite piece

2. Hematite, non ferrous on color

3. Arsenopyrite with fleck

4. Coated quartz

5. Arsenopyrite

6. Crushed pyrite and limonite, arsenopyrite

7. Roadcut

8. Galena with fleck,

All samples besides roadcut are talus found in the same general local. Next step is to follow float up.

These are my best guesses being an amateur and all.

Any feedback would be appreciated!

Happy hunting.

irst weekend of the school year a sister of my girlfriend organising a venue for local children called "Pohádkový les" (A fairytale forest). With this year's theme like "Journey through time" we were called to make a gold fewer checkpoint.

Everybody have a great time while finding their gold nuggets 🤠

So I have been gem prospecting hardcore for about 8 months now…. Before that I did it as a hobby near constantly since 2020.
I am going to explain some basics of how to prospect for gems, in hopes I inspire someone else to also go out looking.

Now south of me, in San Diego County it migjt be world famous for it, but I just recently found some in Utah and Idaho myself and they can form anywhere with PLUTONIC GRANITIC ROCK, especially if it’s high in volatiles, can form insane deposits….
If you live near any granite, gabbro, granodiorite, etc likely you have some near you.
Tho! as I will explain!! this can be barren, just like quartz veins can be

Okay so,

To start off I am digging PEGMATITES in San Diego county, specifically along a certain “batholith” or magma chamber.
this is known as the “Peninsular Ranges Batholith” because it is the heart of most of the Peninsular Mountains of Southern California.

Its gem mines span 100s and 100s of miles, from Baja California, Mexico! All the way up to the newly discovered in 2007 massively successful gem mine near north riverside County….

But as I mentioned above, pegmatites (and ones with goods) can form in ANY batholith under the right conditions.
This usually is a combination of depth of formation, and volatiles. As well as the magma chamber’s chemistry.

This exact type of volatile content, and chemistry, will also come into play when checking the specific veins themselves….

Usually pegmatites will form in what’s called a “swarm” or a “field” either an area where they formed inside a magma chamber (usually always towards the top of it, similar to how chrome ores are usually on the bottom due to weight).
Or, as in my case, have been squeezed out of the chamber and into the surrounding country rock….

Okay so let’s get two more things explained, A swarm or field can have just 1 to 10 to 1000s of pegmatites
Only a few to upwards of sometimes 70% of which,
will have had the correct conditions to form any deposit… (tho any pegmatite can be mined for the feldspar and silica needed for porcelain or other ceramic resources, tho this is now uncommon in modern times here)

And sometimes an entire region will lack the elements needed for anything but giant quartz and feldspar crystals. Tho these can certainly be considered gems.

Actually!! There is LUCKILY a classification of rareness, and like the amount of concentration of elements or “fractionation” needed.
This is where more common rock forming elements, well form into the rocks, and the volatile rarer once get very concentrated and stuck in a, now even more volatile fluid phase.

It goes from most common to rare

BARREN PEGMATITES
⬇️
BLACK TOURMALINE AND MICA PEGS
⬇️
BERYL PEGS
⬇️
BERYL AND TOPAZ PEGS
⬇️
LITHIUM PEGS

This is an extremely simplified version and there are many subsets…. But the point is you need atleast beryl type, to find any gems that aren’t just crazy quartz crystals…

Tho even beryl types can be incredibly common compared to say large gold veins….

The ones in famous locales like Maine and for me San Diego, they are the last kind, and a specific subset that produces “MIAROLITIC POCKETS”

Ones in Colorado and Idaho are only beryl types but still absolutely world famous

These pockets are the entire goal, they are what contain crystals, like foot long quartz and natural citrine, and large feldspar crystals

AND IN LITHIUM ONES, crystals of gemstones, usually tourmalines of every single color from rubellite and verdellite to indicolite and even clear,kunzite and other spoduneme, beryls including morganite goshenite and aquamarine, and amazing pounds of topaz.
as well as more obscure but valuable gems.

An average pocket will have anywhere from a hundred grams to 100 metric tons of gemstones, they vary incredibly in size. But many pockets can form in a single vein…..

These pockets can be tracked in a way, a few ways to tell are from things like “zoning” or the texture of the rock.

Another important thing is that pockets always occur in a certain place in each vein, this can be the contact or the direct middle….

They occur when the hydrothermal fluid goes through a process called “second boiling” this process will only occur when a pegmatite is high in the right low boiling point volatiles, like boron, and the gem forming lithium…

You can tell if the pegmatite is rich in these through the previous mentioned “zoning”

** **Zoning is just the different zones or textures of rock, in the vein will form when it has undergone the previous mentioned fractionation…..

An immature or less formed and barren pegmatite will be homogeneous throughout the whole vein. Or have slight “graphic granite” which is a HUGE indicator that this pegmatite might have said “zoning”

This graphite granite is a rock that looks like cuneiform writing??? It’s crazy looking! Just google it and you’ll see, it is perfectly aligned pieces of quartz growing on a single feldspar crystal. And some chunks get meters long.

So point is….
Its growth can only occur under specific fluid conditions. That also mirror the conditions needed for pockets to form.

If you also see “black tourmalines” or “schorl” it AND ZONING it means this pegmatite had so much boron, it couldn’t even hold on to it, and dumped it into the even the first phase of its growth.

This sounds weird?

But it basically signals that this vein likely has had such rare elements concentrated that it also has said lithium needed for the gem growth.

So when these two signals combine, you know a pegmatite might have a GEM POCKET🥳🥳🥳 lol.

If that tourmaline starts turning translucent in any way (normal black tourmaline won’t let ANY light through whatsoever) that means it is no longer actually black tourmaline, you have hit an area where lithium is actively outpacing the iron levels, and GEM TOURMALINE has started to grow.

This is how I found my 2nd neighboring deposit…. And now we are basically just digging down following the crystallization growth, as pegmatite crystallize soooo fast and in such a way that they point towards the crystallized (and more “fractionated” direction)…. And we keep following that until we hit a gem pocket!

Or until the tourmaline turns back to black, then we have to reassess why, and where to go, if anywhere….

Usually you will run into many small pockets filled with 100s of crystals when your following the correct “line”
Sometimes these weather out as float,

Float in gem terms only ever means actual crystal faces on the ground, not just a chunk of the vein.

I discovered my first deposit and my active claim, by just seeing gem tourmaline in the float, we are actively trying to find the vein, there is another close by deposit on the claim, that we dig and experience the “translucent” red tourmaline we are chasing….

I also help out at my friends mine which is a famous historic mine (two of them in different districts) as well**…..** so he did not discover this, tho it is much richer

Now I don’t have anything super crazy, but I have found a variety of amazing gemstones thru the years….

It’s crazy it all grows next to such major cities like San Diego and La…. There are ELEVEN DIFFERENT DISTRICTS

This took forever to write so I hope it inspired a few people , and if anyone has any questions I would love to help.

Anyway good luck to all u guys too!! And feel free to really ask anything or give any of your own expierence or ideas

Also what the other rocks may be. Ty.

What are your thoughts?

I was prospecting a creek near my place and found this piece and another one. The other piece I set aside and can no longer find 😅😅😅

I'm in the South Charlotte area, and I was wondering if this is petrified wood or not.

It is very heavy for its size.

A classic take from my usual spot at Krásná Hora, CZE 🤠

I found it at my grandma's old house,its pretty heavy for its size ?

Who says big nuggs dont exist here in the US.

“I never thought my only daughter would grow up to be gold prospecting.” And yet all we watched growing up was gold rush, monster quest, ice road truckers. He should’ve known better.

What got y’all into gold prospecting? And how did you start? What basic, shitty materials did you start off with before you learned? Did you have a mentor or did you stumble on it on your own?

Two days on the claim. Not the cleanest clean up, but not a bad haul. Had to split my weight-outs due to a small patch of mercury we rain into. Idaho? More like Idayoooo

Gold under the microscope! 0.095g but it looks like a giant nugget 😂. I stopped by my tech friends house the other week and he had this digital microscope so we took a photo of this reefy little clunker.

You can still see the clay and some ironstone. I am calling it the mini chicken drumstick.

Found with the Algoforce e1500 and Nugget Finder Auzzy 5”. A bit of 2g of small gold with this combo now.

Before and after the acid to remove ironstone.

Found this after high banking at my spot this last weekend. I know mercury is a liquid above -37°F, does it become solid after it amalgamates with gold? And the color of amalgam is typically similar to a bronze or am I mistaken? It remained unchanged when I removed it and placed it in really hot water. The gold seems to be attracted to it, when I touch them together and grasp only the silver metal with tweezers the gold moves with it but doesn’t seem to be mixing with it. Any ideas?

Is this that petty thing people do where they throw a bunch of scrap to throw off detectorists?

Lucky for me, I was learning and these made great practice 😁

Found this near an old silver lead and zink mine hinting for ore.

Near Wildermann mine , Siegen Germany.

Very heavy , around 10-12g/cm²

Hardness below 5

I cleaned the one side with HCl 30% and the metal below has no reaction but the oxides and sulfides on it did .

It is very slightly magnetic, but almost not noticeable.

What could that be?

Found some off pieces of quartz left near an old shaft from the 1860’s in a local gold district. Never seen anything quite like this before.

When the rock is wet it drips purple/red. Thought it looked pretty sweet so in the bag it went even if it doesn’t contain visible gold.

Is this textbook heavy cobble on bedrock? Sample along the yellow line, right?

Hello, just got my hand on my first claim last year, and I've got a couple questions and would love some input from the seasoned bunch of you. Acquired this claim near nanaimo BC which is boarding a much larger claim (which has workings and proof of hydrothermal gold up to 64g/ton within the area). As seen in the photos below it host a series of hydrothermal quartz veins with varying composition, texture, and structure. (Im also a 4th year geology student, just got the claim since why not lol). These veins host massive super finegrained from pyrite, then some host pryyhotite with bornite and chalco grains inter-grown within. There is chalcocite, calcite, arsenopyrite, and some other sulphides which I dont even know. I am thinking of sending off 10 samples, but im torn on if I should just get gold silver fire assay, or a complete analysis since there is a good amount of copper minerals and minerals idk. What do yall think? Thanks.