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Normal Topic Gold in quartz? or....? (Read 268 times)
Rocky Raccoon
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Gold in quartz? or....?
Jan 16th, 2023 at 8:11pm
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Hello!

I found this rock while I was sitting on the bank, fishing at a lake in West Raleigh. The lake has a dam along one side that's edged with a long narrow strip of all sorts of rocks, boulders, rip-rap, which were probably brought in when the city built the dam (so, I guess there's really no telling where this particular rock originally came from).

There's quartz and (maybe) granite exposed on one side, and where the quartz butts up against the green-ish material (not sure what kind of rock that is), it looks like there's a seam of gold! Are my eyes deceiving me? Is there a quick way to test/find out?

Thanks in advance for your help (and I hope my photos are sharp enough)!

  

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Scott LaBorde
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Re: Gold in quartz? or....?
Reply #1 - Jan 17th, 2023 at 10:34am
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If you look closely you can see that it has some iridescents.  That would be the rainbow colors you can see on some of the mineral.  This would imply pyrite or chalcopyrite.  If you can manage to get a piece out big enough for a streak test you'll notice it will have a brownish black streak whereas gold would have a yellow streak.
  

Scott LaBorde
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