# 2 lbs 13 oz Electrum Nugget.



## MorrisTheProspecter (Aug 6, 2022)

Worth keeping as a piece or should it be refined?


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## MorrisTheProspecter (Aug 6, 2022)

I’


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## Yggdrasil (Aug 6, 2022)

I’m a little confused.
How do you know this is Electrum?


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## 4metals (Aug 6, 2022)

He may be suffering from Snowdog syndrome!


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## kurtak (Aug 6, 2022)

4metals said:


> He may be suffering from Snowdog syndrome!


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## PeterM (Aug 7, 2022)

Geez... I have never seen electrum in the first place, so I say what the hell, let's retort it, then dissolve it in Aqua Regia, why not? By the way, when do we start doing Psychic Assays? Or Dowsing a sample for gold? By the way I got 24 lbs of Alaskan Leveright from Snowdog that is sitting in my rock garden outside.


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## Yggdrasil (Aug 7, 2022)

All the pictures I have seen is yellow to yellowish white with a crystalline surface.
These are probably specimens worth collecting, so they might not be representative for what you usually find.
If one can use such a word as usual for something as rare as Electrum.

This rock are obviously in a more common class and should be ok to subject to assays.

So I repeat my question, why do you think it is Electrum?

Edit for spelling.


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## orvi (Aug 7, 2022)

Could contain some gold, but from pictures... I do not know. If it is electrum specimen, I would keep it as is, it can be highly valuable for collectors. But You need some proof how much and in how form gold is inside.


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## manorman (Aug 7, 2022)

It's a very interesting specimen looks like it would be mostly silver ? Since to my eye I see little or no visible gold color. If you have other material from the same source you may want to have an assay done. I think you should shop it around and see if you can find a buyer.


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## kurtak (Aug 7, 2022)

PeterM said:


> By the way I got 24 lbs of Alaskan *Leveright *from Snowdog that is sitting in my rock garden outside.




Per the bold print - Leveright - pronounced Lev - er - right

For those that don't know what Leveright is - in the world of mining it is a reference to a rock *that has no value* so you can *Lev - er - right there *- as it is a rock with no value & not worth picking up 

Kurt


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## kurtak (Aug 7, 2022)

Electrum is not a rock - electrum is an alloy of gold & silver - or - silver & gold (depending whether it is dominant in gold or dominant in silver

Generally speaking electrum alloy is in reference to an alloy of (about) 80% gold & 20% silver - or - 80% silver & 20% gold

Both of which are common occurring alloys found in natural gold/silver deposits

So - though a rock may contain electrum - the rock it's self is not electrum

How much electrum is (or not) in a rock is determined by processing to separate the electrum from the rock

From Wiki ---------









Electrum - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org





Kurt


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## Yggdrasil (Aug 7, 2022)

kurtak said:


> Electrum is not a rock - electrum is an alloy of gold & silver - or - silver & gold (depending whether it is dominant in gold or dominant in silver
> 
> Generally speaking electrum alloy is in reference to an alloy of (about) 80% gold & 20% silver - or - 80% silver & 20% gold
> 
> ...


I know Kurt, but what I see on the picture is in my eyes a rock. 
But maybe he can see some alloy in there.


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## CosmoIridium (Aug 7, 2022)

Snowdog Syndrome...


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## MorrisTheProspecter (Aug 7, 2022)

Slowly but surely starting to shine


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## galenrog (Aug 7, 2022)

As stated by others, electrum is not a rock. Neither is it an ore. Electrum is a native metal alloy of silver and gold. Copper can also be found in the alloy, but in low amounts.

Color is silvery white with yellow undertones to a pale golden hue with a silvery sheen. If significant amounts of copper are present, undertones of blues or greens could be present.

Your rock has the appearance of silver ore, but so do hundreds of other rock types. If your rock has silver, it likely has 10-20 times as much zinc or lead, most in the form of sulfides with a minor amount of oxides.

What field tests have you performed to determine presence of silver or gold? Be specific. If not standard qualitative tests, you will be told to go back and try again. A sticky at the top of the prospecting section has a good tutorial on qualitative field tests. When I prospected areas of Nevada and California’s Mojave Desert, I used a similar tutorial, but that was decades and one stroke ago.

Good prospectors learn how to test various ores in the field. Results of field tests tell the prospector if anything requires further investigation or tests, such as assays of different types.

Time for more coffee.


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## cejohnsonsr1 (Aug 7, 2022)

Electrum is a naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver. I’ve seen it once. Sorry. This ain’t it.


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## Yggdrasil (Aug 7, 2022)

Hmm I did not realise that there was a need to explain what Electrum was

As Wikipedia say, the manufactured version is called green Gold.


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## orvi (Aug 8, 2022)

If you are persuaded you have electrum, it is very easy to prove it to yourself. Just beat off a small sample, and try to smack it with hammer. Electrum will bend and could be forged easily, since it is AuAg alloy. Rock or whatever other stuff will break or crush. And as you will be beating it with hammer, shiny metallic surface will appear. To prove it even further, take it somwhere, where guys have XRF spectrometer. Adjust it on Geochem mode and measure the parts, which you think are gold. Or scrape small sample, smelt it and then measure metallic button (if you obtain any). 

This is no rocket science. People in medieval ages were also able to differentiate between gold/electrum and worthless rocks. Just stick to the proven methods of testing and trust them. Not your gold-fever based feelings. It could be very dangerous


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## Martijn (Aug 8, 2022)

Another thread filled with best guesses and not very much info by the OP. Rock on! 


MorrisTheProspecter said:


> Slowly but surely starting to shine


What is starting to shine? The leverite? all by itself? WOW!!


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## Shark (Aug 8, 2022)

It will start glowing next, just before it flies home.


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## 4metals (Aug 8, 2022)

Shark said:


> It will start glowing next, just before it flies home.



Which will be soon if it has to catch up with Oumuamua, the mothership.


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## MorrisTheProspecter (Aug 11, 2022)

It already flew home.


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## goldshark (Aug 12, 2022)

The nuggets I posted in " metal detector screaming at pyritic ore" thread, under metal detecting, is considered Electrum. It assays .761 Au, rest Ag. with less than 1/2% Cu. Quite a bit of difference from what you have, but then again, you have more Ag, if there is anything in it at all. Just curious how you find the compositions of your rocks. Are you psychic?


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## JMC2 (Aug 20, 2022)

manorman said:


> It's a very interesting specimen looks like it would be mostly silver ? Since to my eye I see little or no visible gold color. If you have other material from the same source you may want to have an assay done. I think you should shop it around and see if you can find a buyer.


For electrum (Au-Ag) alloy , you likely wouldn't see gold color from 20 percent silver or more, which is why the trade tends to define electrum that way. It would be a green gold from there to about 45% silver or so. At that point it would become silvery white---look similar to silver. And, the green color of electrum is very subtle compared to green gold alloys typical of today's jewelry trade. They add other things, Cu, Zn, and maybe 2-4% Cd (Cadmium) for deeper greens and other properties, although 75% Au-25%Ag is an alloy sometimes listed as "soft green gold." Soft because the silver doesn't harden the alloy like Cu would. Greenish electrum ranges from pale yellow-green to silverish with a green tint. The ancient Greeks called electrum white gold. Likely because the ancient Lydian Greeks made the first coins with around 50/50 electrum that would have looked silvery white.

Now this 20% Ag electrum thing is not a technical definition, it's just like an internet-spawned custom. Lots of written sources define 15% Ag or more (with little Cu) is Electrum. Some say "Electrum is an alloy of gold and silver that varies in its natural state between 65% and 85% gold." This makes sense because these points can be approximately seen by color as above.

My understanding is native yellow gold can average 12-15% Ag. Placer and plenty of rich deposits maybe less Ag but much more than 15% Ag becomes rare natively due to the workings of the Au-Ag system in deposition. This would explain why people think electrum is rare. The ancient Lydians were said to pan electrum from the river that ran through town. Ancient sources often claimed it was 50/50 (and so some people consider electrum 50/50 thereabouts the definition of electrum.) Archaeologists have had no success finding any such native alloy there (Turkey) and some books say this alloy is impossible but 55-60% Au Electrum is known from Comstock. My understanding is that prospectors still sometimes find silver-colored gold nuggets in that region. The verbose point is that electrum can be found that looks like silver instead of gold.

The more we have studied electrum, the more it seems electrum is very confusing because most think it's more than a name for an alloy and that the distinction between native gold and electrum seems arbitrary anyway.

We agree with Eion MacDonald (Nature and History of Gold, 2007) that any Au-Ag alloy (trace copper--Eion says less Cu than Ag) can be considered electrum. He also allows for native gold. But then, most think electrum can only be native gold. They say anything made is green gold--usually we would agree since they most often are at least going to add some copper to harden the alloy.

Prospectors refine the silver (and OS) out of the gold. Jewelry suppliers add back mainly copper and a little silver and other stuff (OS) to the refined gold plus deoxidizers because copper likes to oxidize causing jewelers problems. Then, for our research purposes on ancient gold and technology, scrap gold has to be refined again so that we can add mostly silver back to it to reproduce the native golds used by the old timers (say 4,000 years ago). Since these are all Au-Ag with traces of Cu and other stuff, it makes sense to think of them as electrum alloys as opposed to modern gold alloys of the Au-As-Cu system, where Cu>Ag with rare exceptions, maybe.

That's a lot more than you probably care to hear about electrum but it made sense to put it all in one placer. It is important and this is why I came here. That native gold is Au-Ag rather than Au-Cu is what allowed the ancients to work gold. No borax, no UPS bearing crucibles, no gas or electric furnaces. The old timers we studied found or dug a hole in the ground for an impromptu charcoal furnace. Charcoal had its advantages and allowed some refinement. Native/electrum was more workable, allowing the goldwork of the primitive tech Copper-Bronze Age possible.

We've made a shed full of hard-wood charcoal over the past year. We're old and slow about it all. But, we are pretty keen on electrum. Now, I gotta go dig a hole and call it a furnace.


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## Yggdrasil (Aug 20, 2022)

JMC2 said:


> For electrum (Au-As) alloy , you likely wouldn't see gold color from 20 percent silver or more, which is why the trade tends to define electrum that way. It would be a green gold from there to about 45% silver or so. At that point it would become silvery white---look similar to silver. And, the green color of electrum is very subtle compared to green gold alloys typical of today's jewelry trade. They add other things, Cu, Zn, and maybe 2-4% Cd (Cadmium) for deeper greens and other properties, although 75% Au-25%Ag is an alloy sometimes listed as "soft green gold." Soft because the silver doesn't harden the alloy like Cu would. Greenish electrum ranges from pale yellow-green to silverish with a green tint. The ancient Greeks called electrum white gold. Likely because the ancient Lydian Greeks made the first coins with around 50/50 electrum that would have looked silvery white.
> 
> Now this 20% Ag electrum thing is not a technical definition, it's just like an internet-spawned custom. Lots of written sources define 15% Ag or more (with little Cu) is Electrum. Some say "Electrum is an alloy of gold and silver that varies in its natural state between 65% and 85% gold." This makes sense because these points can be approximately seen by color as above.
> 
> ...


It was a lot of talk about Arsenic here. Besides that ther may or may not be As in Gold ores it has nothing to do with Electrum per se?
Does it?
According to the definition used in Wikipedia it is an alloy of 20-80% Gold and 80-20% Silver with traces of Copper and other like Pt and such.
No mention of Arsenic.


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## JMC2 (Aug 20, 2022)

Yggdrasil said:


> It was a lot of talk about Arsenic here. Besides that ther may or may not be As in Gold ores it has nothing to do with Electrum per se?
> Does it?
> According to the definition used in Wikipedia it is an alloy of 20-80% Gold and 80-20% Silver with traces of Copper and other like Pt and such.
> No mention of Arsenic.


typo...working with arsenic bronze too, so expect my noggin slipped. Meant Au-Ag.


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## Yggdrasil (Aug 20, 2022)

JMC2 said:


> typo...working with arsenic bronze too, so expect my noggin slipped. Meant Au-Ag.


Makes more sense like that


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## orvi (Aug 20, 2022)

Electrum for me (what I was teached) is native thing. And where I live, we have quite a bit of lower karat placer gold deposits. One area produced supergene gold that is ranging from 20-90% Au. You often have silver coloured flakes alongside with bright yellow flakes in one pan. So not that uncommon thing. Maybe somewhere in the world it is a rarity, here isn´t.
It is true that in placer deposits, naturally, gold "refines" itself by slow leaching of silver from the structure (mainly from the outer layer of flake). But we also have pleistocene sediments here, that retain 75% gold. Most of classic hydrothermal gold here is above 80%, some reaching more than 98%. Average is 85.


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