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Palladium-rich gold from Icabaru, Venezuela
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alfredo
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PostPosted: Feb 13, 2012 12:04    Post subject: Re: Palladium-rich gold from Icabaru, Venezuela  

When the Icabaru gold crystal floaters first appeared on the market years ago, many people (including myself) thought they were cast in molds, ie. artificial. But now that the locality has been visited by several reputable observers, who have published articles on it in Lapis and Mineral Up and elsewhere, and after John Rakovan's brilliant testing, there is no longer any doubt whatsoever that these are natural crystals.

Whether or not they should be called "palladium-rich" is another issue. Since no one has ever defined "rich", it would be better to use "palladium-bearing".
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Paul S




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PostPosted: Feb 13, 2012 14:44    Post subject: Re: Palladium-rich gold from Icabaru, Venezuela  

Thanks for the update Alfredo, I should have checked those sources myself, but you have been very helpfull.

I can finally put this mistery behind me (as I'm not really interested in the possible presence of certain minor impurities like palladium).
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alfredo
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PostPosted: Feb 13, 2012 15:05    Post subject: Re: Palladium-rich gold from Icabaru, Venezuela  

Paul, I should have added that, in native gold, the presence of palladium and absence of significant silver may be an indication of microbial mobilization and deposition at ambient temperatures... Very interesting gold!
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TomBryant




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PostPosted: Jul 05, 2012 00:16    Post subject: Re: Palladium-rich gold from Icabaru, Venezuela  

Many years ago I first encountered gold "crystals" recovered from liquid amalgams. The standard common factors were - highly liquid mercury - very fine placer type gold - fairly long residency time (many of them coming from mercury used for amalgamation and forgotten on a shelf for up to a year or more) - a mercury press (not always but it preserved the crystals) and acid to finish cleaning the gold.
Operators encountering this often commented on first seeing the crystals as needles, hairs or blocky crystals coated in mercury and needing to be cleaned up with acid beore they realized they were dealing with gold needles etc.. Microscopic examination showed all of the above and also some hollow tubular needles. None of them were over a 1.5 cm in length. I first encountered them from examination of gold recovered from mercury used in a commercial amalgamation machine and I was pretty confident that no such shapes had gone into it.
Further research indicated that we were dealing with pseudomorphs from the gold amalgams. Microprobe work showed platinum in some of the samples from Alberta which linked to the natural platinum found with the placer gold. Silver was absent from the "crystals" because the acid treatment had removed it along with base metals leaving a very high purity gold.
Every prospector that I have gotten similar samples from since that time was convinced they had gathered these crystals from their placer concentrates yet examination of the original cons showed no such shapes.
While I cannot comment on the crystals being discussed here it is possible that a similar occurrence is happening in these crystals. The prospectors may not have been aware at first that they were making the crystal shapes by virtue of their processing but if there is a buck to be had you can be sure somebody would figure it out .

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Leza Junnila




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PostPosted: Jul 06, 2012 15:26    Post subject: Re: Palladium-rich gold from Icabaru, Venezuela  

A couple years ago my son and I went looking for a so-called gold crystal location left to me by a friend after his demise. It's west of the Leviathan Mine in the Sierras. We hiked all day up to a area that we scanned using metal detectors,and because of the late hour we dug down into a dry creek bed and collected material above the bedrock, planning to pan it later. The sample bounced around in the back of the vehicle a few days before I panned it, and found nothing, however my son needed the backpack for something and dumped the trace dirt out on his garage floor. The next morning while he was doing laundry he let out a yelp when his bare foot stepped on something sharp. He called me to come over and check out this gold colored crystal that was sharp and pointy,it looks like your specimen and it is Au. Pt and Palladium are also found here in trace amounts.
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