FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[Jordi Fabre]

In Tucson 2020 these 'silvers' were seen in one single room. They look exceptional although at the same time they look very weird. Out of curiosity I bought some from a Russian dealer who told me, after insisting a lot, that they came out in the 'Udokan' area in Russia.

On my return to Barcelona, I had them analyzed and the result indicated that it was an alloy of anthropogenic origin, which in a way confirmed my suspicions (and those of others who saw them). With the result in hand, I contacted the dealer who sold them to me, and he defended with great energy the natural origin of these 'silvers'. After more than a year of thinking about the subject, that dealer insisted that more tests were necessary and he accepted that the results of the tests performed by another prestigious analyzer of his convenience would be the final one, so they were sent to another analyzer of United States of great prestige and that he knew. The results came, and fully confirmed the first analysis, but the dealer continues to maintain that they are natural and has provided images and videos of the place where he says these 'silvers' are found. The images show these 'silvers' growing like mushrooms on rocks with associated sediments (and which he says they are granodiorites) which could indicate that they were formed somehow accidentally or by smelting elsewhere and that over time they have been formed, randomly deposited in an arid rock, with no silver veins or any trace of silver. As the responses of the dealer who sold me are always that for him they are totally natural and since we cannot move forward, I have decided to raise the issue in the two FMFs, this one and the Spanish one, and we will see if with the contribution of everyone we can clarify this topic, mostly because I think that it is very useful to make it known especially for future buyers potentially interested in these 'silvers'.

At the moment I am posting some images of these alleged 'silvers' as well as copy of the first analysis made by Dr. César Menor-Salván and throughout the progress of this thread I will be posting more information, always with the corresponding authorizations from the authors.

From here I cordially invite the Russian dealer to participate in the issue and present here his arguments as well as his photos and videos of what he says is the place where these 'silvers' are found.

[Bob Morgan]

I saw some unbelievable gold and silver crystals in a Russian Minerals room. There were even combinations of the two metals in oriented zones. They were expensive enough not to tempt me to buy them. I was told they were not part of that dealer's stock, that the person selling them was just showing them in that room.
I mentioned them later to someone who'd seen them. He said they were crafted, and he was someone who I thought should know about such things.
When I went back the next day the person with the crystals had gone.
I don't know if this was the same person who sold your silver, but it's a good idea to be wary of fakes.

[Roger Warin]

Hello Jordi,
What amazes me is the morphology of the cubic crystal. It is typically dendritic, which corresponds to rapid crystallization. I think the man is always in a hurry.

[Cesar M. Salvan]

I always find interesting such 'detective' problems. When Jordi sent me the samples, the impression at hand was non-natural. The analyses showed copper-silver alloys with phase segregation and copper enrichment in the surface. The separation in copper-enriched and silver-enriched phases is typical of diffusion in a melt and relatively fast cooling, which are evidenced also by bubbles, the formation of hollow crystals, and associated dendritic growths.

Recently, I saw pictures of the place where the silver pieces were supposedly found: a sterile outcrop in an obscure location, with silver crystals dispersed in sediment. It was pretty much obvious that the location confirmed the possible non-natural origin of the crystals. The location, moreover, made the samples even more suspicious: all the samples I examined were covered by a relatively thick alteration layer, formed mainly by silver chloride. That alteration made me think in natural alteration by brackish waters or patina formed by slag, fluxes or silver refining process where high chloride could be found. How the crystals ended there? who knows.

The shape and characteristics just told us that the samples were anthropogenic, but their formation could be not intentional. I saw on occasions interesting metal crystals formed in smelters (I attached here an example picture), but I never saw silver crystals that big.

Anyways, we do not have a smoking gun pointing to an intentional fabrication. One of the samples that I examined, though, was very suspicious: a crystal silver-copper piece attached to a piece of schist with quartz. The boundary between the piece and the 'matrix' was formed by a low melting point metal, rich in lead and antimony; the morphology of liquid metal poured on the rock piece, made me think that the silver piece was soldered to the matrix. The net contact with the rock, the metal liquid features, presence of bubbles and cracks, the segregation of metal phases... Too many indicators of, at least, a non-natural origin.

So, unless a very consistent and unambiguous geological and metal deposit contextualization of the samples appears, with the evidence so far, I considered the samples man-made. Whether they are fabricated or not, we have no means to know it.

If these pieces were natural, they would be extraordinary and very peculiar. And extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. So far, there is no evidence whatsoever on a natural origin.

[Peter Lemkin]

While fake minerals can and do come from most everywhere, when I was in Russia I noted more than the usual number of people selling fakes of all manner of things. If one puts the words [or something similar] 'electrochemical growth of silver wires in the laboratory' you will see papers and even videos of this quite easy process. It is interesting and enlightening how both fake and perhaps one of the mechanisms of natural silver wire growth.

Here is one video of an experiment done at the small scale. Just scale it up in size and voltage and bingo! you get the kinds of specimens Jordi has... I have long been told about fake silver wire specimens and how they could be produced and even placed on 'matrix'. Buyer beware! Caveat Emptor!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnyBldC4Ra4
(link normalized by FMF)

The hopper-growth Ag is especially suspicious to me, as are the color of the specimens - not enough tarnish, although someone could claim they cleaned the tarnish off [which I feel one should not do with natural Ag specimens usually. A few years ago someone or some group had developed a way to grow artificially large wired Ag [like Kongsberg specimens] and all were found to be fakes.

On this Forum we even have a thread on the subject: https://www.mineral-forum.com/message-board/viewtopic.php?t=249

[alfredo]

This reminds me of a recent case from Germany where a dealer made a lot of money selling large pieces of "native brass", zhanghengite, and other extremely rare copper-zinc alloys in previously unheard-of large sizes, the "best of the species", and from a German locality that had no other recorded Zn or Cu minerals. They were embedded in some sort of fine-grained white rock matrix, which the dealer swore was natural. Some species collectors were quite excited, although I was very skeptical, and I suppose these are more likely to be either some ancient smelter product or the result of an ancient fire disaster in a wooden building. I guess the matrix rock is the compacted insoluble remains of ashes after several centuries "diagenesis".

[Jordi Fabre]

I received these images from the Russian dealer, owner of those alleged 'silvers'

[Jordi Fabre]

[Bob Harman]

Jordi, This is an interesting thread with 2 important take-aways for me.

The first is that since these examples were originally for sale as natural mineral specimens and were subsequently analyzed as almost certainly man created alloys, this thread should now be moved to the "incorrect id and fakes" section of the website.

My other take-away is that it reinforces my personal philosophy of narrowly focusing my own collection to only those mineral localities with specimens that I truly know. Truly knowing what I collect, greatly diminishes any chances of being fooled by fakes, frauds, unstated repaired, and overpriced specimens.

P.S. I have known John Rakovan for years. Several years ago, he and several of his geology students came over to see my collection. I subsequently provided him with several examples of Indiana Baryte/Smythite for his studies.
Regards to John!

Happy New Year, Bob

[alfredo]

I completely agree with Bob here. The collectors most likely to fall for fakes are those who try to collect everything from everywhere. A collector had best specialize in a limited geographical area, or a limited number of species, and study them well.

[Bob Harman]

Hi Alfredo and thanks for your input.

My philosophy of focused collecting started when I was about 10 yo. when I started collecting stamps.
Coincidentally, my dad's business partner was an advanced stamp collector. He came over and discussed several points, one of which was that almost no advanced stamp or coin collector had a worldwide collection. Virtually all advanced stamp collectors specialized. For the rest of my stamp collecting years I specialized. This stuck with me after I sold my large stamp collection in 1997 to concentrate on the minerals of Indiana.
It has since struck me as somewhat odd that soooo many so-called "advanced" mineral collectors actually collect worldwide minerals without much knowledge of really(!) what they are collecting ("buying" for most of their specimens would be the more accurate term). I still don't quite get it as, unlike stamps or coins where there are well known printed or minted quantities, there is an unknowable and unending number of mineral specimens from many localities.

Some years ago I was looking at a very superior Fluorite specimen labelled as coming from the May Sand and Stone Quarry, Allen County, Indiana. A large cabinet example with superior quality fluorites, all seemingly correct except that there were a couple of small white bladed Celestine crystals. I immediately knew the label was incorrect. While Fluorite from the Indiana quarry can be very similar to those from NW Ohio quarries, no Celestine had ever been reported to come from the Indiana quarry. This knowledge was very important as whether I wanted to add this mineral specimen to my collection it had to be based on a correct label. Knowledge is power!
Bob

[Jordi Fabre]

Continuing with this non-end history, I received from the seller these papers. He announced to me too that he will be in Tucson selling this material ...

[Cesar M. Salvan]

Well, these analyses tell nothing apart of the elements in the analyzed point of the sample. In fact, one of them is very close to the composition of sterling silver!

A point element analysis of a decontextualized sample is proof of nothing, apart from the composition of this particular analyzed point (and, in the case of crystallized silver-copper alloys, this composition changes depending on the position and thickness, depending on the cooling temperature and crystallization rate).

A common problem among collectors is that they value the object over the context too much. The complete lack of geological context and the unclear origin, render impossible to even throw in a hypothesis of its formation. It is just silver-copper alloy of unclear origin, probably man-made (intentional or not, as crystals formed during metallurgy or refining) according with its properties.

Good Lord, the only context provided are pictures of big silver crystals emerging from a random sediment like mushrooms! it is non-sense. Whatever is its origin, no educated collector should give it credit or buy these samples, unless properly contextualized, its origin clarified, and properly analyzed.

This story is over for me until new relevant data show up. These X Ray analyses are not relevant, and add nothing to the story, as we already analyzed the composition of these samples.

[Jordi Fabre]