FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[WatchGrassGrow]

Its coated in a thick layer of scale colored orange brown and yellow tan. Found it with my metal detector in Arizona below an abandoned mine shaft. I looked up info on the old shaft, but didn't learn anything that would help. It reads nonferrous like gold. Once I rubbed the scale off, it appears to shine like silver or platinum, but it has a grey shine too. Its quite heavy for its one centimeter size. Seems to be quite brittle(alloy?) Not soft. I rubbed it quite hard against a thick ratchet strap and it left a light dull grey color on the strap, and less and less rubs off. A local rock shop owner thought it might be galena, but I've searched the net and can't find a similar match. Looks like it formed some cubical structure that is now rounded off. I have not tested it with a magnet yet.

The nearby dirt is mostly a light yellow color mixed with white schist. Lots of bright orange quartz mixed in as well. There are little clusters of a different metal/alloy that is a heavy dull grey metal nodules surrounded by orange yellow tan crystal structures. I panned out some dirt around where the nugget was found and did have some micron metal that acted like gold in the pan, but it was so small that I cannot gaurantee it is gold.

[WatchGrassGrow]

It seems although over time its tarnished a little from a more whiter silver to a more grey silver but I don't want to polish it again in case its toxic. I'd say half of the rock is metal.

[WatchGrassGrow]

Here are the dull grey nodules I mentioned above next to a galena and rose quartz specimen I found in the same dry wash only feet away.

[WatchGrassGrow]

Here is the same nodule in the picture above broken open. You can see its not shiny metal like the nugget, but I found pounds of whatever this metal is. Its heavy but not nearly as heavy as the shiny nugget.

[alfredo]

The nugget in your first photo is pure enough that a density test would go a long way in helping to identify it. Grey metallic minerals without crystal faces are impossible to identify just from looking at photos, as there are way too many possibilities.

The pale yellowish white oxidation rind however gives a clue that it may be some lead, antimony, arsenic or bismuth mineral.

[WatchGrassGrow]

My concern on the shiny nugget is that it might be an alloy containing radioactive material. Also while I was out hunting this spot a couple guys came by and suggested that I might want to wear a mask if I broke any of this into a powder to pan out as it might contain uranium. I gather they may have known more about the area then me, and they specifically said they were looking for metal and one mentioned they may have left some metal behind. This got me thinking it might be a valuable metal, maybe a mozanite thorium rare earth mixture?,... but I want to know what you think?

[James Catmur]

Find out the mine name (from maps) and that will help you. Then see what they mined there. Lumps of great metallic ore could be many things, and knowing the mine helps narrow it down. So it could be galena or stibnite, or something else. Impossible to say from the photos

[alfredo]

The fact that you found it with a metal detector tells us one property of the material: that it's an electrical conductor, which eliminates from consideration a lot of grey metallic minerals that are only poor conductors, like the sulphosalts. But that still leaves a lot of possibilities, with galena being by far the most common, but also things like acanthite, silver, native bismuth, native antimony...

[WatchGrassGrow]

[SteveB]

Yes a density measurement is a must. Photos pretty irrelevant here, an accurate hardness test with hardness scribes will also help but density is a must.
Dont handle food after handling this and dont eat the rock at all.Geiger counters can be picked up fairly cheap and are good enough to confirm if its radioactive much, not likely and I dont think any radioactive “Metals” naturally occur in metal form. Could just be some solder too. Even if its arsenic its nothing to worry about as long as you wash your hands before eating (general life advice everyone should be following anyway. Plus things like mercury, arsenic and lead dont just kill people from a little handling, it takes a LOT of handling constantly over a long period to have any health effects. People are just dumbly concerned over nothing when they hear certain words.test density properly and get a number. Dont just say “it feels heavy like a quartz pebble or a #2 sinker. Maybe a school can help you test density as it needs accurate equipment they would have, a jeweler might help too but “identification” will probably cost you.

[WatchGrassGrow]

[Peter Lemkin]

You are doing an awful lot of speculation, when you should be doing testing. Personally, I would never put an unknown in my mouth - more so with some alteration crust on it. A lot of persons that hunt with metal detectors have a slim hold on science and mineralogy. A few know a lot. While it is true that most 'dangerous' minerals need to be eaten or inhaled in some quantity to do harm, that is not true of all of them. There is one here in Czech Republic that was used to kill rats and people through the ages. One from Kola and a few other places [I'd rather not name it] in rather small quantities in the mouth or swallowed could kill one [it is water soluble and looks like candy]. Both I'm talking about are rare...but don't be silly or stupid. Not everything in nature is harmless! Specific gravity test and good hardness test would tell you a lot. Then, if still of interest, you could have it tested on sophisticated machine - but unless you are lucky you may have to pay for that. It could be, as mentioned, just solder or molten metal from work on whatever they had at the mine. I even had a 'friend' who made it his business [sic] to 'salt' dumps with minerals from far distant and completely different dumps just to drive people crazy - a sadistic mineralogist! But mine waste put there by humans has misled many. Just do your homework and don't expect an answer from photos posted here. You have been given many good ideas and leads. Finding out what was found at that mine would really limit things, but keep in mind it could be anthropogenic and not natural. I doubt my 'friend' made it to AK...he was Colorado based.

[James Catmur]

I recall people dumping specimens they did not want at the next mine they visited, thus messing up what is found where

Watch - please do the tests suggested. Color, hardness, density and streak. That gives you a good start. Then work from there, knowing the area / mine and you might get a good idea.

As Peter says, never put things in your mouth or breath in dust from them. I used to collect in a silver mine, which had a significant radon accumulation - so you never went underground.

[Don Lum]

Health Risk of Radon | US EPA
https://www.epa.gov/radon/health-risk-radon
(link normalized by FMF)

The report confirms that radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer in the U.S. and that it is a serious public health problem. The study fully supports EPA estimates that radon causes about 15,000 lung cancer deaths per year.

[SteveB]

If you must “clean something in the field, spit on it and rub gently, do not put in your mouth. But your after financial reward it seems, this is a mineral forum, our interest is the mineral in natural form. At this point since you haven't done tests required to identify anything I would speculate its lead. Lead is commonly found by gold hunters as the locations are remote and idiots have to take guns to play with to remote locations. Then people come along and find something heavy and think they’ve struck it rich. I've seen people like that come on here being cagey in case someone stole their claim or reported their claim stealing so would say nothing that might give away location. then a few simple test later, their find was just a chunk of solder that a concretion had formed around instead of the nugget of platinum they were convinced it was. Plus remember no gold location has ever been seen by humans unless its been dug, and mercury was a common way of gathering gold. But my guess is its lead shot which could mean anything these days, just a heavy alloy of stuff excluding actual lead, “green” bullets and could be all sorts of shapes might have hit a rock face that had lots of squarish cracked and formed an interesting shape, then maybe spent some time rolling down a slope maybe water tumbled a bit. So you seem to be jumping at shadows wanting it to be something its not, and xrf test would be useful but likely expensive, its only certain types of highly dangerous radioactive mineral that are excluded from most xrf machines as they are not what mining companies are after when surveying land and still an xrf is not going to tell you what the mineral is, only the elements present which YOU still need to match to minerals could be a bullet projectile a dog ate and pooped out. Density narrows possibilities to only a few and hardness refines to an exact match but only if this is a “pure” natural mineral sample, if its manmade which I’m thinking likely then precisely what might never be known, but get the tests done as nothing else will help get an answer.