This small meteorite fragment was labeled "Tunguska event - Russia 1908" when we acquired it from a rock shop.
Weight is approximately 0.9 gram, size 0.5 inch
Chosen 5/17/14 by Drex!
This is an Opal triangle trio.
3 small cut opal cabochons, 2 white and 1 black. All from Australia.
Black (bottom right) opal is approx. 5.8 mm and 0.4 ct in weight.
White opals are (bottom left) approx. 5.6 mm and 0.25 ct in weight, the other (top) is approx. 8.9 mm x 5.6 mm and 0.5 ct in weight.
These all are much more colorful in hand including orange and yellow fire in the whites.
Chosen 10/20/14 by John!
This cute little gold nugget was harvested from good ol' mother earth but more recent theory suggests it may have actually been deposited by comet impacts. Weight is approx. 0.4 gram
Chosen 6/25/14 by Jim & Tracey!
This sweet little Colorado smokey quartz crystal on Microcline was also collected by Dan and myself. The whole specimen measures 28x23x23mm high. Smokey quartz crystal is about 21mm in length.
Chosen 4/16/15 by James & Cyndi!
This prize choice, a bag of CP Placer Dirt contains two-1 Lb. bags (1 average pan full), of unprocessed Colorado alluvial material for a real panning experience with a vial to place your finds in for displaying. It has at least 1 gold flake/picker and some fines, which we added to make sure everyone can find a nice gold smile in their pan.
Chosen by Jason and Cara!
Chosen by Eric!
Chosen by Henry!
Chosen by Stephen!
Chosen by Gerald!
Super nice piece!
Looks like Cara and I will be claiming the dirt!
Welcome to the club and forums Jason and Cara.
Fun choice, we will get all your goodies sent out to you soon. Make yourself at home around the site. We have a great helpful group here so post up any questions or adventures you may have.
Welcome to the club!!!
Thanks to all three of you! I am really excited to be finally connected with like minded individuals who love to play in the dirt the right way. I hope I am able to significantly contribute as a member as time goes on.
Wow, wow, and wow. I'll have some photos to post soon. Just... WOW.
Edit: So, two lbs of what appears to have been shovel to bag placer dirt (ie not concentrates) was provided. Mrs.CP kindly explained that she had added non-gold sparklies, which turned out to be a slightly smokey quartz pairing, and a third quartz with nice termination. It also looks like said third quartz fits onto the pairing, so I may have a go at repairing it. Also included was a small glass vial which had a smidgen of 100 mesh gold dust in it.
At first, the dirt didn't look great to me. Not many heavies of iron or magnetite, no strong placer indicators of quartz, no garnets, lots of fine clay. Being a placer guy at heart, I was a bit apprehensive. Then came the reveal, and my jaw dropped. The 2 lbs yielded almost 0.2 grams of gold... if consistent, this ground would yield a troy oz per 311 lbs of material. That is insanely good. Shoot, I'd be happy with ground that yields an oz per ton.
And one nice picker to boot! Thanks Mrs.CP... this was a very nice present!
Bag 1
Bag 2
Very cool, glad you both liked your gift. I hope Cara had fun panning it out.
Here is the crystal cluster. Gotta clean it, but that's a few days of work to get the clay loosened enough without causing the base matrix any damage, then I can attempt to refit the cleaner crystal in the back.
Sweet bonus.
Very glad you both like them. We found those in the Idaho Springs area. Check out the specimen cleaning thread if you need any tips.
Has the golden smile been panned out of the dirt yet?
Yes ma'am, check the 4 posts above, I edited it with photos and details. Just shy of 3 grains, and a nice picker.
Here it is all cleaned up, if that is what you wanted to see? I don't profess to be the sharpest tool in the box.
Ha! You snuck in an edit on me with photos and I missed it. Looks great, glad you enjoyed it. Too funny that there was a trace of gold dust in the vial already.
Guess that shows CP likes to recycle since he was the one to put that package together.
Horray!!!!
Like Yoda, I too think the dirt is the way to go for me!
It's yours and on it's way EMac! We added a "newlywed bonus" to the dirt, so keep your eyes open for the extra blue "Sparklies" added.
Congratulations!!
Booyah!
Might have to wait until I come back from upcoming travels before I can pan out the goodies though...definitely looking forward to the smiles! Thank you D&D
You are very welcome Eric and thank you. Great having you and Teresa as lifetime members! If you haven't left yet You might get away with digging your fingers around in the dirt for the added goodies. They will be easy to spot!
Unfortunately after panning through my cons last weekend, I didn't have the motivation to work the goodies you sent. Mostly because I was expecting more from the initial test pans I did creek side really, so I was demotivated somewhat.
I plan to work through the Fairplay dirt this weekend, and I'm very excited to see what's in there. I'll be sure to post some pics :)
Thank you for all your support! It's great to have you onboard as a lifetime member Henry!
We will be sending out your CP placer dirt soon.
Congrats to all yous!
I was all excited to post pics, and then I saw the detail Jason put into his, and I'm kicking myself now for not taking more. I too would be greatly pleased to find some ground with this kind of value in it. Similar to Jason, I was pretty skeptical about the initial appearance since there weren't many black sands. Admittedly, I was reticent to muddy up my panning bucket with the silt, but I went ahead and did it anyway since that's where I keep all my previously washed dirt.
I used 3 classifiers at around 100, 50 and 20, and I was somewhat frustrated that the gold tended to float far more than I'm used to. At all class levels (except the picker which I found sitting in the classifier screen), particularly when tapping, the water picked gold up and floated it down. I backed off using the tap method which took longer, but the floating decreased substantially.
I already took one of the outer package, so here are the contents with my panning partner in the background. I did both bags at once, so amount in each bag is confounded:
Looks like a good golden smile!
And don't feel so bad... my wife is a camera bug, so I get to play with all her neat toys for Macro shots.
The most important thing is you had fun, and you are gonna improve your kit as a result of it! The fever sinks in deeper...
Very cool guys, glad you all have fun with these placer dirts! Jason did do a nice write up on his for sure! Thank you all for the postings/write ups on your bonus gifts, fun stuff.
Crack me up with the hesitation to "muddy up the panning buckets" too ..... the placer dirt will sure give off some mud since it's not worked yet at all.
Yep it will make the water get dirty fast too causing the frequent floating gold, sometimes you might need to add your surfactant several times during panning with that type of "raw material". That ground was good in the old days as you can tell, that placer dirt was taken right off the edge virgin ground of where the Fairplay bucket line dredge worked then moved off another direction. It was running around 1/2 a gram to 1 gram per ton which today we'd be happy to work but back in the old days it wasn't enough to keep the dredge in "pay" so it moved to better dirt!
Good work finding the extra sparklers too Emac, I'll wait to tell you what they are yet since you're having so much fun figuring them out.
Congrats on LT level membership everyone, we are very glad to have you all as Lifetime club members!
If you wanted to reply with your own words instead of a quote, there is a grey box on the lower right that says "add reply". Just click and type away!
I FINALLY got around to working my Fairplay placer dirt last night... only took 2 years. Still need to Blue Bowl the 100-, but I gotta say, it was pretty exciting to pan!
This Colorado beauty is a smokey quartz crystal with a smaller quartz crystal beside it. Larger smokey quartz crystal is an inch long.
Chosen 8/13/17 by Mike J.!
This is a great Colorado Fluorite! Stands close to an inch tall/wide. Is a great specimen for the display case!
Chosen 3/5/17 by Josh!
Hello, this is Mike Julo, I purchased a LT memebership this past week and would like to select the smokey quartz crystal as my bonus sign up gift. Thanks
Great choice Mike, it's even better in hand as you will see!
Welcome to the club and forums!
Make yourself right at home around the website and let us know if you have any questions.
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