Newbie needs help from diamond prospectors, Haven't been able to find someone to positively identify Options

[TheRookie]

Okay, to start off with, this is my first post, here. I'm not from Colorado, and neither are the minerals I'm asking for help with. I hope that's not a rules violation. To make a long story short I was doing some gold prospecting in NE Illinois. Yes, Illinois. In with my black sands, which turned out to have some gold, but not enough to mess with, I found these:



After doing a little research, they look to be pyrope, I think. Let me know if you disagree.

Then I found a few rocks like this:




So, I extracted a bunch of the small crystals. Which look like this:




A lot of them still have a bit of the host rock still stuck to them, but, as is, I did a Specific Gravity test and came up with between 3.1 and 3.2 with less than lab-grade equipment. I'm working on cleaning them up some more & when completed in a day or so, will redo my SG test. I also did check the SG of the host rock and that came back at 2.5. My guess is that the cleaning will raise SG to 3.5, or so. The way I did my SG test was to weigh out a sample, then put them into a graduated cylinder half full of water to see how much water was displaced. Using water I had a bit of a problem with air bubbles that just were a bear to get rid of. Would it be better to use a light oil when I rerun my test? I've also subjected them to scratch tests up to mohs 8 (beryl). I don't have any corundum to check further, unfortunately. I've also soaked them in strong, hot acids, and also in lye, none of which has any affect on them. The only thing I've done that had an adverse affect was to heat a couple of them over an open, natural gas flame, 'til they were red-hot, which turned them an opaque white. I've taken these to jewelry shops, rock shops, and a lapidary museum. So far, no one has been able to positively identify these crystals.

[ASTROBLEME]

TheRookie,

If you have some larger crystals, I'd advise checking them with an electronic diamond tester. Most pawn shops have them so perhaps you can get a quick test on the larger specimens.

Sounds like you are in a good area to prospect for diamonds. Good luck!

[TheRookie]

TheRookie, If you have some larger crystals, I'd advise checking them with an electronic diamond tester. Most pawn shops have them so perhaps you can get a quick test on the larger specimens. Sounds like you are in a good area to prospect for diamonds. Good luck!

I actually just extracted a stone that's about 1 1/2 ct. the other night. That's by far the largest one so far. Up 'til then the largest stones were about 1/2 ct. I've heard that diamond testers can give a false negative reading if the stone is held between your fingers, is that true? Because I took one to a pawn shop and a jewelry store that tested one of them that way.

It's funny that you say that it sounds like a good area to prospect, most people think I'm crazy as a bedbug. I've heard and read that drift diamonds in the Midwest all came from Canada, but I wonder how much truth there is in that. The accounts I've read about a lot of the diamonds found in the area describe many of them as being "off color". For example, the documented diamond finds in Indiana include diamonds that were "pinkish, blue, pink, brownish yellow, greenish yellow, and between white and yellow". Aren't Canadian diamonds known for being mostly colorless? BTW, many of mine, if they turn out to be diamonds, are not colorless.