platinum nugget

I will not disclose the results.

Send a pinhead sized cutting or scraping to:

Cannon Microprobe
1041 NE 100th Street
Seattle, WA 98125

metalic iron and awaruite are both magnetic this nugget is not, i know natural platinum can have other metals in it so i dont know how accurate my acid test was, the majority of the white line held for a minute on a clean test stone. ive been researching metals that look like this and i have not found many non magnetic metals that it could be . if you know of anymore please let me know

I have been "playing" in the creek near my house. This year, after the two hurricane/tropical storms that whacked the east coast last fall, I decided to revisit the creek here in Maryland. A new vein of gold must have been uncovered as I'm now finding some flour gold in the creek, and with it a silver, nonmetallic "nugget", considerably bigger. Looks like platinum, but that mineral has never been reported from Maryland. It also could be a micrometeorite. It's being tested by SEM, so I'll know soon.

Hi my name is Jorge and live in Renton, I'm found a nugget that seems to be platinum and I was wandering if you could analyze it for me.
I already bought a platinum test online and the nugget doesn't by the acid get affected please help me .
Thank you.
Jorge.

Jorge,
Can you post a picture of it, and do you know how to find the specific gravity of it? A scale that weighs grams will probably be good enough.

X-ray spectroscopy is the only practical way to answer these questions.

I don't think I ever received a particle of Walsh 68s nugget which I offered to analyze for free.

Bart

Here's another metal nugget - possibly platinum, possibly????
It was found in a gold bearing area of North Carolina where small amounts of platinum have been found. Due to its size I find it hard to believe it could be platinum (17.3 grams), but it is worth looking into.
I do not have a scale that will give me accurate specific gravity (tried suspending in water, but my scale only goes to 20 grams) so I had a small cup inside a styrafoam bowl and measured the weight of the run off after dunking it into the topped off small cup. This left quite a bit of room for error, but it is heavy and after 15 tests came with specific gravity in the range of 11-17 (yes lots of room for error).
I took it to the local college where they said "O' that's just slag." until they held it. It is not slag, way to heavy. That professor (geology department) took it to the head of the department where he took a good look at it and determined it was most likely a meteorite and asked several times if he could keep it.
I got a acid test online and the nitric and muratic acid mixture labeled for testing platinum does not dissolve a streak of it on the stone (however it scratched the stone that came with the test kit and i had to use a bathroom tile). The bathroom tile is red so it may throw off the streak color, but it was a gray/silver color.
I am off to a jewlery store this afternoon to see if they can give me some insight, but thought I would ask around for other ideas. Does anyone know of a place to have it tested or if anyone does single items like that.

Certainly neither a platinum nugget nor a meteorite. Being as it's hard and dense, and if the colour as displayed on my screen is accurate, I'd guess a smelter product like manganese carbide.

Can you break off a small fragment? Can you crush the fragment to powder with a hammer?

Rock Currier
Crystals not pistols.

Walsh 68,

Sorry I didn't reply. I often forget to "follow a topic".

Use a small twist drill to remove a "pinhead's" volume of your nugget, tape it to a 3x5 card.

Send to:

Cannon Microprobe
1041 NE 100th Street
Seattle, WA 98125

Walsh 68,

I have proven that I can't really navigate Mindat.

Seems I did reply with a solution to your situation. TWICE !

Bart