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Fakes & Fraudsastonishing ebay acution

4th Dec 2012 05:08 UTCAriel S Wall

All the UK collectors out there would get a kick out of this acution. There's platinum and gold in this! Not!

http://www.ebay.com/itm/RARE-21-5-GR-GOLD-N-PLATINUM-ORE-NUGGET-w-FOSSIL-bullion-scrap-paydirt-kt-/251191064408

what's sad is the # of bids on it.

Ariel

4th Dec 2012 11:58 UTCPaul Brandes 🌟 Manager

Are you saying this platinum/gold fossil is not accurate Ariel???

Come now, it's on ebay so it has to be the rarest, one-of-a-kind, museum quality specimen....... :-S

4th Dec 2012 12:28 UTCVandall Thomas King Manager

The test proving platinum is present is certainly false. The specimen doesn't look like gold in the photos and the occurrence with a fossil is, as you say, astonishing and would have been much admired by von Munchausen. Has anyone from UK complained to eBay that the item offered is probably incorrectly labeled?

4th Dec 2012 15:06 UTCBart Cannon

Just a tidbit here.

The famous Liberty, Washington gold camp has produced electrum replacements of Eocene fish fossils.

The wire electrum almost looks like fish ribs.

I have a stack of postcards from a long known midwestern USA mineral dealer from the 60s.

My mind doesn't work well any longer, and I don't have the energy to unpack my boxes of mineral photos and art, but I think his name might have been R. Pickens.

Maybe I'll work on that project after I conduct my last of season lawn mowing out here in Seattle. Seattle is in deep flood stage, but California is much worse. Don't hold your breath on this tease !

Interesting side note on Liberty. The entire valley of Swauk Creek below Liberty is totally swaddled in placer dredge tailings. The grizzlies used to eliminate the coarse materials sometimes made huge mistakes. Back around 1955 a woman walking on top of the tailings found an electrum or gold nugget the size of a potato. I need to verify this story and find that potato for Rob Lavinsky.

I think to story of the nugget might be from H.C. Dake's "Northwest Gem Trails" published in 1962.

Gee whiz ! My mind might still be working, .

Bart

5th Dec 2012 04:59 UTCAriel S Wall

these fossils are primarily pyrite. Polissed in this case to resemble gold. Fools style.

The fact that the acution ended for $787 for a $15 specemin is fascinating.

5th Dec 2012 05:51 UTCBart Cannon

Back in my early days in 1963 Detroit my father would drive down to the Ohio border to afford me the opportunity to collect pyritized brachiopods.

When the enclosing limestone was dissolved away in HCl, a sparking brassy pyrite shell was revealed. The most amazing thing was that the soft internal organs of the brachiopod were also pyritized. I recall that there were some kind of curly spirals inside the shells. I wish I could find those fossils. They are here somwhere.

The Ohio town where the fossils came from was named Silica. Why the heck was a limestone town named Silica? Today's conunbrum for me.

My poor dad. All he really wanted to do was to play golf, yet he drove his little brat all over the place in the Buick to find minerals.

Bart

19th Dec 2012 22:22 UTCDavid Wells

Bart, I believe Silica, Ohio was named after the local silica sand that was used in the manufacture of Portland cement. The Silica formation is a series of fossiliferous limestones and shales were named after the town of Silica. I also collected fopssils here when I was young.

David

19th Dec 2012 22:44 UTCDavid Baldwin

That's a pyritised ammonite, we get hundreds of them on the beaches here at Charmouth. I also have a collection of platinum nuggets from alluvial deposits at the mouth of the river here (which definitely aren't hematite after marcasite nodules). I'm a potential millionaire..... until I get caught!

19th Dec 2012 22:48 UTCDennis Tryon

I don't believe anything about this. I'll bet that many of the bids were made by the seller. I just hope he made the last one.

Dennis

19th Dec 2012 23:13 UTCDavid Baldwin

What's most amazing is how gullible people seem to be. Here's another classic, metaphysical rip-off. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Large-Wonderful-Female-Ascension-Stone-230-Gm-Top-Piece-For-Grounding-Balance-/280459446458?pt=Loose_Gemstones&hash=item414caf88ba Give me a couple of wheelbarrows and a few helpers, and I could probably collect a couple of tons of these things in an afternoon. CAVEAT EMPTOR!!

20th Dec 2012 00:05 UTCChester S. Lemanski, Jr.

Sorry to be redundant, but ..........Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, agrummmmm (clearing throat), ha, ha, ha, ha!!!!

20th Dec 2012 05:03 UTCMatt Neuzil Expert

I believe it may have been the sylvania quarry you may have collected pyritized brachiopods at. My paleontology class took a day trip there I didnt find any brachiopods but did find out pyritized fossils. other students found some brachs though

7th Jan 2013 14:39 UTCJason Evans

Damn i found several of these around lyme regis and charmouth, i wish i kept them, i could have been rich by now!

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