Silver Nugget question

[MDMac]

What VDI number will a Silver Nugget produce on a Whites MXT while in Coin/Jewlery mode? I think I may have found a silver nugget but would like to hear anyone else's experience. Thanks!

 

[Hillbilly Bob]

Silver is allot like gold it will show up anywhere from 15 to 90 depending on the size of the nugget and the depth of it. Silver and gold nuggets aren't always pure some times they have other metals in them that's why you really can't go by the VDI. Platinum, copper, nickle, white gold, are all present sometimes in Silver nuggets.

 

[Nancy-IL]

Hmm, I would have thought it would be in the higher numbers as like when you find a silver ring even a tiny silver ring rings in around the lower 60's. Guess I learned something today. HH to all, Nancy

 

[Hillbilly Bob]

Silver rings are different there not as solid as a nugget. Nuggets will show up more like a silver dollar. And it all depends on the host metal that the silver jewelry is made of.

 

[MDMac]

Well, I found 4 nuggets this weekend, and they all registered VDI 77 in the Coin/Jewelry mode when they were on the surface. When buried, the screen showed 1 or 10, VDI 77. I then switched it over to prospecting mode and they registered VDI 76 and bounced to 77 a bit. I am not sure if they are really silver, but they look like it are in a highly rich silver area in the Rocky Mountains between Durango and Silverton. According to the mail scale here at work, the four nuggets total .8 of an ounce. I would have tried to find more but the rain started falling. I need to find a test kit.

 

[Hillbilly Bob]

I would say you found yourself some silver nuggets, there reading to high to be platinum. and like I was saying nuggets can give many different readings depending on how pure or not. Silver nuggets in my book are as good as gold. And if there showing up in the higher readings then I would say there pure!

 

[;hgarr]

I have never found a silver nugget, but I think the VDI 77 sounds about right fjor a lump of silver, versus flattened out or in the shape of a ring. For instance a 5 grain gold nugget in the shape of a ball will not be heard as deep or give as high a tone as a flattened out one. A 5 grain thin gold ring will even ring out higher and deeper yet. Hope this is helpful....How..

 

[Gila Marc]

Wow!! In twenty-plus years assaying gold and silver I have never seen a silver nugget! I understand they do exist but native silver is really rare, the metal usually being in forms like chlorides, sulphides, oxides, nitrates, silver antimony, in galena, etc. Silver mixes with just about anything. I've seen it mixed with gold in a kind of "electrum", and being less than fifty percent gold shows only silver. I would love to see a close-up photo of them!

There are legends of the Spanish finding large pieces of native silver, the so-called "planchas de plata" (platters of silver), so it is a real form of the metal. I just haven't seen any.

Where are you located? If silver it's a great find!!

Marc

 

[MDMac]

I live in Bayfield, Colorado, near Durango. It is an interesting story how I found these pieces of whatever they are. I was camping along Lime Creek, which is between Purgatory (now called Durango Mountain Resort) and Silverton, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silverton%2C_Colorado. The Lime Creek Fire of 1879 was one of the largest Wildfires in the United States up to that time and just about everywhere I dug, I would run into burned wood between 3 inches and 12 inches down. Somewhere between 25,000 and 30,000 acres were burned in the Lime Creek Canyon, which is a very steep walled canyon. At first, I thought they may be melted aluminum but I can't bend them at all plus they are heavier than aluminum. They do look like they have "melted marks" on them, so I thought they may be melted metal from the 1879 fire. But every nail, bolt, washer, etc.. that I have found with the MXT had a LOT lower VDI number. Maybe they were silver coins just under the ground before the 1879 fire, but does a Forest Fire reach 1,800 degrees F to melt silver? Maybe they were silver nuggets that a prospector dropped while fleeing the fire and they just have fire damage?

The funny story is how I even discovered the first one. I was digging next to a 60 foot tall Ponderosa, the soil was damp so digging was easy. The MXT read penny or dime, 77 VDI. So I dig a 4 inch deep hole, about 2 inches across. MXT states it is still in the hole so I go down 4 more inches and 2 inches wider. Now the MXT says that the object is in my pile of dirt. So I dig through the dirt, spreading it across the ground. I do this again and again. Pretty soon, I have the dirt covering about 2 square feet of ground, and still no penny or dime. There are several rocks mixed in from the size of a pea to the size of a grape. Now going over the spread out dirt, I get no signal at all and no signal in the hole. So I am really perplexed. Then I remembered I had tossed a couple of rocks about 3-4 feet from the hole, rocks about the size of a flattened grape. When I run the MXT over one of them, it sings a symphony to me, penny or dime, VDI 77. I pick it up and it feels a bit lighter than a rock but still looks like a dirty old rock. So I run some water over it and one end comes clean and shines like silver.

A gentleman I ride the bus with told me his wife is a Geologist so I gave him one of the nuggets to take home to her for examination. I will let you know what I find out. If they are silver, I will post a picture. If they are just melted something else, at least it brought some excitement to my Metal Detecting.

 

[Hillbilly Bob]

Great story! Lets hope they are silver nuggets, the old time miners they took alot of silver out of the hills around Silverton.

 

[Nancy-IL]

WOW, what a great story. Thanks!!!! I wish you the best of luck and sure hope they're real. HH to all, Nancy