I have a bag labled "Colorado Gold Ore". Is it worth anything?

Question

It has a card talking about how purity is measured on it and on the back it says "This bag of ore is from one of the richest mines". The stones are gravel colored with a little bit of milky quartz and little sprinkles of gold. I really want to know what it is worth. I think it might be little sprinkles of gold in rocks.

Answer 1

A typical "rich" gold ore assays about a fifth to a tenth of an ounce of gold per ton (3-6 grams per ton). If your bag weighs, say, ten pounds (1/200 of a ton) then the amount of gold in it is probably in the order of 0.015 to 0.030 grams - or at todays massive gold price about $0.40 to $0.80, assuming that you could extract it for free.

Gold ores often contain pyrite, in quantities of up to a few percent. Pyrite looks yellow and metallic, but is made of iron and sulfur. This is probably what you are seeing. Visible gold in hand samples is extremely rare, even in "rich" gold mines.

Interestingly, the pyrite often hosts the gold. Often in processing the first step will be to extract the pyrite and throw away the quartz, then the pyrite will be roasted and leached to extract the gold. The grade of those little pyrite blobs may be as high as an ounce ot two per ton. In other words, when you are looking at the pyrite you are also looking at the gold, in a manner of speaking, but even the pyrite contains less than a hundredth of a percent gold.

As you may have already figured out, the only way that you get rich with gold mining is to do it on a massive scale. If you process 20,000 tons per day of ore, you are playing with a thousand ounces or so of gold per day and have a chance of operating profitably. With a bag of ore... well, it may be interesting, but no more than that.

Answer 2

This Site Might Help You.

RE:
I have a bag labled "Colorado Gold Ore". Is it worth anything?
It has a card talking about how purity is measured on it and on the back it says "This bag of ore is from one of the richest mines". The stones are gravel colored with a little bit of milky quartz and little sprinkles of gold. I really want to know what it is worth. I think it might be...

Answer 3

Not really. It's only value is as a gift shop item. Somebody took the trouble to bag it and label it and put it on the table in some Colorado tourist trap, maybe got $5 for it, or less if it's old.

There's probably no more than 10-100 mg of gold in those rocks, worth $0.25 to $2.50 AFTER extraction and refining. The mine owner makes more per pound selling rocks to tourists.

Answer 4

It all depends on how much gold you pull out of the dirt. If you recover enough flakes to make an ounce, you will have a $800 bag of dirt. The sprinkles can add up quickly, so you may have a valuable dirt-bag. LOL. But no one can tell you "what it's worth" until you recover the valuable parts and separate them from the worthless sand, dirt, clay, rocks, etc. and weigh the good stuff. Have fun!

- The Gremlin Guy -

< also got a bag of dirt from his sister for Christmas, with rubies? garnets? in it....>

Answer 5

I've seen a large gallon pickle jar filled with gold nuggets from miners while in AK. But I was given several rocks that crumble that looks like they are filled with gold flakes. Their not in quartz looks something like charco. We can I send them to see what their worth and sell them?
Same problem

Answer 6

I have been surfing the web more than 3 hours today seeking the answer to the same question, and I haven't found any interesting debate like this. it's pretty worth enough for me.

Answer 7

first powder all the material and mix it well. draw a sample. test the sample at some testing lab for percentage of gold.
after you get to know the percentage of gold in the material calculate the total gold in it by the formula:-

weight of gold = (weight of material X percentage)/ 100

once you get to know the amount of contained gold you can sell it for at least 60% of the market value.