In Search of Virginia Pocket Gold


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Well it has been one year in my quest to find the gold bearing pocket at my nugget patch and to date I have found nuggets from the creek uphill 360 feet and still no pocket, just scattered nuggets. Originally I detected the site and found a little over 30ozt, afterwards I purchased the land and started scratching with a small Takeuchi excavator. This is a slow process, tracking side to side trying to stay on the gold bearing quartz float and test panning to find colors. As I work uphill the spread has narrowed from the 250' wide and now only 15' wide. I would think I am getting close to the source but I don't know a lot about prospecting only detecting. The process works like this, clear the scrub and occasion pine tree, remove the topsoil until the quartz gravel is exposed. Next fire up the GPX 5000 with the Nugget Finder coil and search the cleared area which averages 8' X 12'. Repeat the process until all gravel is removed and then dig down another few feet in search of another quartz vein. Then refill the hole, the entire process takes approximately an hour and a half to two hours. Over the course on the last year I have found 12 ozt. I hope to find the source soon assuming it has not all spilled out. All advice appreciated.

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Have you checked the gold with a loupe?See if there is any quartz attached to the yellow.It;s possible the vein has pinched out.Are you sampling all the veins?The gold goes in and out in a vein and maybe beyond the reach of a detector at this point.....

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Pocket or no pocket, it is cool to see gold coming from an area you don't hear much about, at least not on the forums. Hope it keeps producing for you, that is some pretty gold for sure!

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Im with desertman..........thats a LOT of gold!!!

Heck........if your finding it all over who needs a pocket :)
WTG

Tom H.

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Could be a manganese coating.Did you crush any of the quartz that doesn't sound off on your detector?A detector will likely not sound off on very fine color.Have you found any veins in place,that is contained within the country wall rock,soft or hard..or is it all float quartz?The vein/veins may have pinched out,dissolved or the quartz may be from a quartz blowout which I believe happens when the uprising solutions are encountering soft ground.Not real sure on that last scenario though there's a hill like that a few miles from me and most of the vein structure is much deeper.You might want to try different coils and even a VLF detector like the GMT or Goldbug.

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Dave, so far we have only discovered a few white quartz stringer and one quartz vein which appeared in the last hole. It contains football size white quartz rocks but did not produce any nuggets or colors. I did not dig completely though it since I found nothing and I was at a depth of 5 feet. Typically the nuggets and colors have been found in the surface quartz gravel float which is resting on red/gray clay. The float thickness varies from 12" to 28".

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Is all the gravel your talking about water worn including the quartz?Perhaps there was a another creek running on the hillside in the older days or the current creek changed course?Sounds like some of the Australian terrain where whole hillsides and mountains have eroded away and people find sunbakers..placer and quartz species but no veins in place.

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The gravel and nuggets are not water worn, I have other sites that display that. This site is different, the nuggets are extremely rough just like the gravel. An occasional nugget has the slick black surface but after removing, the nugget is rough. Btw, I dug a few more holes today above the white quartz vein and found a small nugget. I was 25 feet above the quartz vein, so can I assume that this is not gold producing vein? One other tidbit, the white quartz vein is only 30' long, 5'wide, and the depth is over 5'.

Maybe I am looking for the wrong source. I assumed that the source would be similar to the float gravel, red/brown material 1"to 2" rock settled in yellow dirt. Instead of a couple feet thick, the source would be comprised of the same material but 5' or 10' deep. Am I off based?

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A vein is not always exposed along it's length and some veins never surface at all(blind veins).Perhaps as stated earlier,parts or all of the vein/veins have eroded away or pinched out.Some parts of the vein may be clay seams(gouge).Some veins are all clay,having the wall rock decomposed.Besides sampling and continued sampling,what else can one do?It would be wonderful if veins produced pocket after pocket but that is a very unlikely scenario.Ore shoots come and go in a vein and most of the ore if any is fine gold,not high grade species.Seems to me that since none of your gold has quartz attached the quartz and perhaps the vein itself has dissolved away by whatever chemical interaction.Was the little piece you found 25 feet above in a vein or just the dirt or clay?

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Local Digger

My guess on this is you not looking for a pocket but rather chasing stringers. the problem with stringers is they are random in their direction. and usually only produce gold at or near the surface of the bedrock. based on the character of the gold you are on top of it. their almost like a lightning bolt coming out of a main vein. if their surface precipitation their will not be much gold in the main vein below. you cant argue with the gold your finding. I would pursue the outer boundaries of were your finding gold that will center the outcrop. dig trenches in a cross pattern. without more photo's Its hard to say. AzNuggetBob

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Dave, the last nugget was in the quartz gravel. Bob I have not found any nuggets or colors in the stringer we encounter, the last vein was different, not like the stringers, rather large white quartz rocks. Maybe it's not a vein but a large stringer? FWIW, at the base of the hill the spread of nuggets stretched 300', over the last twelve months I have followed the nuggets uphill in an inverted "V". Digging and detecting outside of the "V" produces no nuggets or colors. Obviously the higher I go the narrow the pattern of finds.

Thanks for the input, this is all new to me.

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local digger, once you go past the top point of the inverted "V" that is where you get no more gold or colours, the same as when you go outside the edges of the inverted "V" you get no more gold or colours.

It should be a matter of coming back down to the tip of the inverted "V" where you begin to get colours again and go down deeper right there, sample and wash the dirt as you go down, thats what the old timers did anyway

GE

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  • 2 weeks later...

Local digger I highly suspect that if there isn't a lot of quartz on your nuggets and based on the character of them that they are not coming from the quartz. possibly from a hematite or ironite clastic dike. AzNuggetBob

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Same here, now I need to clean the key board. Bob, thanks for the input. Last night I re-examined the nuggets with a glass and I did see on some nuggets with pieces of quartz hidden in the crevices so can I now assume that these nuggets came from a different source than the nuggets with the black coating?

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local digger

The reason I was considering that your gold source may be clastic dike is the red layer your encountering and I could not see any host quartz on the nuggets in your photo even though they are rather course. clastic dikes, not classic dikes lol, Im still laughing over that one. are often composed of hematite or ironite and will make a red layer as they decompose/oxidize and erode over time. and may appear to be soil or clay now but may have been solid rock or dike a long time ago. dikes can be thin or hundreds of feet wide. the host rock or wall rock,bedrock next to a clastic dikes can be many types of rock and there may be a quartz vein sandwiched between all three.. I know your doing your best to explain this but it would be easier for me with more photo's of the hole your digging in and the soil and rocks your digging out. I have to say I'm not as familar with the geology were you are as I am out west. assuming your back east? The reason I ask this is a lot of people dont always want to say exactly were they are digging the gold but that can also really throw me off in trying to figure out what the source of your gold is. but I'll help you if I can. also can you put up a photo of the black nuggets.

You can always PM me.

AzNuggetBob


BTW Goldstudmuffin thanks for clastic dike link.

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local digger

That is a very interesting gold area. from what I read about it based on all the mining that went on there. I was a little surprised how much gold has been found in that area. I have a friend that owns a mine in dahlonega georgia and the gold in your area may be part of a simular system. your gold looks very simular to what he's finding.

If there is no sign of mineralization in the main vein. (large quartz)most comercial mines just dig and process all the suface alluvium in bulk and try to stay within a tested zone. because that belt you are refering to is miles wide this can be tough. at this point you could do as Ron suggested you could dig a series of numbered test sample holes in a grid pattern and the resultes of the test sample holes can steer you in the right direction without wasting time and money digging everything. just transfer the numbered results of the test holes to a topo map and use this to guide you later and keep you in the paystreak and leed you to the source. this is what we do at some of the larger mines. also is there enough fine gold to process everything. Ive seen places were there wasn't much fine gold with the nuggets and if this is the case on your property the test hole gridding wont work unless your digging rather large test holes.


On the black nuggets, sometimes dark brown. little is known about them and they are considered rare. some have what appears to be an organic coating. looks almost like a mold. if it is mold I have no idea why it would grow on a nugget. Im not a biologist so I couldn't even venture a guess on them.

Some are coated with maganese.

manganese is not uncommon here in Az. its what causes the some of desert varnish on rock outcroppings. of the black nuggets tested was from an area were the gold is higher than average in mercury. it could be that a manganese oxide or manganese dioxide is attracted to the mercury and attaches itself to the outside of the nugget over time. almost like a natural plating carried by rain water. but just a theory. most of the black nuggets Ive seen are smooth well worn and appear to be very old. some are buried some are sun bakers, laying exposed on the ground.

hope this helps. AzNuggetBob

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