Found two nuggets. Silver or Lead, how to tell?


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Found a bunch of stuff this morning, and these two nuggets have me confused. They seem a bit heavy, maybe lead? how can I tell for sure?

Also several coins, a small pendant (need to determine if silver as well), a wheatie, and 50 centavo piece.

The silver pieces are not magnetic. So that test is out of the way.

Scratched easily with a knife.

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Try your "streak test" on the bottom rim of a coffee cup or saucer where there is no glazing, a piece of paper is not good enough for doing a streak test.

The streak color of Platinum is grayish white, the streak color of lead is lead gray, darker than that of Platinum, the streak color of gold is gold.

Skip

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Skip, what color is the streak from silver, compared to lead and platinum?

Silver would have a silver white streak.

If you have a piece of pure silver, you can do a comparison of an actual silver streak to the streak of your samples, the same goes for lead, gold, and platinum or any other mineral/metal, just make sure you use an area of the object that will not deter/affect the value of it, such as using a piece of jewelry.

Here's a great site to check for mineral data.

http://webmineral.com/cgi-bin/search/search.pl?Match=1&Realm=All&Terms=+silver+mineral+data

Skip

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So, what is the chance of finding two chunks of lead?

Remember, the reason I am even scanning here is because my mom's nextdoor neighbor found a gold nugget in her backyard. So, talk about random chances!!!

I had a great time hiking up in the mountains and digging around an old mine. We ended up finding the Butterfield Stagecoach Trail and messed around on it. Found some old pepper shaker lid, other old rusty and useless stuff.

Still had a great time!

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