One way that gold prospectors look for gold is too try and locate its source, the place where to gold forms in the earth. In epithermal gold deposits, it is quite common for sizable gold veins to run through quartz rock, and these specimens can be located using a quality metal detector.

Often these gold in quartz specimens are very beautiful and interesting, causing them to be highly valued by mineral collectors, sometimes even more than the value of the gold itself. With specimen-grade gold such as this, it is recommended that the gold miner seek out collectors that will pay a premium for them rather than crushing these mineral specimens by quartz processing machine.

However, there are occasions when it is in the prospectors best interest to crush these pieces of ore. We will discuss this in further detail below.

Despite the fact that gold is a unique metal with very distinctive characteristics, it is perhaps one of the most misidentified minerals there is.

This is certainly due to its high value, and the desire of so many people to find the precious metal. This desire often clouds their judgement to a point where any shiny rock is considered gold.

The fact is that gold is rare. Even low-grade gold ore that has only small amounts of visible gold present is still extremely rare. Yet people are constantly finding different types of shiny rocks and hoping that they have found the real-deal.

Differentiating real gold from the huge variety of “fool’s gold” out there is a different discussion, but suffice it to say that I would be very rich if I had a dollar for every person who has showed me a shiny rock and asked if it is gold or not.