What is Fool’s Gold?

Fool’s gold is a mineral called pyrite, also called iron pyrite. Its name comes because it fools people into thinking they’ve found genuine gold.

“Pyrite is usually found in quartz veins, sedimentary rock, metaphoric rock even igneous rock. It has a very cubic form and a nice brassy luster, so it’s confused for gold a lot. There aren’t too many things out there that look like gold besides gold,” said Michael George, Assistant Chief of the Nonferrous and Precious Metals Group in the Mineral Commodities Section of the National Minerals Information Center of the U.S. Geological Survey.

George has been with the USGS (www. usgs.gov) for almost 20 years. He earned his bachelor’s degree in mineral economics from Penn State and his master’s degree from George Mason in geographic and cartographic science.

How Fool’s Gold Differs From Real Gold

Looking at it from a scientific standpoint, fool’s gold and real gold aren’t alike at all.

“Chemically, pyrite is made up of the chemicals iron and sulfur where gold is its own element. Gold only has molecules of gold in it. Pyrite has one iron molecule for every two sulfur molecules. Their chemical compositions are completely different,” explained Cynthia Pridmore, a California Geological Survey (CGS) Senior Engineering Geologist.

Pridmore has spent 33 years with the CGS. Although most of her work has primarily been in earthquake hazards, because gold is California’s state mineral, she feels it’s something all employees should know about.

“Gold doesn’t really have a form, it’s pretty much an amorphic blob when it’s found in nature,” added George. “While pyrite usually has a cubic structure, it usually has flat edges on it. If you see something with flat edges and shiny, you’re pretty much guaranteed that it’s pyrite.”

Simple Tests to Tell the Difference

There are several simple ways to tell the difference between fools’ gold and the real deal. One quick way to tell is if you bite it and it hurts, it’s not gold. However, this test isn’t recommended if you want to keep your teeth!

“This kind of goes back to when you’d watch old movies and you see the gold miner bite on the gold nugget and says, ‘Ah, that’s real gold,’ that’s because he’s denting it with his teeth,” she said. “The gold nugget is going to be soft enough that teeth will dent it. However, if you bite on too many rocks that aren’t gold, you’ll start wearing your teeth away.”

Hardness, however, is one of the easiest tests, but Pridmore has a better solution than the old bite test.

“If you take a metal probe or metal fingernail file or anything that has steel in it and you touch gold, it’ll deform. Kind of like a ball of aluminum foil kind of crushes,” said Pridmore. “Gold is malleable, it’s soft and it can dent easily. If you don’t want to dent it too much, you can dent it lightly and look at it with a hand lens to see the dent in it. The hardness is really important. Pyrite is brittle. You’ll either scratch it or you’ll chip off a piece of it.”

She said another easy way to tell the difference is in color. Pyrite is often described as brassy, but it has a bit of greenish color in it when compared side by side with gold. In the field, you can compare your find to a piece of gold you’ve already confirmed as genuine, like a wedding band.

Both Pridmore and George agree that shape is also a reliable way to tell the difference between fool’s gold and real gold. They both describe pyrite’s shape as cubic. George also describes the edges as straight, while Pridmore describes the crystals of the pyrite as usually being at right angles.

When asked about the most accurate ways to distinguish pyrite from gold, Pridmore suggested panning and George described a fun streak test.

“Gold is heavier than pyrite,” Pridmore said. “If you break the substances up into a fine material and pan it, you’ll see that the heavier mineral is what’s left behind. Pyrite isn’t that heavy, so it’d get flung out of the pan.”

George added that “in Geology 101, we’re taught what’s called the Streak Test. If you take a chunk of pyrite and rub it against a white unglazed porcelain tile, it’ll streak black. It’s very noticeable. But if you use gold, it’ll leave a light yellow streak. All you’re doing is transferring the gold onto the porcelain. It’s really easy to tell. This is a fun test. I used to go to elementary schools and do geology talks, and this was always a fun one to show them. You don’t expect it to happen.”

Other Minerals That Might Fool You

It’s not just pyrite that can fool a person.

“Besides pyrite, sometimes people mistake weathered mica for gold, which is a flaky mineral. But mica is only mistaken when it’s weathered because it’ll usually catch the sunlight. If you see it at a certain angle, it’ll catch the sunlight and reflect back maybe yellowish hue. However, once you get close to it, you’ll clearly note that it’s not gold. It just looks like a flake, like Formica,” said George.

While pyrite (fool’s gold) is the most common mineral mistaken for gold, chalcopyrite also appears and looks like gold, but it’s also brittle and not soft like gold. Weathered mica could look like gold, particularly when you’re panning.

“If you do see gold, you’ll see that little bit of grain in the bottom of the pan with the heavy dark minerals. But mica is sometimes in there, too, because it’s flat and it floats around,” said Pridmore. “Kids get really excited, especially if you’re at the river and you stir up the sand, and you see all those things twinkling at you, that’s mica. It can look like it’s flashing gold at you, but it’s not gold. It scratches very easily. If you take a little metal probe and scratch the mica, it’s brittle. It’ll scratch, but it’ll scratch in crumbs and break into powdery pieces. Whereas gold, if you poke it, it’s going to be soft and not break.”

What’s Pyrite Worth?

Much of the information you find on pyrite declares the mineral relatively worthless. However, that doesn’t mean it’s not used for certain things that can give it some value.

“Back in the ancient times, it was a useful thing to find because it would spark so it was used a lot against steel to start fires. Now, not so much,” said George. “Domestically in the United States, we don’t use it for anything other than pretty rocks, which I guess is a useful thing,” he said. “You’ll often see it as an ornamental rock on somebody’s desk. I’ve got several pieces in my office. It does look nice and pretty.”

Elsewhere in the world, pyrite is used to produce sulfur dioxide to make sulfuric acid. Sometimes it’s used in the fertilizer industry.

Armed with these details on fool’s gold, you should be able tell if those shiny specks are truly gold that’ll put a little cha-ching in your wallet.

This story about fool’s gold appeared in Rock & Gem magazine. Click here to subscribe. Story by Moira McGhee.

The post Get to Know Fool’s Gold first appeared on Rock & Gem Magazine.

Minerals and Metals of the Bible: Timeline

Biblical archaeologists study ancient cultural sites and artifacts to gain insight into the Bible’s Old and New Testaments. Combining archaeology with scriptural interpretation provides a clearer understanding of life as it was and the events that occurred during the biblical period, which extends from 3300 B.C. to the first century A.D.

Archaeologists divide biblical history into three general periods based on the dominant material used in tools and weapons: Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age.

Holy Land Topography

The Jordan Rift Valley dominates the Holy Land’s topography. This rift system began forming 35 million years ago with a westward separation of the African tectonic plate from the Asian plate and fractured the crust into long, parallel faults. The crust between the faults subsided, sometimes thousands of feet, to create a long, linear sequence of narrow rift valleys. The East African Rift System, including the Jordan Rift Valley, is still widening today.

The Jordan Rift Valley extends from Lebanon south for 300 miles to the Gulf of Aqaba. Within it is the Jordan River, the Sea of Galilee, the Dead Sea and the desolate Wadi Araba, all features of biblical significance.

Main Metals of the Bible

The Bible mentions six metals: gold, silver, lead, tin, copper, and iron. Although not mined in the Holy Land, gold and silver played major roles in biblical history. The Bible mentions gold more than 400 times, and silver nearly 300 times.

Metals of the Bible – Gold

During the biblical period, just as today, gold served as a store of value, a symbol of wealth and prominence, and a jewelry metal. It was obtained in trade mainly from sources in Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula, India, and the Sinai Peninsula.

Metals of the Bible – Silver

Silver was scarce in the Holy Land until the Greeks developed the great Laurion silver-lead mines in the fourth century B.C. Silver coins such as Greek drachmas and staters, Roman denarii (the Bible’s “tribute pennies”) and Tyrian shekels, were the standard mediums of exchange throughout the greater biblical region.

Metals of the Bible – Lead

There’s also yielded large amounts of lead which, in the Holy Land, served as rebar in the construction of stone buildings. Holes drilled through adjoining stone blocks were filled with molten lead which then solidified to secure the blocks in place.

Metals of the Bible – Copper

Copper had a great impact on the Holy Land, and most came from the Timna Valley in Wadi Araba near Eilat, modern Israel’s southernmost city on the Gulf of Aqaba. Timna Valley copper occurs as both sulfide and oxide minerals that are emplaced in granite, dolostone and sandstone. Pre-dynastic Egyptian cultures were mining these rich deposits as early as 4000 B.C. Miners initially collected nodules of copper minerals from the surface; later, they followed outcrops underground to carve out large systems of passageways and galleries.

Biblical scholars have long debated how Solomon, the fabulously rich king of Israel from 970 to 930 B.C., amassed his fortune. Many believed that Solomon owned gold mines. But in the 1930s, an American archaeologist suggested that the legendary “King Solomon’s Mines” were the Timna Valley copper mines, an idea initially discredited because the ruins, at that time, could not be dated to Solomon’s reign.

But in 2013, Israeli archaeologists accurately carbon-dated organic remains from the Timna Valley ruins to 930 B.C. — the end of the great king’s reign. Most biblical scholars now agree that copper from the Timna Valley, the world’s earliest example of systematic copper mining, was indeed the source of Solomon’s wealth. Today, the valley, a remote, arid region of spectacular pillars, arches, and canyons, is the site of Timna Valley Park and an adjacent nature preserve. Exhibits at the park museum represent 6,000 years of copper mining.

Metals of the Bible – Iron

Thanks to supplies of Timna Valley copper and Kestel tin, the Bronze Age dawned in the Holy Land about 3300 B.C. Bronze, a copper-tin alloy superior to copper in hardness, durability, and workability, was the primary metal for tools and weapons for the next two millennia. (Many Bible translations erroneously refer to bronze as “brass,” which is a modern copper-zinc alloy.)

About 1500 B.C., the Hittite Empire in Anatolia began smelting iron from bog iron ores. Described in the Old Testament as adversaries of the Israelites, the Hittites produced tempered, carbon-steel alloys that were harder and more durable than bronze, and could be fashioned into sharper-edged weapons. Iron weapons, armor and chariots, the latter a landmark military advancement, soon made the Hittites a feared regional power.

The Hittites zealously guarded their iron-smelting methods. When their empire collapsed around 1250 B.C., Hittite ironworkers scattered throughout the greater Mediterranean region to bring the Iron Age to various regional cultures. By 1200 B.C., iron, obtained from hematite and magnetite deposits in Syria, Anatolia and Wadi Araba, was in widespread use throughout the Holy Land.

Metals of the Bible – Tin

The world’s first great source of tin was Kestel in the Taurus Mountains of Anatolia (now south-central Turkey), where the mining of placer and vein deposits of cassiterite or tin dioxide began about 3400 B.C. Caravans traded this tin throughout the Middle East and beyond. The Kestel ruins contain miles of narrow tunnels and dozens of small smelters that reduced cassiterite to metallic tin.

Minerals and Metals of the Bible – The “Eilat Stone”

The national stone of Israel, “Eilat stone,” also known as “King Solomon’s stone,” consists of intergrowths of blue-green masses of azurite, malachite, chrysocolla and turquoise. Specimens and polished cabochons of Eilat stone have been popular souvenirs of Israel since the nation was founded in 1948. But the specimen supply ended when the last commercial copper mine closed in the 1980s. Since then, much Eilat stone sold in Israel and abroad is similarly colored material from the copper mines of Africa and Arizona.

Main Minerals of the Bible

Minerals of the Bible – Alabaster

Another carving material was alabaster, a dense, fine-grained, compact form of gypsum, or hydrous calcium sulfate, which often occurs in limestone formations. Translucent and often displaying subtle patterns of honey-yellow colors, alabaster is soft and easily carved. Polishing brings out a warm glow similar to that of marble. Alabaster was fashioned into goblets, sculptures, vases, and funerary urns. (Some “alabaster” artifacts from the biblical period consist of the travertine form of calcium carbonate, which has a similar appearance.)

Minerals of the Bible – Soapstone

Stone carvers also worked with soapstone or steatite. Soapstone, a metamorphic rock consisting primarily of talc, or hydrous magnesium silicate, is the softest mineral at Mohs 1.0. It has a “soapy” feel and colors ranging from off-white to grays, blues, browns, and greens. The softest and most desirable carving grades contain about 80 percent talc. Soapstone artifacts from the Holy Land include bottle stoppers, cylinder seals, beads, and figurines. Most of this soapstone came from metamorphic formations in the mountains of present-day Syria and Turkey.

Minerals of the Bible – Brimstone

The Bible mentions brimstone 14 times, always as an idiomatic expression for the wrath of God, as in “fire and brimstone.” The English word “brimstone” is derived from the Old English brynstan, literally meaning “burning stone,” referring to its ability to burn in air. Brimstone is elemental sulfur that frequently occurs in volcanic environments, hence the Old Testament’s association with fire, hell, and God’s retribution. In biblical times, sulfur had many uses in medicine, and as a fumigant and disinfectant.

Sulfur occurs at several sites in the Jordan Rift Valley which, like all rifts, has numerous remnant volcanic fumaroles and active thermal springs, some with condensate and evaporite sulfur deposits.

Minerals of the Bible – Limestone

Two common, often-overlooked mineral resources of great importance in biblical history are limestone and clay. Much Holy Land bedrock is limestone, a marine sedimentary rock consisting of at least 50 percent calcium carbonate. Limestone forms when calcareous skeletal and shell remains of marine life accumulate on sea bottoms, mix with other sediments and lithify into massive formations.

Jerusalem rests atop thick formations of fossiliferous, fine-grained, oolitic limestone with buff, pink, green and brown colors. Since the city was permanently settled around 3000 B.C., this late-Cretaceous Period limestone, now known as “Jerusalem stone,” has been used in much of Jerusalem’s construction.

Jerusalem stone was also the raw material for making lime or calcium oxide. Finely ground stone was calcined (heated) to drive off the carbon dioxide from the contained calcium carbonate, leaving behind white lime.

Multicolored limestone mosaics were a popular art form in the Holy Land during the Roman occupation. Stoneworkers cut colored limestone into thin, half-inch-square, inlay pieces to create elaborate mosaics for interior décor.

Minerals of the Bible – Salt

It’s not surprising that the Bible refers to salt (halite, sodium chloride) more than 30 times. During the biblical period, salt was a widely traded commodity that was used as a food seasoning and preservative, a disinfectant, a ceremonial offering, and even a monetary-like unit of exchange. The Holy Land’s main source of salt was the Dead Sea, which is fed by the Jordan River and has no outlets. Continuous, rapid evaporation in the desert climate maintains the salinity of the Dead Sea at 34 percent, nine times higher than that of seawater. Thick shoreline salt encrustations were the first regional sources of salt.

By 1000 B.C., the systematic mining of rock salt had begun at Jebel Usdum (Mount Sodom) on the Dead Sea’s northwest coast. Jebel Usdum is a five-mile-long, 720-foot-high ridge consisting almost entirely of layers of rock salt that formed 10 million years ago when seawater repeatedly flooded the deepening Jordan Rift Valley and then evaporated. Mining peaked in the second century B.C. when camel caravans regularly transported tons of rock salt to distant markets.

At the southern end of the Jebel Usdum ridge, a 100-foot-tall spire of rock salt is known as “Lot’s wife,” alluding to the Old Testament account of the destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah in which Lot’s wife, while fleeing the city of Sodom, ignored God’s warning not to look back and was turned into a pillar of salt.

Minerals of the Bible – Pitch

Another Dead Sea resource was pitch, or natural asphalt, which is referred to in the Old Testament when God instructs Noah to build an ark and “cover it inside and outside with pitch.” This pitch originated as bituminous (hydrocarbon-rich) limestone. The heat and pressure of deep burial altered the bitumen into partially developed petroleum that mixed with silt and clay, lost its volatile components and formed thick layers of natural, black asphalt. Parts of the Dead Sea floor consist of layers of pitch that sometimes floated to the surface where they were collected, cut into pieces, and shipped to markets.

During the biblical period, most of this so-called “Dead Sea stone” was sold to Mediterranean shipyards as hull-caulking material. Some was traded to Egypt where it was used to waterproof papyrus boats and to Mesopotamia to serve as building mortar. Because high bitumen pitch burned like coal, it was also used as a fuel. Solid, black pieces of pitch, similar in density, color, and carving properties to jet, were fashioned into ornaments.

Minerals of the Bible – Natron

The Bible also mentions “nitre” or natron (sodium carbonate decahydrate), which was used as a soap, antiseptic, disinfectant, food preservative and medicinal compound. Some natron was obtained from the Dead Sea, but most came from northeast Egypt’s huge Wadi el Nutrun (Natron Valley) evaporite deposit. Utilizing its hygroscopicity, the Egyptians employed natron extensively in mummification.

By 1000 B.C., natron’s most important use was in making glass, or “crystal” in the biblical terminology. Glass, which was then very valuable and even served as a gemstone, was made from silica sand, a lime stabilizer and a natron flux to lower the silica’s melting point.

By the first century B.C., new glassblowing techniques could create thin-walled glass vessels in virtually any shape. During the Roman occupation of the Holy Land, glassmakers began producing high-refraction glass by adding lead oxide to the glass mix to increase density and thus refractive index and brilliance.

Minerals of the Bible – Clay

Clay was another common mineral resource of great importance in biblical history. Wet clay has a plastic consistency and is easily moldable. It is mixed with various tempering or stabilizing materials, then fired in ovens where it dries, loses its plasticity, and hardens into permanent, molded ceramics.

By the early biblical time, making ceramics had become a well-developed skill and art that produced pottery, storage vessels, funerary urns, beads, ceremonial objects and writing tablets. Writers used styli to impress characters into soft, wet clay which was then fired into durable tablets.

Many priceless biblical artifacts have survived within ceramic jars. One of the best-known examples came to light in 1947, when a Bedouin herdsman discovered caves in the limestone cliffs along the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea. These caves contained ceramic jars holding one of the 20th century’s greatest archaeological discoveries—the Dead Sea Scrolls. The scrolls are written mostly on parchment, with a few inscribed on papyrus and one on a copper sheet. Without the protection of clay jars, archaeologists believe none of the scrolls would have survived.

Biblical Gemstones

Along with minerals and metals, the Bible also mentions gemstones, notably those of the sacred breastplate of the high priest of the Israelites. Familiarly known as “Aaron’s breastplate” or the “breastplate of judgment,” this golden breastplate was set with 12 different gemstones representing the 12 tribes of Israel and dates roughly to the 14th century B.C.

The Old Testament describes the breastplate and its gemstones in detail. But over many centuries as the original ancient Hebrew text was translated into Greek, Aramaic, Latin and, finally, English, the gemstone identities have become uncertain.

New interpretations of Old Testament scripture combined with modern archaeological and mineralogical data, along with historical information about the availability and sources of specific gem materials during the early biblical period, is providing new ideas about the identity of the breastplate gemstones.

This story about minerals and metals of the Bible previously appeared in Rock & Gem magazine. Click here to subscribe! Story by Steve Voynick.

The post Minerals & Metals of the Bible first appeared on Rock & Gem Magazine.

A Golden History

California has always had a deep history in gold, ever since the 1840s gold rush, where thousands came from all over the world to try and capture their fortune in gold. Though you might not hear about the gold rush in California much anymore, it hasn’t stopped. New claims are being filed each year, and many tourists still come to try their hand at panning gold to get the real experience.

Finding Embedded Gold

Recently, Shannon Poe from the American Mining Rights Association (AMRA), and his partners have been digging in the Screamer Mine near Angels Camp, California. Much of the gold there is embedded in large quartz specimens and it cannot be seen by the naked eye. They have uncovered quite a bit by using metal detectors and then bringing the material back to their shop and slabbing the rocks to see the gold veins run through the center of the quartz. The gold can then be run through the extraction process, or it can be utilized as lapidary-grade material. The slabs containing gold veins can be performed to design cabochons.

Tips For Working With Gold-Embedded Quartz

Although quartz isn’t very complex to work with, adding gold to the mix changes a few things in your setup. To start, quartz and most California materials are generally fractured and can easily fall apart at any time during the lapidary process. Stabilizing the material first is beneficial to ensure getting the most material to work with, without losing any from it falling apart either on the saw or when starting to grind performs.

Next, when cutting the quartz down, use the thinnest blade possible so that you waste very little of the gold content. At this point, you want to inspect all your slabs to ensure the stabilization process effectively filled any fissures in your material and that it will be solid enough to proceed to cab it. If there are open cracks, send it back for a second stabilizing treatment. At this point, be ready to trim out the cabochon preforms.

Cabbing the Quartz

Cabbing gold-embedded quartz adds a little more setup to your machine. This is where you want to completely clean out your cabbing machine and add material to the floor of your bays. Felt is a good option, it will allow the water to pass through it while it gathers all the grinding particles as you shape your cabochons. This way no gold is being wasted. It can be collected and processed at a later time.

Start the cabbing process on an 80-grit steel wheel. Cautiously grind the shape and dome. Continue to check often, as you never know how much gold will be in any area of the material and you don’t want to grind it away. Once the shape is complete, either uses a 140 or 220 soft resin diamond grit wheel to smooth it and remove any remaining scratches left from the course steel wheel.

From this point, continue to the 280 soft resin wheel, and continue to dry it off every so often to ensure all the scratches have been removed. The rest of the way is rather routine, from the 600 grit, all the way up to the 14k grit wheel. Once you’ve finished on the 14k grit wheel, it will be beautifully polished and not much else is needed but maybe a quick polish with either jeweler’s rouge or Zam with a felt tip Dremel bit.

This story about California gold previously appeared in Rock & Gem magazine. Click here to subscribe! Story by Russ Kaniuth.

The post What to Cut: California Gold first appeared on Rock & Gem Magazine.

An A-Ha! Moment

I first realized the value of a metal detector when I saw an amazing gold specimen labeled “The Dragon.” It was perfectly crystallized, about seven inches high and Bryan Lees, a Collector’s Edge dealer, said it would likely sell for six figures. He said it had been found in the Colorado Quartz mine, near Mariposa, California, by miners using metal detectors.

That got my attention. Bryan made arrangements for me to visit the mine to watch miners using metal detectors to scan the walls of the old tunnels and then attack any spot that responded. That was a few years ago and those guys are still having success finding hot spots in that mine!

This is not the only “strike” I’ve seen made using a metal detector. My son Evan lives on a hillside that has an old gold mine on it. He has used his metal detector to find enough pieces of gold ore worth processing.

Metal Detecting in the Richmond Basin

In Arizona, a couple of fellows were rock hunting with metal detectors in the Richmond Basin silver mining district north of Globe, Arizona. They hit it using metal detectors!

Silver nuggets had been collected by the Apaches hundreds of years ago and in the 1800-1900s silver mines operated here. The nearby town of Globe was so named because a large rounded chunk of native silver reminding them of a globe was found near there.

Tiny nuggets of native silver were still found in Richmond Basin, so a couple of them decided to check it out. They walked the washes in the entire Basin with their detectors.

They found one or two small heavy, dull black rocks of tarnished native silver. They decided to get serious and organized a small group of collectors with detectors to check the entire area including the surrounding open desert.

Striking Silver

They found several more small silver nuggets before their efforts paid off when they found two large masses of native silver each weighing in at over 100 pounds. The pieces were less than two feet underground.

The pieces had weathered out of an as yet unknown vein of silver and been buried by years of weathering.

Finding these two masses of silver would make anyone jump for joy. But the best was yet to come. One of the fellows was about done for the day and was scanning the ground as he walked to his vehicle when signals stopped him in his tracks. He was getting wide-ranging signals from something big. This time, they dug down less than two feet and uncovered a mass of silver you only dream about. The silver mass they exposed was almost three feet long, well over a foot wide and many inches thick. The find of a lifetime!

Once exposed and wrapped for protection, it took five guys hours to haul this treasure across the rough desert to a vehicle. When they finally weighed it on the scale, it hit an amazing 417 pounds!

Now that’s what I call a successful day in the field with a metal detector. What’s it worth? You tell me!

This story about can metal detectors detect rocks previously appeared in Rock & Gem magazine. Click here to subscribe! Story by Bob Jones.

The post Can Metal Detectors Detect Rocks? first appeared on Rock & Gem Magazine.

According to the Big Thunder Gold Mine’s website, this is a family-friendly venue accessible for people of all ages and abilities, including wheelchairs, with no stairs to access and well-lit areas.

Where the Mine is Located

Keystone is nestled in the scenic Black Hills, a small mountain range in western South Dakota. This region is rich in Native American culture, American frontier expansion history, gold discoveries, conflicts and sorrows, colossal sculptures and gold mines.

The name Black Hills is a direct translation of the Lakota name Pahá Sápa. It reflects their dark appearance from far away, as they are covered with evergreen trees.

History of the Big Thunder Gold Mine

The Lakota are one of the indigenous people of the Great Plains, also known as Teton Sioux, who arrived from Minnesota in the 18th century. After fighting the local Indian tribes, the Lakota settled in the Black Hills. In 1868, the U.S Government signed the Fort Laramie Treaty establishing the Great Sioux Reservation, exempting the Black Hills from white settlement, however, gold was discovered in 1874 and everything changed. Thousands of miners poured into the area, and the US Government took back the Black Hills and moved the Lakota people.

In the beginning, placer gold in the Black Hills was retrieved by panning the stream beds using a pan, rocker or sluice box. When most of the easily found placer gold was depleted, miners turned to hard rock underground mining, which is more difficult, demanding and expensive. Several gold mines generated the gold rush in the Black Hills. The Keystone Mine was the first big lode mine in 1891, which was combined with the Holy Terror Mine in 1898 (discovered in 1894). By 1900, the two combined mines were producing a record 5,200 ounces of gold every two weeks, according to Dale Baity in Keystone Gold Mines & Black Hills Mining History.

Mine Beginnings

The Big Thunder Mine was originally known as Gold Hill Lode. It was discovered in 1882 and was worked by two German immigrants. The miners drilled the solid rock, trying to reach the adjacent Lucky Boy Mine’s rich vein. In 1907, they intersected the Lucky Boy vein after digging an adit (a horizontal tunnel) 330 feet into the mountain. Unfortunately, the vein had tapered to unprofitable status. In 1914, thirty-five years after the miners started digging, the tunnel reached 680 feet into the mountain and 240 feet underground. The mine was worked on and off until the owner, Julius Engle’s, death in 1921 and is still waiting for modern mining methods to produce again profitable gold.

The Big Thunder Gold Mine Today

The Big Thunder Gold Mine hosts a mining museum, offers an underground mine tour and gold panning opportunities.

The Mining Museum is a replica of the Tykoon Gold Mill. The mill, built in 1895 on the Big Thunder Gold Mine property, processed ore from small area mines.

Thousands of artifacts are on display from three old Black Hills mines. Among the exhibits are one of the three original stamp mills, bell crusher, jaw crusher, winch pulley, elevator equipment, original ore carts, blacksmith equipment, mining tool, and an original assay office.

The tour of the original 1890s underground mine – the tunnel inside the hill – explains how miners dug out the gold ore, crushed it at the stamp mill and recovered the gold. The tour lasts about 45 to 50 minutes and includes both the mining museum and the underground mine. The mine tour rate is $11.95 for adults, $8.95 for children 6-12, and free for children five and under.

Gold Panning at the Mine

Two options for gold-panning are offered at the Big Thunder Gold Mine. One is on-site gold panning, offered in large troughs outside, with a 15 to 20-minute hands-on lesson of how to pan for gold from the mineral-rich sand and gravel using the proper technique.

Gold-panning is available all day. The fee for gold-panning is $11.95 per pan, or $9.95 when combined with the tour. The mine owners place two capfuls of bleach in the troughs to eliminate any viruses and also provide gloves.

The Big Thunder Gold Mine offers a whole day or half-day gold panning at a Black Hills gold claim stream. You will head out with one of their panning experts and pan for gold. You can keep all the finds from your claim-panning adventure. Currently, the rate for adults is $80 for the full day and $50 for a half-day (four hours). A 24-hour reservation is required for claim-panning.

Please visit bigthundermine.com or call (605) 666-4847.

This story about the Big Thunder Gold Mine previously appeared in Rock & Gem magazine. Click here to subscribe. Story by Helen Serras-Herman.

The post Exploring the Big Thunder Gold Mine first appeared on Rock & Gem Magazine.

Gold panning, the simplest form of hydraulic gravitational separation, relies on differences in mineral density, which is measured in specific gravity. The specific gravity of quartz, the primary component of most sands and many rocks, is 2.65. That of native gold is most often between 17.0 and 18.0. Because of gold’s far greater density, it remains in the pan while the common, quartz-based gravels are washed away.

Most Common Concentrates

Most gold-pan concentrates consist of relatively dense, iron-based minerals such as magnetite (iron oxide, ferrous-ferric), hematite (iron oxide, ferric), ilmenite (iron titanium oxide), and chromite (iron chromium oxide), all of which have substantial specific gravities. between 4.3 and 5.3. Their generally dark colors are the origin of the term “black sand.”

With careful panning techniques, minerals with specific gravities as low as 2.9 will remain in the pan concentrate.

These minerals can include everything from the sulfides, oxides, and carbonates of heavier metals to such relatively dense gemstones as diamond, ruby and sapphire (corundum), topaz, garnet, spinel, and chrysoberyl.

Concentrates Aid In Deposit Discovery

Both the historic silver discoveries at Nevada’s Comstock Lode and Leadville, Colorado, were made by gold miners who identified oxidized silver minerals in their pan concentrates. Gold panners also discovered Montana’s five major sapphire deposits.

Sometimes pan concentrates can be a big problem. I once sluiced gold-bearing gravels in an Alaskan creek—where the pan concentrates consisted largely of tiny bits of native lead—from which the gold particles could be separated only by amalgamation.

Even in this age of high-tech mineral exploration, panning remains a valuable prospecting tool for many minerals other than gold. In the late 1980s in northern Canada, pan concentrates led to the discovery of diamond-bearing kimberlite pipes.

Prospecting for ‘Indicator Minerals’ Pays Off

When exploration geologist and prospector Chuck Fipke panned his way across 400 miles of tundra, he was not searching for diamonds per se, but for the “diamond-indicator” minerals that typically associate with diamonds in kimberlite environments, but are much more abundant and readily identifiable.

Fipke was specifically looking for black ilmenite (iron titanium oxide), red pyrope garnet (magnesium aluminum silicate), and green chromium-rich diopside (calcium magnesium silicate), which all have sufficient densities to be retained in pan concentrates.

During several years of prospecting, Fipke never panned a single diamond. He did, however, follow a trail of ilmenite, pyrope, and diopside. He eventually panned a green diopside crystal with no alluvial wear at all—enough to convince him that he was standing atop the eluvial remains of weathered kimberlite pipe. Core drilling revealed a kimberlite pipe that has since been developed into the billion-dollar Ekati diamond mine.

Along with the common black sands, you’ll find an array of other minerals with densities mostly in the 3.0-5.0 specific-gravity range.

Under a loupe, the combination of colors can be eye-catching. The common garnet-group minerals impart bright orange, pink, and red hues. Some concentrates even have a “Christmas tree” appearance when garnets mix with another common, dense mineral—green epidote (basic calcium aluminum iron silicate).

Panning Leads to Fascinating Discoveries

Although many minerals in gold-pan concentrates are abraded and rounded from alluvial wear, some retain enough of their original crystal forms to aid in identification.

So gold pans are not just gold-recovery tools, but geological sampling instruments. Take a closer look at those ubiquitous “black-sand” concentrates and you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the cornucopia of interesting minerals that meet the eye.

This story about gold pan concentrate appeared in Rock & Gem magazine. Click here to subscribe. Story by Steve Voynick.

The post What are Gold-Pan Concentrates? first appeared on Rock & Gem Magazine.

Where is the Gold in Gaming Devices?

Video games are actually just electronic impulses and magnetic charges. Gold, along with other minerals including copper, silver, tin and nickel, is used in the electronic parts that make your game work. The gold is found in the printed circuit boards (PCB) in the game.

How Much Gold is in a Game Console?

There is more gold used in making electronics these days than in making jewelry. Even so, the amount of gold in each device is so tiny it’s hard to even imagine. The weight of gold in a tiny PCB in a game console is only .04% gold. For comparison, an average Lego brick weighs 2.5 grams.

Circuit boards vary greatly in size and thickness, but on average, the entire circuit board is usually only about the thickness of 10 sheets of paper. The layer of gold is only about a half to a tenth as thick as a piece of paper, thinner than a human hair.

Why Use Gold?

Gold has many properties that make it great for use in electronics. It conducts electricity plus it is stable and durable. It also tolerates high temperatures and resists corrosion. The main uses of gold are:

• Electronics
• Jewelry
• Money
• Dental Work
• Aerospace

Where Does Gold Come From?

Gold is a natural element in the earth, but people rarely find gold nuggets in streams or laying on the ground anymore. Gold mostly comes from ore. Ore is the raw material (rock) that contains a more valuable mineral like gold. Usually, there is not even any visible gold in the ore. It can take over one ton of ore, as much as a rhinoceros weighs, to get one ounce of gold, which is the weight of a mouse.

What is it Worth?

Gold is currently worth $1844 per ounce, or a little less than $60 per gram. It would take about 40 cell phones to get one gram of gold.

Environmental Impact

About 70% of U.S. households have video game systems. When they are worn out, what should we do with them? Most game systems, as well as cell phones, TVs, and computers have valuable minerals that can be recycled. This reduces the amount of waste in landfills and reduces the need to mine new minerals. The website recyclenation.com has free information on how to recycle your game console and other electronic devices.

This R&G Kids story about gold in gaming devices appeared in Rock & Gem magazine. Click here to subscribe. Story by Sally Williams.

The post Is Gold Used in Gaming Devices? first appeared on Rock & Gem Magazine.

To the Egyptians, gold, as the color of the sun, was the flesh of the sun god Ra and represented eternal life. The colors of the mask’s gemstones—red, green, and two shades of blue—have great significance in ancient Egyptian symbolism. Red symbolized life-sustaining blood, power, and vitality; green stood for fertility, lush vegetation, joy, and rebirth in an afterlife. Light blue symbolized primordial waters and the daytime sky, dark blue the all-embracing and protecting night sky.

Locating Egyptian Gold

In the early Predynastic Period (about 3100 BCE), Egyptians became the first culture to mine and work gold on a large scale, obtaining gold from placer deposits and as fl from eroded quartz veins. By the time of the New Kingdom (1570 BCE), gold mining had evolved into a royal monopoly with slaves laboring in hundreds of small hard rock mines.

Almost all of Egypt’s gold mines, and its later gemstone mines, were located in the Eastern Desert, the arid expanse of barren ridges and wadis (seasonally dry ravines) between the Nile and the Red Sea. Geologically, the Eastern Desert forms part of the western edge of the 4,200 mile-long Great Rift Valley, the Earth’s largest crustal rift that is the key to Egypt’s gold mineralization.

Geologic Rifts

Geologic rifts are separations in the crust that appear as long, linear surface depressions. Rifts form when tectonic plates drift apart or when uplifting “domes” break the rigid crust. The Red Sea section of the Great Rift Valley began forming 55 million years ago when the African and Asian plates collided, then separated.

As separation progressed, long, narrow, crustal blocks between the two plates subsided to create the depression now filled by the Red Sea.

The Red Sea is the Great Rift Valley’s most prominent topographic feature. The crustal faulting and fracturing that accompanied its formation provided conduits for intrusive and extrusive igneous activity.

Associated mineral-rich hydrothermal fluids emplaced veins of gold-bearing quartz. These veins, eventually exposed by erosion, were the source of Egypt’s gold.

Royal Egyptian Gold

By the time Egypt had attained its height of cultural development in the New Kingdom, its gold workers had mastered the techniques of fusing, lost wax casting, engraving, embossing, and hammering the metal into thin, workable sheets. They turned most gold into jewelry for royalty and the elite, and into decorative and ceremonial objects to adorn temples and accompany deceased royalty into their tombs.

Gold from the Eastern Desert contains varying amounts of silver, sometimes more than 20 percent. Although lacking the metallurgical ability to separate the silver, the Egyptians were aware that varying silver content produced gold of different colors. They used this knowledge artistically in Tutankhamen’s funeral mask.

Tutankhamen’s Funeral Mask

Many of ancient Egypt’s most prized gemstones and gem simulants appear in Tutankhamen’s funeral mask. English archeologist and Egyptologist Howard Carter recovered the mask in 1923 from a tomb in the Theban Necropolis in the Valley of the Kings, an ancient burial site near the present-day city of Luxor (formerly Thebes). It was one of the few tombs that had not been previously looted.

Archeologists believe the face of the mask combines the imagined physical features of Osiris, the Egyptian god of the afterlife, with those of Tutankhamen. The mask is 22 inches high, 15.5 inches wide, and 19 inches deep; it weighs 22 pounds, with gold accounting for 95 percent of its weight. It consists of two types of gold sheets between one and three millimeters (.04 to .12 inches) thick. Most of the mask is 22.5-karat gold but, in an artistically brilliant touch, the face is 18.4-karat gold which, with its lighter color, gives the face a subtle, life-like radiance.

Gems of the Mask

The mask is inlaid with hundreds of pieces of semiprecious gemstones, faience, and glass. The eye outlines are of lapis, the iris and pupils of milky quartz and obsidian, and the elaborate collar consists of rows of cylindrical bits of red carnelian, green turquoise, blue-green amazonite, and blue and green glass and faience. The striking blue stripes in the headdress that appear to be lapis are instead dark-blue glass.

That gold was abundant during the New Kingdom is evident in Tutankhamen’s five-room tomb, which was filled with hundreds of solid-gold and gold-gilded objects from large chariots to tiny figurines. The interior coffin of the pharaoh’s three-part sarcophagus consisted of 240 pounds (2,880 troy ounces) of gold that would be worth $5.7 million today.

Mining Gold

Despite its advanced gold-working methods, ancient Egypt’s mining technologies remained primitive. Slaves broke rock with handheld or hafted stone mauls. Most mines were surface pits and trenches, although slaves also drove narrow workings hundreds of feet underground to follow gold-bearing quartz veins. Slaves manually crushed the ore, then recovered the gold by dry shaking or by hauling the ore 50 to 100 miles to wash it in the waters of the Nile. Egypt’s first significant mining advancement was the introduction of iron (actually low-grade carbon steel) tools during the Late Period.

Just how much gold the ancient Egyptians mined will never be known, but the German geological-archaeological research team of geologist Dietrich Klemm and Egyptologist Rosemarie Klemm estimates the total Egyptian production at 7.1 tonnes, or roughly 227,200 troy ounces.

Historically, this would amount to most of the gold mined worldwide before Roman times. From a modern perspective, it is surprisingly little, amounting only to the output of a modern, medium-sized, open-pit gold mine for a single year.

Turin Papyrus Map

Ancient Egypt’s gold-mining history is undocumented except for the Turin Papyrus Map. Drawn about 1150 BCE to support a 5,000-man quarrying expedition to obtain sandstone blocks for royal sculptures, it is now displayed in the Museo Egizio in Turin, Italy.

The six-foot-long Turin Papyrus Map, the world’s oldest known topographical and geological map, depicts stone quarries and numerous gold mines along a nine-mile section of the Eastern Desert’s Wadi Hammamat mining area. It accurately presents different rock types as black and pink hills and depicts lithologi- cally diverse wadi gravels as varicolored dots. It even provides textual information on quarrying and gold mining.

Egyptian Gold Today

Today, Egypt still produces gold. The nation’s first modern gold mine, the Sukari Mine, began production in 2010 in the Eastern Desert where gold was first mined more than 5,000 years ago. That the ancient Egyptians left much low-grade gold behind is apparent in Sukari’s production figures: the mine has already recovered four million troy ounces of gold and has twice that amount as ore reserves waiting to be mined.

Tutankhamen’s tomb may even yield a few more surprises. Recent work with ground-penetrating radar indicates that two chambers remain hidden behind the tomb. While it is unlikely that these chambers will yield another golden funeral mask, their contents may add yet another chapter to the story of ancient Egypt’s experience with gold and gemstones.

This story about Egyptian gold previously appeared in Rock & Gem magazine. Click here to subscribe. Story by Steve Voynick.

The post Egyptian Gold – Ancient Treasure first appeared on Rock & Gem Magazine.

Gold is a native element that resists forming mineral compounds. Of the several gold compounds, only two are sometimes available to collectors: sylvanite and calaverite. Other less often available species include nagyagite — a lead, gold, antimony sulfide, and petzite — a telluride. Meanwhile, krennerite — a gold and silver telluride, is so rare I’ve only seen it in photographs.

On the other hand, silver readily forms mineral compounds with copper, arsenic, sulfur, and other elements. Silver compounds have regularly been found in quantity in many of the world’s great silver deposits. They often occur as excellent specimens available for sale if you can afford them. You certainly see silver minerals on display in many museums and private collections. Among the many silver species, there are uncommon silver species, including chlorargyrite, dyscrasite, and polybasite, which are seldom available for sale.

These few uncommon gold and silver minerals are certainly worth collecting when available. Some are also the subject of fascinating true stories related to their discovery. Did you know, for example, that one gold compound found in quantity in a rich gold-producing area of Australia was thought to be fool’s gold, so it was tossed on the dumps and later used as road fill in the developing town? You can guess what happened to those roads when someone figured out the “fool’s gold” dump rock was really gold. Fortunately for the state of Colorado, no one has dug up the “Million Dollar Highway” between Ouray and Silverton in the San Juan Mountains. It is so named because the road gravel was hauled in from nearby silver and gold mine dumps.

ROMANIA’S REIGN ON THE UNCOMMON

Historically, one of the better sources of uncommon gold species is Transylvania, now known as the Baia Sprie region of Romania. It has been producing gold species since before the Romans invaded the area. The region was the largest gold deposit in Europe. The deposits produced not only fine crystallized gold but also some of the finest rare gold and silver telluride species known, like nagyagite, petzite, calaverite, sylvanite, and others.

Since the gold deposits in Romania have been one of the great sources for gold and silver tellurides, it is no surprise the area is the type locality for the metal element tellurium. Named for “tellus” and “earth” in Latin by Martin Klaproth, tellurium is one of the few natural elements that will combine with gold and sometimes silver to form such rare mineral compounds as petzite, calaverite, nagyagite, and sylvanite.

Nagyagite crystallizes in the monoclinic system, but crystals are rare. They tend to be small and dark grey tightly clustered on a matrix. Nagyagite was often encountered in Romania in relatively shallow, low-temperature hydrothermal deposits with other rare gold specimens. I’ve only handled one or two nagyagite specimens and was fortunate to own one for a time after I traded for it from a private collection years ago.

Calaverite is far more common than nagyagite but is still uncommon. The gold deposits of Kalgoorlie, Australia, produced quantities of calaverite, which went unidentified as a gold mineral because it looked so much like fool’s gold, so it was tossed aside. Needing road fill, Kalgoorlie used the dump rock with the lustrous silvery to pale yellow metallic species until it was shown to be gold telluride. The local prospectors immediately began digging up the roads to recover the yellow metal. I’ve been to Kalgoorlie since, and the streets are fine now!

CRIPPLE CREEK’S CLAIMS TO FAME

Here in this country, calaverite is normally an uncommon gold species but was very common at Cripple Creek, Colorado, the richest gold discovery made in that mountainous state. Again, this gold telluride was not recognized early on, and many who had an opportunity to strike it rich in the Cripple Creek area passed it by until the 1890s when Cripple Creek became the last big gold strike in Colorado.

Gold and silver discoveries were being made all over Colorado in the second half of the 1800s, yet Cripple Creek was really late to the rush because the gold went unrecognized. It was known earlier by a local cowboy, Bob Womack, who struggled for years convincing folks he had found gold on Pike’s Peak’s western slopes. Womack was sure he had found gold, but no one would listen because the samples he had were calaverite and sylvanite and didn’t look like gold. He even displayed specimens in Colorado Springs’ store windows, trying to find investors, but no luck. Finally, the ore was checked and proved to be rich in gold species calaverite and sylvanite, and the rush was on. Of course, poor Bob ended up being aced out of his finds.

Did you also know Cripple Creek was named for a cow that fell in a creek and broke one of its legs?

Once the word “gold” was out, the place boomed, fortunes were made, and amazing true stories about Cripple Creek abound. One of my favorite Cripple Creek tales is about William Stratton. In 1891, he staked claims and began mining his Independence mine. He labored for months but was not very successful. He finally had had enough and decided to lease his holdings to another miner, which he did. On his last day underground in the Independence mine, he broke into a very rich gold vein.

Now, what to do? He knew the lessee would take over the mine the next day, so he buried his discovery and held his breath for a month. The lessee worked the mine for a month without finding Stratton’s hidden gold vein. On the last night of the lease, Stratton was having dinner with the lessee. As they sat in front of a roaring fire enjoying their cigars, the leaseholder admitted failure, pulled out the lease, and handed it to Stratton. Stratton was shaking so much he simply suggested the fellow toss the lease in the fire, which he did, not realizing he had thrown away a fortune! Stratton worked his rich vein in the Independence mine and became one of the first Cripple Creek millionaires with one of the richest mines.

Stratton’s near-miss is just one of the true stories of the area. The accidental discovery of a cave lined with gold is even harder to believe but is true. It happened at the Cresson mine in Victor, the town next to Cripple Creek. How would you like to be a miner who broke in-to a big cave lined with sparkling gold crystals? It happened more than once in Cripple Creek. In 1953, a small cave was encountered lined with calaverite and sylvanite crystals. The Cresson mine has since proven to be the richest property in the Cripple Creek/Victor area. It was operated underground and later as an open-pit until recent years.

But the earlier 1914 find in the Cresson is really beyond belief. In the early 20th century, during the drifting of a tunnel, Rick Roelof’s crew broke into a room-sized cave measuring 36 feet by 14 feet by 23 feet. The cave walls were covered with crystallized gold. Reports don’t suggest if it was native gold, calaverite, or sylvanite, but it was probably all three minerals. The owners immediately installed a steel door, and the cave walls were “mined” in secrecy. I shudder to think of the myriad crystallized specimens miners scraped off the walls, bagging them and hauling them to the surface for smelting! It took a month to mine all the cave’s gold, and the total value is something over $50,000 at $20 an ounce! Today, that’s millions of dollars.

One of the interesting things about Cripple Creek gold, where so much was in the form of calaverite and sylvanite, is what we call blister gold. More than 50 years ago, you could go into Cripple Creek shops and buy a specimen of blister gold, a small ore specimen that had been heated to drive off the tellurium leaving behind small bubbles of yellow gold on the rock surface. Today, if you are looking for either of these uncommon gold compounds from Cripple Creek, check on the internet, and check with every local dealer in Denver.

Silver species are far more available these days than gold compounds. Even something as uncommon as dyscrasite shows up now and then. Some years ago, dyscrasite was almost never available, and then a large batch of this silver antimonide came on the market from Pribram, Czech Republic. The specimens are lovely clusters of elongate cylindrical shafts spraying off in all directions. They are black with a steely luster, and many of the crystals were twinned. Occasionally, a specimen of this material is available for sale even today.

The original dyscrasite was found in Germany and was given a name meaning “bad alloy” because it messed up the smelting process. More recently, it has been found in the silver mines of Morocco, and a few specimens from that locality appear on the market at times.

Polybasite, a very complex silver species, is not rare. Composed of lead, copper, arsenic and antimony, it is a lustrous black with slightly visible red reflections on its edges that helped identify it. The problem is it can easily be confused with other silver sulfides, so it is often mislabeled. There are enough specimens available on the internet and occasionally at a show, so a collector who can afford polybasite should have little trouble finding a specimen. Be sure to check for that red reflection on a mislabeled specimen.

The hard-to-get silver specimen is chlorargyrite, silver chloride. It forms close to the surface of silver deposits, where weathering has broken down the exposed silver compounds. The mineral is very soft, hardness one to two, and seldom forms crystals. It is most often found in waxy masses during the initial opening of a deposit, proving a rich ore source initially. It is often referred to as horn silver, and it is a light-sensitive mineral, so it readily fades from a light yellow to dark brown to even purple. It can form crystals, small and usually brownish in monoclinic form, but these are really rare. As a silver ore, it was very important in the very early days of mining at Tombstone, Arizona, and other deposits, but collector specimens are quite difficult to obtain and are seldom very attractive.

Calaverite was first found in the gold veins of the Stanislaus gold mine, Calaveras County, California, in 1881, hence the mineral name. I suspect calaverite had been encountered before that in California, but it could very well have been ignored for years.

Calaverite is gold telluride. It has a high metallic luster but is most often seen as a gray-white lustrous crystal, often showing minor striations, and does not resemble the pure metal. It can occur with a light yellow color but was often bypassed, as earlier mentioned, in Kalgoorlie, Australia. Chemically, calaverite is closely related to sylvanite, gold, silver telluride, and if you find one, you should find the other. Good luck!

For the serious collector, these uncommon to rare gold and silver species are not prize winners, but as very hard-to-get species, they are well worth the hunt when found.

The post Exploring Legendary Hard-to-Find Gold and Silver first appeared on Rock & Gem Magazine.

By Antoinette Rahn

Ajay Bansal’s pursuit of a career in the gemstone industry began when he was attending college in New York in the late 1990s. Juggling a full academic course load and learning the gem business while overcoming various obstacles was a lot to handle at the same time and at a young age, but he did it, and it’s more than paid off for this passionate owner of Bestingems.com.

All of the juggling, learning, maneuvering, and patience he practiced when first starting not only helped to hone his sharp business mind and work ethic, it also prepared him for doing business during a pandemic and doing so successfully.

“You always have to be on your toes to stay in business,” Ajay said. “Market conditions and customer requirements change so quickly and so fast that if you are not ready to adapt in a timely manner, you will be left behind. COVID-19 is a prime example of this. Within a week from 80 trade shows a year, we came down to zero shows. But we were quick enough to learn and adapt.”

The BIG (Bestingems.com) team, which includes around 15 employees, was always interested and eager to work on the company website and develop an app. However, given the number of shows and travel they did, finding the time was always a challenge until the pandemic changed the landscape of how they, and a vast majority of companies, do business.

Changing their approach from a largely show-focused operation to in-office and online sales, Bestingems.com now has inventory in the office all of the time, which makes for even more quick and complete order fulfillment, Ajay explained.

“Our online sales in 2020 were already 60 percent higher than 2019, and with the new website and app launching, we are expecting exponential online growth moving forward,” he added.

As history reveals, Ajay’s keen strategic business sense and passion for a full future has been at work since he began his operation in 1999. Among his earliest and most substantial decisions was to marry and move. Ajay married Shikha in 2001, and she became an essential part of the business right off the bat. Shikha also traveled and attended trade shows before having the couple’s first child in 2005. Their first child’s birth changed Shikha’s role from traveling and shows to taking care of other crucial aspects of the business, including designing and placing orders for semi-mounts and gemstones, quality control, managing inventory marketing strategy, and customer service, among other things.

Today, Shikha oversees many aspects with perfection while working 50 plus hours a week and taking care of two demanding teenagers.

Although the current show schedule is still light, traffic to the website and through the app is anything but, and the strategic decision to call the Midwest home serves BIG well still today whether Ajay and his team are traveling or welcoming visiting buyers.

It’s not only been location and the show schedule that’s changed over the years. The business operation has evolved a lot in 10 years, Ajay reports. Cabochons have long been a significant part of the inventory BIG offers, but a growing interest in ready-made jewelry prompted Ajay and his team to expand their offerings and services to meet the need.

“We have gemstones in cabs — in almost every stone on the planet, in calibrated sizes,” Ajay explained. “Since the cost of manufacturing is going up in the USA every day, now customers’ interest has shifted to ready-made jewelry. This leads us to 14K gold semi-mounts that have become a huge part of our inventory recently. Now we have more than 5,000 rings, earrings, and pendants, [as well as] 14K gold semi-mounts with diamonds, in stock at a given time.”

In addition to the inventory, customers also choose BIG for custom mounting and setting services.

“We do custom designs and have them manufactured in our overseas unit in Mumbai, India,” said Ajay. “We have a GIA graduate on staff (and) a bench jeweler on staff (who happens to be the face of our company), which help (with) identifying gemstones and getting stones mounted in a timely manner.”

Whether BIG is expanding its virtual presence, serving wholesalers at its Ohio office, working with customers to fulfill gemstone purchases, or creating custom jewelry to cherish for a lifetime, the BIG team is happily here for it all. All the evolution, all the growth and opportunities, and all of Ajay Bansal’s hopes, dreams, and passions to serve and celebrate the gemstone industry.

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The post Bestingems.com: Grateful for the Present and Building Toward the Future first appeared on Rock & Gem Magazine.