Chris, I figure I would be the luckiest woman on this earth if I could find a gold nugget !!! I would be so busy looking for gold, I would probably overlook anything other than a piece of gold. That’s OK though, I would just be happy taking in The Great Outdoors and coming up with a little or big nugget of gold. As I continue to watch these videos, the countryside is absolutely gorgeous. Everyone of you seem to have a special place (or your claim) to share with us. Water running through a little canyon with clean (litter free) areas that you can just sit and enjoy. Beautiful waterfalls without graffiti sprayed all over the rocks. I just couldn’t think of anything better !!! Truly God’s Country. Thanks a million.
Hello there from New Zealand 👍 , I'd love to meet a woman who is as interested in the outdoors and gold as you are , great to know that there is hope for me yet 😆 , my life would be complete with some one such as your self with the ZEST and appreciation for the beautiful places the world has to offer.. May God bless you with a lovely Nugget !! 🎉 ✨🤗 👍
I found a platinum nugget above Canyon City Oregon with my metal detector.Yes it was a real one it was in a dry creek bed below an old adit dug into serpentine. It was 1 1/4 in. long by 3/8 in thick. Canyon creek has all kinds of green to black serpentine.
Up to 70% of serpentine (California's state mineral) can be asbestos, so crushing this ore for platinum has its risks. In the early days of mining in Russia, platinum was so abundant and resistant to rusting that they made frying pans out of it. Expensive metal detectors with higher frequency ranges will pick up platinum in rock, if the content is high enough. A short distance off Route 80 in the foothills of California, I have found platinum with my Minelab metal detector, set on A/M (all metal), platinum sets off the alarm with a numerical code reading of 32. It's difficult to process this ore, so other than sending in an assay it is simply sitting in a few buckets in my storage locker. Every time I'm in that area I pick up a little more and someday I may have enough to pay someone else to process it. Cheapest processor I have found, so far, has a $2,500 minimum charge. Very interesting video, Chris. Thanks for doing such a great job with it, as usual.
Thanks for all the good information. I will purchase your book. I own 1000 acres on Arizona/New Mexico border where gold was mined in the old days but know very little of what to look for. I have many canyons here with black sand and bed rock so I am researching and testing. I will be watch your videos to learn more. Thanks
One small gold mine in the south end of the Panamint Valley California revised their operation to also recover platinum. People can get so focused looking for gold anything else of value goes unseen.
Just started watching your videos, and immediately subscribed; this is exactly the kind of information i have been looking for. I love how rich and informative your videos are, and thank you for taking the time to make such good content for us greenhorns, who want to get into prospecting. : )) And I am looking forward to purchasing you book very soon.
Chris blessed as you are ....you know what ... Many miss all these adventures of enjoying the nature with sense of treasure hunting...money may be might not be an option for me but yes trying out natural vastness as small ant makes me feel blessed with pleasure ...and yes of course with knowledge through your videos makes trip more enthralling.
I do admit that I have been blessed may times over. I do have a lot of fun getting out and exploring - its not always about the money. Glad you enjoyed the video.
Great video on Platinum, Chris... thanks! I have purchased several copies of your book; for myself and to give to friends who are whan-a-bee Gold Prospectors. You are the best!
What color were the rocks you, as kids, sold.....pink?? Grey?? Blue/Green?? If so, you still made money by selling, per say, just not all the money....wink.
If they were common and abundant and had no precious metals or gems instead of them, then you didn't lose anything. I would have worried more about the tourists possibly overpaying. And with a name like Silverton, it sounds like silver was plentiful in that town.
Thank you , I just love your videos and can’t wait to read your book .I really appreciate the time and effort you put into making these videos and explaining everything so clearly . You’re amazing , keep up the great work , we don’t learn enough about our environment and surroundings as we should in school . It’s shocking how little most people really know about basic elements and nature . . Have a great day .
This is by far, the most in depth explanation of everything I was looking for. I am no geologist but I just like to dig holes in the ground and find cool things plus locate fossils. So today I had went gold panning for the first time. And what I see from my finds look more like platinum where the gold should be sitting in the pan. Now, this area is very interesting because this area was impacted by a meteorite 450+ mil years ago (Rock Elm WI). This area is very unique in ways. It also contains a rare mineral named reidite. This type of thing gets me all interested.
@@ChrisRalph We need more people to be interested in this subject. So THANK YOU for creating videos on this topic! Younger generations need to learn this knowledge from these videos.
Hi I have some meteors stone collection. But I don't know how to classify it. Or what metreors that I have found and collected. If someone interested. I want to sell it.
Great video back in the day when they were panning in the creeks, they had no idea what the platinum nuggets were so they would dump them off to the side and leave them.
Hey Chris, it was nice talking with you today! See 26:13 for what I was talking about, in the Seattle area... I enjoy your videos when I can't get out (rain/snow) ;)
So I said the platinum was from Washington state and yes, there is platinum in Washington. I mentioned that if you are in the Seattle area or other places in Washington, you might want to follow up on these occurrences. I did not say these nuggets are from the Seattle area. From a Washington state Report: Platinum occurs in a number of places in this State and small amounts are produced almost every year as a by-product of placer gold mining. The platinum probably occurred originally very sparingly disseminated through certain basic igneous rocks and as these have been weathered it has been freed and collected along the streams with the sands and gravels. Localities are known to occur in the Cascade Mountains, where such rocks are exposed over large areas and along the st reams flowing from them platinum may be expected. A small amount of platinum has been produced from the south fork of Lewis River in Clarke County. Negro Creek, near Mt. Stuart, and Mad River in Chelan County are said to have produced some platinum. Near Anacortes in Skagit County platinum is said to occur in a massive chromite. Platinum is also reported from Slate Creek, Similkamene district, Little Mt. Chopaca; and near Riverside, Okanogan County; from placer gold mining of the beach sand in Clallam County; and from black sands at Beards Hollow in Pacific County.
Middle fork American river has some platinum, I've read stories of historical finds and have actually found a small platinum nugget from there as well. Always keeping an eye out for the stuff!
The middle fork (American) is one of those places I've intended to prospect more seriously but have done only a little. One of these days! Glad you enjoyed the video.
@@ChrisRalph you seem to know what your talking about so I have this question for you have you ever heard of minerals and gemstone rocks being pushed out of the ground on their own and I'm talking within an 8 hour period and multiple ones forming trails and when they are gathered together and put in piles together they react to each other positively and negatively forming patterns and symbol shapes in very precise ways. This is a very serious question and I do hope you can give me some feedback and I appreciate your time sir, thanks.
Hello Chris, writing here o congratulate You for the great work you`re been doing here, teaching or at least enlighting people on how to start prospecting, and I am one of those whom are geting to learn here, my intent is to (soon enough) make an youtube chanel to pass on everything i am learning here with you and also other great prospectors, as I`m from brazil and am living here atm, my goal is to make a chanel in portuguese/english so people from here can learn mining language in english and maybe people from around the world learn the portuguese mining language, I hope you don`t mind the passing on of your knowledge. And once again, Thanks for Your great work here!
I sent you an email with a picture of what I believe is my platinum nugget that I recently found while gold panning in Oregon. Thank you for sharing your information with us all. 💙
Still trying to catch up with your old videos, love 'em! Would love a re-visit on platinum group metals and prospecting for them in the US. I know Northern Cal, SW AZ, and a few places have a little, but it'd be quite interesting to know more about prospecting for it in the regions, how to spot it etc. With the price of platinum, rhodium, etc currently, it's time to go scratch around some hillsides! Keep up the good work! I cannot believe you don't have a lot more subscribers! We need to point more rock geeks at your channel!
I've got a friend who thinks he has a silver nugget but watching this I kinda think he has platinum. How can you tell between platinum and silver? I know where I'm at in copper country wasn't a place you mentioned for finding platinum but also I know we have at least trace elements of the platinum metals groups coming out of our copper mines here.
Hi Chris. Thank you so much for not only sharing your knowledge, but for doing it in a positive, friendly, fun, academic, and joyful way. I stumbled upon your videos in the last month or so and I was wondering as I begin to prospect, what your thoughts are on how drones are used in prospecting. Could you please give suggestions of usage. Thanks
Wanted to thank you for your great videos! I'm a hobbyist prospector and very much enjoy the science. Quick question on the topic of platinum nuggets and magnetism. Certainly, pure platinum is not magnetic. However, I've read that metallic platinum containing iron is at least as common as pure platinum. This information was on the Internet, so it has to accurate, right ? :) Assuming that you agree with the above comments, how would you go about identifying ferrous platinum metal (short of sending suspect metal off for assying)? It's specific gravity will be significantly less than pure platinum (given that it is a mixture of platinum and iron), it can have at least some iron oxide covering it, and it will be attracted to a magnet.
@@ChrisRalph : Apologies, my terminology might be a bit off. The following is a link to mindat.org. Discusses Ferroan Platinum (10% to 50% iron -- can be magnetic, depending on amount of iron) and links to info about Isoferroplatinum (~7% iron -- not magnetic), and Tetraferroplatinum (~23% iron -- is magnetic). Additional googling required to find information about proportion of iron to platinum. www.mindat.org/min-1509.html
Hello from Ireland bud. I enjoyed your video. The Irish government are undertaking a massive survey of the country's minerals and have discovered good amounts of platinum in my home county. The survey is called Tellus if your interested in giving it a look. Check out the east coast
This is so awesome. I finally had some time to watch it again. Please keep this coming and go even deeper... with the mining- extraction locations just like you are doing..
Just double clicked today, although I shamefully admit I’ve been watching and always been learning for a while now. I find quite a bit of serpentine in my area (interior BC) which is often encasing calcite and always has black crystals studding them... chorolite (?) or something I thought.
I was exploration drilling at the Stillwater Complex in MT. back in 1979-80. Very interesting area. We hit it big! I do believe that a South African company is running the operation now. Ps. I live now real close to Duluth and a mining co. named Polymet has been trying to get approval from the environmentalists for about 15 years now. I think they are getting close. I know that they have drilled thousands of holes core sampling and figure that it has 10 times at least the PGM as the Stillwater Complex. I wish them well. We need those rare minerals!! Great presentation on this little known subject!
I was just doing a little research and was wondering, where would I sell these nuggets if I were to find them? And also seen on eBay where people are selling similar looking nuggets calling them meteorites. Thank you for your time.
Color is a bad way to do metal analysis. Platinum which worth about $1000 per ounce is pretty much the same color as mild steel which is worth $30 a ton. The meteorites are largely an iron steel rich in nickel. They are definitely not the same thing. Platinum can be sold to refiners. I plan to do a video on turning your finds into cash in a couple months. I'm glad you enjoyed the video!
@@ChrisRalph I believe I found a beautiful nugget on a steep lake bank near Mariposa CA, I did see serpentine on the roadcut on the highway going there. It was a beautiful luster, like the butter of metals in my opinion. I sold it for a small amount to an eager rock trader at a rock show. Though he insisted it was a simple camp nugget, he was extremely eager to buy it from me. It seemed to warm in my hand as I remember it. Heavy, not light at all. I wasn't looking for it but was looking at gravel beds in the lake basin.
@@ChrisRalph I used to find platinum in my sluice box when I was dredging for gold in the Trinity Mountains, albeit not very much, but it was present. Those were the days....
I reside along a river which runs down from the geysers in Northen Calif close to Mendocino and Sonoma Counties lots of Serpentine here as well along with garnets, river jade and quartz I would love to learn more about what gems and minerals are indigenous around here, I'd be thrilled and would enjoy your expertise and experience rockhounding.
Hello I just finished watching you video, I enjoyed it btw. Anyway my grandfather past away last year. While cleaning out one of his small barns I found a gray metal bar that he or possibly his father made. My great grandpa was a miner and my grandpa helped him also. The bar is 8” x 3.5” x 1.5” and weighs 10.4 lbs. it was exposed to the weather but has not rust or corrosion on it. I’m curious as to what it could be. It’s similar in color to the platinum nuggets in your video. How might I go about identifying it? I’m located in central California. Thanks
Zinc? lead? Stainless steel? Tin? pewter? there are plenty of possibilities, so impossible to say without testing. That's so light a weight, it could not possibly be platinum. A platinum bar that size would be 30 pounds. I'd guess pewter or zinc as the most likely, but who knows. ....
Thanks for this video not much info out there on wild platinum 😀..I’ve found what I believe to be very small platinum pickers when prospecting in the south west mountains of curry county OR also a bit in the beach sands after a big storm….Im very excited now about the time I found a chunky rock unusually heavy for its size w/ streaks/crystal matrix of grey looking metal found in a creek bed…I’m desperately now searching for that dang rock after watching this video. 😂
Today I'm about to go out to a B grade placer for platinum and it's group metals out in California. Just wanted to say Thanks for the inspiration to get out and start prospecting, and for the videos and all the helpful advice therein. Keep up the great work!👍 (I Will update this comment after I get back with anything that I find or don't find .) Update, found 1 speck of platinum and a whole lot of black sands with what might be some extra extra small iridium specks. Had lots of fun but lost a pan and classifier to the river. Further prospecting is needed to determine if there is enough platinum to work the area.
I've had a large rock for 30+ years, no one seems to have the same opinion on what it is but many want to buy it. Love to find someone who REALLY knows. Looks like Platinum.
@@ChrisRalph tried that, they wanted to buy it for 600$ but couldn't say for sure what it was. Then we showed some gold buyers that came here, they said it was silver and offered 500$. It's extremely heavy, should weigh 5 lbs but weighs 15. I'll just keep it on my shelf forever. 😁
@@Dan0rioN the closest place to me is about four hours away. A rock and gem show came near here they said it was silver and offered 600$ not really interested in selling it just want to know what it is. I also have a place I dig black rocks much like Apache tears but not. No one seems to know what they are either. I have several great mysteries 😆
@@ogremgtow990 i live in ny . so im not allowed to keep anything of value that i find so there is no point , pretty sure i make a cupel with a lead sponge and remelt it in a bone ash crucibal . at tht point id do acid washes to disolve and suspend everything but the pgms , once the pgms are seperate, i would wash it with disgilled water to remove any acid left over and melt it again to make the platinum ingot. As far as refining the differant pgms into individual elements, id have to have almost a commercial level fo pgm ore to make it worth the expenses. Good Idea though.
@@coreymerrill3257 Good luck finding a furnace that gets to a temp of over 3300 degrees F which is the melting point for most platinum group metals. Besides you forgot about the Arsenic and Sulfur dragging up the PGM metals in any acid. How do I know. I do Ore refining. So start with a good chemistry book because any heating Flux also takes the contaminated metal into the flux.
@@ogremgtow990 like i said. It doesnt matter, I live in new york state. You sure seem to be bothered by something, what is it and how is it my problem?
I live close to the gold areas of Prescott and Wickenburg. I've been told that platinum shows up in these areas as well. Any history of that? Thanks for your vids.
Love the videos thank you. I live in southern ontario . And its a three hour drive to gold or other minerals . Amd they say theres no gold in southern ontario.have u ever been .if not you should really go to colling wood, blue mountain area . Cause guys have been mining there for years .
Should really try and visit i live right beside the precambrian sheild . The amount of meteors that have hit .is pretty wild . Im actually going to visit "Bancroft" "El Dorado " ontario next weekend . To look around. I e found some marker trees and stone .markings that say" oro "on them .(im sure you know what that means . But any how thanx for the reply .hope u get the chance to visit ontario . Its beautiful in many ways .
Enjoyed a lot, definitly answered a couple ?'s of a claim ive been workin im sure i got a lil plat.nuggie ! It has to be its not mercury i find that too lol! Yeah gonna be gettin that book for x-mas!
@@ChrisRalph interesting country. spent a year in Windfall, Alberta. the biggest moose and biggest grizzly in the Alberta record books are there. pack two cans of bear spray!!!!
I found a rock recently that resembles a geode but it’s flat and there is a round circle in the center that’s made of metal. I believed it would be iron but it’s not magnetic. Inside is solid metal, outside looks like a regular geode with small crystals. Anyone familiar with anything that sounds like that?
there is some fine gold on the beach near Fleishhacker Zoo (the SF zoo). I do not know the legality of prospecting there or if you can get legal access.
Omg thank you so much!!! What I found was in a wet- weather creek back behind my house where there is over 5000 acres of untouched woods here in the ozark mountains. It wasn't a nugget but more like a smashed mushroom.... small though like a nugget. It had a lot of black and brown in fact that's what color I thought it was but I could see what looked like shiny pencil marks bleeding through it. I noticed it was bumpy and had shiny spots like pencil heads chunked here and there. I thought it was odd that there was litter there cuz I have lived here 50 years and the 2500 acres my house sits on has been in my family since my ancestors settled here during the trail of tears. But I thought it must be a piece of aluminum can. So I had to get in the creek to get it out. But once I did it was obviously not. For one reason it was way too heavy. Well I had a 10 week old puppy that got ahold of that rock one day and chewed and chewed and chewed that rock clean! I had actually washed it with water and soap but that little slobbering puppy got down in those cracks I guess and when I came home and found it all I saw was what looked like a shiny piece of silver with very little of the brown and black left! It was still the same shape as it was before the puppy got ahold of it! The foothills around me have been declared as prehistoric volcanos and we have huge elephant rocks that are suppose to be prehistoric lava. I'm in southeast missouri where quartz limestone and almost every other element and mineral is. In fact there are lead mines, silver mines, copper mines, colbalt mines, all with in thirty miles from my house. There is rumored to be a gold vein going across our county that's over five miles wide. I don't know how to go about finding out what this is but I bet there's more somewhere on that mountain where the water flows down and feeds that creek during our rainy season. There was not a bit of rust and it was in the bottom of the creek bed. We also have several artesian wells all around here. No salt water here though! We are land locked! I live in Madison county missouri. Please give me advice on what I should do now.
I wish you the best of luck in your prospecting efforts but I get many requests for help, training, evaluations, mineral ID. etc. every day. There simply is not enough time as I have many projects and commitments of my own. This is why I do not offer a service to consult and do all the things I am asked to do every day.
I need a hobby when I retire, I guess I'll have to move for the metals I love, I live in N.E. Pa. Lots of rocks, but not the right ones, and laws are not for the people!
There's easier ways. When I was a contractor I was giving the homeowner the rundown on what we contracted for on his home he just purchased and he drove up in a Toyota pickup and parked it in his driveway where I was waiting. We went to the backyard to finalize the expansion plans which took all of maybe 10 minutes and walked back to his vehicle, he gets in and starts it up...loud as hell...in that 10 mins someone had come by and stole his hot catalytic converter.
Hi Chris, great video. Rock collecting, Rock hounding, metal detecting and the like are in my blood. My Grandmother taught all of us kids about these activities ever since we were knee high to a Grasshopper. I truly enjoyed your video and have marked your Web site. Thank you.
Chris, thanks for the lesson. I found two rough, dull, dark grey rocks that were rather heavy along the path of a dried-up river bed. It had no inclusions and I did not have a magnet with me. Both rocks rang up a solid 7 on my Equinox. I assumed that they contained iron even though it had no rust. But it still bothers me and will go back to get them.
I have been finding platinum in Vermont since the flood happened this last summer. I’m finding small bits at a good gold sight I’m working it’s all flake no nuggets.
I live in Rutherford County, North Carolina, and we have platinum and palladium here as well. We also have gold and diamonds. Bechtler’s Mint is located here. It’s a museum now though. I wonder why Rutherford county is never mentioned in a lot of prospector videos I see when it comes to gold. There’s a gold belt here in NC, and there was a gold rush before the California gold rush. I am kind of glad a lot of people don’t know about all of the amazing minerals we have out here. 😅
Great video! Fascinating stuff. A professor once took us on a field trip to nearby Paradise, California, where a bunch of serpentine rock is located, and told us about it being asbestos. It’s a beautiful shade of green.
Great video, wish I would have seen this when it first came out. I spent a couple of years of working in Alaska and this would have been good to know to give me something to look for when I had time off from work
It's truly nice to know that there are some really respectable people out there that know a lot of information that they like to share I've done a lot of tests panning in the last 15 years in the same areas that I do my videos in used to have better luck with panning before I got shot in the arm but like I was saying the areas that I've been working I've test pan over and over I always follow the spec count and trust and believe in that system
Hey I'd like to ask you a question if you're interested can I send you a sample on some of my concentrates from the area that I think has Playdium titanium in Arcola and I think maybe there might be some Platinum but I'm no geologist so if it's not too big of a deal can I send you some and have you analyzed it and tell me what you think
The Tulameen river in southern British Columbia in the town of Princeton has placer platinum deposits. Back in the day, during the gold rush, before platinum was determined to be an element, the old prospectors referred to it a immature gold, and would throw it away, or gave it to their kids to play with.
I metal detect and I found some platinum ore tested it and it’s confirmed. Looks like the dark ore pics from Montana, and has spots of platinum with the dark black spots and ashy grey and white color
I love all of your videos, Super informative and exciting! I'm a new prospector getting in to this awesome hobby and need all the help I can get ha ha. Have you ever mined in Utah before?
Chris Ralph, Professional Prospector how are sir love your knowledge and videos I’m investing in my first metal detector I’m thinking 300$-900$ what brand is a good one so I can even put it under water ???
Given how there's lots of videos about platinum in automobiles, that makes it sound like it's very common. Like, imagine being an auto mechanic, and spending all day around all that platinum inside those cars.
There are tiny amounts of platinum and palladium in all gasoline powered modern car exhaust systems - these are the catalysts that make the catalytic converters work. That does not mean they are common. The auto makers use as little as possible because the stuff is expensive.
Great video Chris some great information had found some platinum nuggets gold panning on the Similkameen river in British Columbia and by nuggets I mean pieces the size of a grain of rice lol .
A great book someone could write is about speculation of Spanish silver in southern Utah coming from silver in petrified logs. I read somewhere some think the silver the Spanish found in the desert were from silver deposits in petrified logs. That’d be cool to find a log with silver in it. It’d be a beautiful specimen for collectors.
I'm really a miner and not a treasure hunter. I've never done books on hunting things like Spanish silver. There is a spot with gold in petrified wood in Nevada.
kolton crane, that area in southern Utah is known as Silver Reef, mainly a sandstone base rock area. At the time of its discovery no one believed silver would precipitate in sandstone, but it did. The miners would sometimes find pockets with buried trees that had all of its carbon replaced by depositing silver. It was so rich in silver that no samples were saved. And, yes, it would make an interesting book. The same type of precipitate occurred a little northeast of that location near Moab. Here, uranium was deposited, not silver, in trees trapped in ancient rivers. Silicone deposits in trees, as well, and we call that "petrified" wood, aka agate and jasper.
I'm in s Arizona and I explore where old trees were. Giants. Anyways, in the creek beds, I find that the bottom sides of certain pieces are silver in color with black flakes on them. Look at my channel petrified reality. I have videos of these locations proving they were trees
@@ChrisRalph it's my belief the old silica trees, used quartz, as it's sap. I've proven this on my channel. All mountains are old trees that were cut down
And now after watching your video I'm pretty sure I've found a bunch of that before 2 the Platinum The Creeks are chock-full of it around here but there's no Prospectors in this area but me but I mostly go after gold which I find mostly West from this area but you do owe find a lot of whitish silver metals throughout the creeks and streams in this area
Ive found some platinum flakes and pickers on Cow creek in Oregon while dredging for gold. I would get 1 piece for every 100 pieces of gold i estimate,,considerably more rare to find....never been fortunate to find any big beauties like are displayed in this video. That would truly be magnificent.
A good amount of mines in the Goodsprings area, also have significant amounts of Uranium, so be careful if you decide to dig around the area. Also, we went to Boss Mine last year because we had found that it was a closed mine; not anymore. It's an active mine again.
I am having alot of trouble with a sample that I have found. It is not Al ,Pb, or Galena. It is dense, hard enough that you need steel to scratch it so I'm saying 6.5, 7 hardness. It is metallic I chipped it off and polished a part with fine sandpaper. It is metallic silver in color and got a pretty decent shine with just a 10 minute job with a palm sander.
I've found platinum gold dredging on the Smith rivet in northern cal. Nothing large but probably found close to half ounce or more . But the largest platinum nuggets I ever saw were from the New River in denny cal. Up off the trinity River. Seen numerous ones found by dredgers 1/4 to half ounce .
Chris, I figure I would be the luckiest woman on this earth if I could find a gold nugget !!! I would be so busy looking for gold, I would probably overlook anything other than a piece of gold. That’s OK though, I would just be happy taking in The Great Outdoors and coming up with a little or big nugget of gold. As I continue to watch these videos, the countryside is absolutely gorgeous. Everyone of you seem to have a special place (or your claim) to share with us. Water running through a little canyon with clean (litter free) areas that you can just sit and enjoy. Beautiful waterfalls without graffiti sprayed all over the rocks. I just couldn’t think of anything better !!! Truly God’s Country. Thanks a million.
I'm glad you enjoyed the video.
Hello there from New Zealand 👍 , I'd love to meet a woman who is as interested in the outdoors and gold as you are , great to know that there is hope for me yet 😆 , my life would be complete with some one such as your self with the ZEST and appreciation for the beautiful places the world has to offer.. May God bless you with a lovely Nugget !! 🎉 ✨🤗 👍
I found a platinum nugget above Canyon City Oregon with my metal detector.Yes it was a real one it was in a dry creek bed below an old adit dug into serpentine. It was 1 1/4 in. long by 3/8 in thick. Canyon creek has all kinds of green to black serpentine.
Sounds great to me. Glad you enjoyed the video.
@@ChrisRalph I I have
I platinum Nuggets . I want to need buyer
😮
@@ChrisRalph you have Facebook or WhatsApp number?
Up to 70% of serpentine (California's state mineral) can be asbestos, so crushing this ore for platinum has its risks. In the early days of mining in Russia, platinum was so abundant and resistant to rusting that they made frying pans out of it. Expensive metal detectors with higher frequency ranges will pick up platinum in rock, if the content is high enough. A short distance off Route 80 in the foothills of California, I have found platinum with my Minelab metal detector, set on A/M (all metal), platinum sets off the alarm with a numerical code reading of 32. It's difficult to process this ore, so other than sending in an assay it is simply sitting in a few buckets in my storage locker. Every time I'm in that area I pick up a little more and someday I may have enough to pay someone else to process it. Cheapest processor I have found, so far, has a $2,500 minimum charge. Very interesting video, Chris. Thanks for doing such a great job with it, as usual.
Glad you enjoyed the video.
Thanks for all the good information. I will purchase your book. I own 1000 acres on Arizona/New Mexico border where gold was mined in the old days but know very little of what to look for. I have many canyons here with black sand and bed rock so I am researching and testing. I will be watch your videos to learn more. Thanks
Test around on your property to see what the possibilities are. The book will give you more of the basics.
I bought a tea pot at a yard sale, made of platinum in West Germany, worth $2500 on line.
OK.
😂
One small gold mine in the south end of the Panamint Valley California revised their operation to also recover platinum. People can get so focused looking for gold anything else of value goes unseen.
glad you enjoyed the video.
Great job introducing platinum.
Glad you enjoyed it
Just started watching your videos, and immediately subscribed; this is exactly the kind of information i have been looking for. I love how rich and informative your videos are, and thank you for taking the time to make such good content for us greenhorns, who want to get into prospecting. : )) And I am looking forward to purchasing you book very soon.
Glad it was helpful! Lots more videos coming - this morning I put up a new video on Rare earths.
He's more of a professor prospector than a professional prospector don't you think?????
His book tought me literally to find fists full of gold
Chris blessed as you are ....you know what ... Many miss all these adventures of enjoying the nature with sense of treasure hunting...money may be might not be an option for me but yes trying out natural vastness as small ant makes me feel blessed with pleasure ...and yes of course with knowledge through your videos makes trip more enthralling.
I do admit that I have been blessed may times over. I do have a lot of fun getting out and exploring - its not always about the money. Glad you enjoyed the video.
@@ChrisRalph Thanks Chris. Honourably sharing your pleasures in India. Thanks a lot.
I liked your presentation! Good information! Thanks. I will probably get your book.
Glad it was helpful! I think you will find the book helpful also.
Hi Chris. Thanks for sharing your knowledge. Its complicated to find some information about platinum. One more follower!!
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed the video.
@@ChrisRalph =~0
Great video on Platinum, Chris... thanks! I have purchased several copies of your book; for myself and to give to friends who are whan-a-bee Gold Prospectors. You are the best!
Awesome, thank you for the kind words!
I grew up in Silverton Colorado. As kids we would sell rock specimens to the tourists who came in on the train. Wonder how much money we lost.
Hard to say...... Glad you enjoyed the video.
What color were the rocks you, as kids, sold.....pink?? Grey?? Blue/Green?? If so, you still made money by selling, per say, just not all the money....wink.
@@ChrisRalph Thanks for the lesson. BTW, it's "per se" not "per say". My lesson to you. lol. Have a good day, sir.
...Wonder how much money we lost...
That's hard to say. What was the growing rate for #2 aluminum then? 🤣
If they were common and abundant and had no precious metals or gems instead of them, then you didn't lose anything. I would have worried more about the tourists possibly overpaying. And with a name like Silverton, it sounds like silver was plentiful in that town.
Thank you , I just love your videos and can’t wait to read your book .I really appreciate the time and effort you put into making these videos and explaining everything so clearly . You’re amazing , keep up the great work , we don’t learn enough about our environment and surroundings as we should in school . It’s shocking how little most people really know about basic elements and nature . . Have a great day .
I'm glad you enjoyed the video.
I hv it nd I need buy
ok sir thanks and more power.
This is by far, the most in depth explanation of everything I was looking for. I am no geologist but I just like to dig holes in the ground and find cool things plus locate fossils. So today I had went gold panning for the first time. And what I see from my finds look more like platinum where the gold should be sitting in the pan. Now, this area is very interesting because this area was impacted by a meteorite 450+ mil years ago (Rock Elm WI). This area is very unique in ways. It also contains a rare mineral named reidite. This type of thing gets me all interested.
Glad you enjoyed it.
@@ChrisRalph We need more people to be interested in this subject. So THANK YOU for creating videos on this topic! Younger generations need to learn this knowledge from these videos.
Hi I have some meteors stone collection. But I don't know how to classify it. Or what metreors that I have found and collected. If someone interested. I want to sell it.
@@peteralimpolos5203 hmu, I would like one piece if possible.
Thank you, I wish you happy times and benefit from you a lot.
Thank you so much for your info. Great video.
Glad it helped.
Great video back in the day when they were panning in the creeks, they had no idea what the platinum nuggets were so they would dump them off to the side and leave them.
Glad you enjoyed the video.
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Hey Chris, it was nice talking with you today!
See 26:13 for what I was talking about, in the Seattle area...
I enjoy your videos when I can't get out (rain/snow) ;)
So I said the platinum was from Washington state and yes, there is platinum in Washington. I mentioned that if you are in the Seattle area or other places in Washington, you might want to follow up on these occurrences. I did not say these nuggets are from the Seattle area.
From a Washington state Report: Platinum occurs in a number of places in this State and small amounts are produced almost every year as a by-product of placer gold mining. The platinum probably occurred originally very sparingly disseminated through certain basic igneous rocks and as these have been weathered it has been freed and collected along the streams with the sands and gravels. Localities are known to occur in the Cascade Mountains, where such rocks are exposed over large areas and along the st reams flowing from them platinum may be expected.
A small amount of platinum has been produced from the south fork of Lewis River in Clarke County. Negro Creek, near Mt. Stuart, and Mad River in Chelan County are said to have produced some platinum. Near Anacortes in Skagit County platinum is said to occur in a massive chromite. Platinum is also reported from Slate Creek, Similkamene district, Little Mt. Chopaca; and near Riverside, Okanogan County; from placer gold mining of the beach sand in Clallam County; and from black sands at Beards Hollow in Pacific County.
Thanks again Chris. My grandkids and I are loving your videos.
Glad you enjoyed the video.
Thank you for the videos I have learned a lot thank you very much
You are very welcome
Middle fork American river has some platinum, I've read stories of historical finds and have actually found a small platinum nugget from there as well. Always keeping an eye out for the stuff!
The middle fork (American) is one of those places I've intended to prospect more seriously but have done only a little. One of these days! Glad you enjoyed the video.
@@ChrisRalph you seem to know what your talking about so I have this question for you have you ever heard of minerals and gemstone rocks being pushed out of the ground on their own and I'm talking within an 8 hour period and multiple ones forming trails and when they are gathered together and put in piles together they react to each other positively and negatively forming patterns and symbol shapes in very precise ways. This is a very serious question and I do hope you can give me some feedback and I appreciate your time sir, thanks.
Find the big ones
Hello Chris, writing here o congratulate You for the great work you`re been doing here, teaching or at least enlighting people on how to start prospecting, and I am one of those whom are geting to learn here, my intent is to (soon enough) make an youtube chanel to pass on everything i am learning here with you and also other great prospectors, as I`m from brazil and am living here atm, my goal is to make a chanel in portuguese/english so people from here can learn mining language in english and maybe people from around the world learn the portuguese mining language, I hope you don`t mind the passing on of your knowledge. And once again, Thanks for Your great work here!
Best of luck to you.
I sent you an email with a picture of what I believe is my platinum nugget that I recently found while gold panning in Oregon. Thank you for sharing your information with us all. 💙
Its almost always impossible to ID minerals from photos. So I do not offer a service to ID minerals for folks.
@@ChrisRalph Do you happen to know how do we get platinum nugget identified?
@@user-dk9ch7qu7e Thank you!
Absolutely loved this, thank you. definetly subscribing
Thanks, glad you enjoyed it.
Still trying to catch up with your old videos, love 'em! Would love a re-visit on platinum group metals and prospecting for them in the US. I know Northern Cal, SW AZ, and a few places have a little, but it'd be quite interesting to know more about prospecting for it in the regions, how to spot it etc. With the price of platinum, rhodium, etc currently, it's time to go scratch around some hillsides! Keep up the good work! I cannot believe you don't have a lot more subscribers! We need to point more rock geeks at your channel!
It's very rare and is found in very few places. Oregon is one you did not mention.
@@ChrisRalph I live next to it :) I would also like to know more about it.
I've got a friend who thinks he has a silver nugget but watching this I kinda think he has platinum. How can you tell between platinum and silver? I know where I'm at in copper country wasn't a place you mentioned for finding platinum but also I know we have at least trace elements of the platinum metals groups coming out of our copper mines here.
Hi Chris. Thank you so much for not only sharing your knowledge, but for doing it in a positive, friendly, fun, academic, and joyful way. I stumbled upon your videos in the last month or so and I was wondering as I begin to prospect, what your thoughts are on how drones are used in prospecting. Could you please give suggestions of usage. Thanks
I appreciate that! Drones would be used to explore around a property and take a look before you start hiking around.
Wanted to thank you for your great videos! I'm a hobbyist prospector and very much enjoy the science.
Quick question on the topic of platinum nuggets and magnetism. Certainly, pure platinum is not magnetic. However, I've read that metallic platinum containing iron is at least as common as pure platinum. This information was on the Internet, so it has to accurate, right ? :)
Assuming that you agree with the above comments, how would you go about identifying ferrous platinum metal (short of sending suspect metal off for assying)? It's specific gravity will be significantly less than pure platinum (given that it is a mixture of platinum and iron), it can have at least some iron oxide covering it, and it will be attracted to a magnet.
This type of platinum has only a tiny amount of iron, and it not magnetic and does not rust.
@@ChrisRalph : Apologies, my terminology might be a bit off. The following is a link to mindat.org. Discusses Ferroan Platinum (10% to 50% iron -- can be magnetic, depending on amount of iron) and links to info about Isoferroplatinum (~7% iron -- not magnetic), and Tetraferroplatinum (~23% iron -- is magnetic). Additional googling required to find information about proportion of iron to platinum.
www.mindat.org/min-1509.html
The high iron platinum is extremely rare. Amounts of a few percent are more common.
I've noticed in refining preshess metals and e-wast old silver and gold tend to have trace amounts of platnum group metals mixed in .
Sometimes they do.
Hello from Ireland bud. I enjoyed your video. The Irish government are undertaking a massive survey of the country's minerals and have discovered good amounts of platinum in my home county. The survey is called Tellus if your interested in giving it a look. Check out the east coast
Glad you enjoyed the video.
i enjoy your videos they have taught me alot in the last 3 months thank you
I'm glad to hear you enjoyed them.
This is so awesome. I finally had some time to watch it again. Please keep this coming and go even deeper... with the mining- extraction locations just like you are doing..
I'm glad you enjoyed the video.
Very interesting topic one I can keep going on
I'm a jewelry artist and you have peaked my interest.
Coming in 2023 I will have a number of videos on crystals and gemstones.
Just double clicked today, although I shamefully admit I’ve been watching and always been learning for a while now.
I find quite a bit of serpentine in my area (interior BC) which is often encasing calcite and always has black crystals studding them... chorolite (?) or something I thought.
There are like more than 1000 minerals that come in black, so could be a lot of things.
Amazing job replying to comments. I have never seen a content creator do that. Lovedtje video
It's one of my "things" that I do reply.
Hello chris! I seen you on discovery channel also! It looked and sounded like you! God bless you for all you do!
It was actually the history Channel, but it looked and sounded like me because it was! I'm glad you enjoyed the video! May Gold bless you as well!
I was exploration drilling at the Stillwater Complex in MT. back in 1979-80. Very interesting area. We hit it big! I do believe that a South African company is running the operation now. Ps. I live now real close to Duluth and a mining co. named Polymet has been trying to get approval from the environmentalists for about 15 years now. I think they are getting close. I know that they have drilled thousands of holes core sampling and figure that it has 10 times at least the PGM as the Stillwater Complex. I wish them well. We need those rare minerals!! Great presentation on this little known subject!
Thanks for the kind works. Glad you enjoyed the video.
I sent you an email with a picture what I believed is my platinum nugget i found sea shore in Somalia.
I was just doing a little research and was wondering, where would I sell these nuggets if I were to find them? And also seen on eBay where people are selling similar looking nuggets calling them meteorites. Thank you for your time.
Color is a bad way to do metal analysis. Platinum which worth about $1000 per ounce is pretty much the same color as mild steel which is worth $30 a ton. The meteorites are largely an iron steel rich in nickel. They are definitely not the same thing. Platinum can be sold to refiners. I plan to do a video on turning your finds into cash in a couple months. I'm glad you enjoyed the video!
I would like to see that video.
@@ChrisRalph that would be a great video
@@ChrisRalph I believe I found a beautiful nugget on a steep lake bank near Mariposa CA, I did see serpentine on the roadcut on the highway going there.
It was a beautiful luster, like the butter of metals in my opinion. I sold it for a small amount to an eager rock trader at a rock show.
Though he insisted it was a simple camp nugget, he was extremely eager to buy it from me.
It seemed to warm in my hand as I remember it. Heavy, not light at all.
I wasn't looking for it but was looking at gravel beds in the lake basin.
@@ChrisRalph I used to find platinum in my sluice box when I was dredging for gold in the Trinity Mountains, albeit not very much, but it was present. Those were the days....
I reside along a river which runs down from the geysers in Northen Calif close to Mendocino and Sonoma Counties lots of Serpentine here as well along with garnets, river jade and quartz I would love to learn more about what gems and minerals are indigenous around here, I'd be thrilled and would enjoy your expertise and experience rockhounding.
There is some Jade and there are some traces of platinum in places, but not a lot of gold in that region.
Hello I just finished watching you video, I enjoyed it btw. Anyway my grandfather past away last year. While cleaning out one of his small barns I found a gray metal bar that he or possibly his father made. My great grandpa was a miner and my grandpa helped him also. The bar is 8” x 3.5” x 1.5” and weighs 10.4 lbs. it was exposed to the weather but has not rust or corrosion on it. I’m curious as to what it could be. It’s similar in color to the platinum nuggets in your video. How might I go about identifying it? I’m located in central California. Thanks
Zinc? lead? Stainless steel? Tin? pewter? there are plenty of possibilities, so impossible to say without testing. That's so light a weight, it could not possibly be platinum. A platinum bar that size would be 30 pounds. I'd guess pewter or zinc as the most likely, but who knows. ....
Thank you for this wonderful introduction to PGM’s!
Glad you enjoyed it.
Thanks for this video not much info out there on wild platinum 😀..I’ve found what I believe to be very small platinum pickers when prospecting in the south west mountains of curry county OR also a bit in the beach sands after a big storm….Im very excited now about the time I found a chunky rock unusually heavy for its size w/ streaks/crystal matrix of grey looking metal found in a creek bed…I’m desperately now searching for that dang rock after watching this video. 😂
Best of luck in your prospecting. Glad you enjoyed the video.
Today I'm about to go out to a B grade placer for platinum and it's group metals out in California.
Just wanted to say Thanks for the inspiration to get out and start prospecting, and for the videos and all the helpful advice therein. Keep up the great work!👍
(I Will update this comment after I get back with anything that I find or don't find .)
Update, found 1 speck of platinum and a whole lot of black sands with what might be some extra extra small iridium specks.
Had lots of fun but lost a pan and classifier to the river.
Further prospecting is needed to determine if there is enough platinum to work the area.
Have fun, and I am interested to hear what you find.
I've had a large rock for 30+ years, no one seems to have the same opinion on what it is but many want to buy it. Love to find someone who REALLY knows. Looks like Platinum.
Find someone locally who knows rocks and minerals... Glad you enjoyed the video.
@@ChrisRalph tried that, they wanted to buy it for 600$ but couldn't say for sure what it was. Then we showed some gold buyers that came here, they said it was silver and offered 500$. It's extremely heavy, should weigh 5 lbs but weighs 15. I'll just keep it on my shelf forever. 😁
@@walinga70 Why don't you get it tested?! Smh..
@@Dan0rioN the closest place to me is about four hours away. A rock and gem show came near here they said it was silver and offered 600$ not really interested in selling it just want to know what it is. I also have a place I dig black rocks much like Apache tears but not. No one seems to know what they are either. I have several great mysteries 😆
@@walinga70 order a testing kit.. Everything is a mystery if you don't make proper effort to find out what it is
Sir. ... you may have just helped me make my dreams come true!
God bless you 🙏 truly. I love you and yours unconditionally.
So nice of you, glad the video was helpful.
Pgms! I love them! So much! I have pgm flu instead of gold fever.
The PGM flu -= I love it! Glad you enjoyed the video.
If you have PGM Flu pick up a good chemistry book and learn how to processes PGM's from ore and placer finds.
@@ogremgtow990 i live in ny . so im not allowed to keep anything of value that i find so there is no point , pretty sure i make a cupel with a lead sponge and remelt it in a bone ash crucibal . at tht point id do acid washes to disolve and suspend everything but the pgms , once the pgms are seperate, i would wash it with disgilled water to remove any acid left over and melt it again to make the platinum ingot. As far as refining the differant pgms into individual elements, id have to have almost a commercial level fo pgm ore to make it worth the expenses. Good Idea though.
@@coreymerrill3257 Good luck finding a furnace that gets to a temp of over 3300 degrees F which is the melting point for most platinum group metals. Besides you forgot about the Arsenic and Sulfur dragging up the PGM metals in any acid. How do I know. I do Ore refining. So start with a good chemistry book because any heating Flux also takes the contaminated metal into the flux.
@@ogremgtow990 like i said. It doesnt matter, I live in new york state.
You sure seem to be bothered by something, what is it and how is it my problem?
Great knowledge thank you very much
You are very welcome.
@chris ralph, professional prospector thanks for the great video. and been enjoying your book
That's great. Glad you enjoyed the video.
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Thank you very much your video has been very informative I appreciate the information thank you
Glad it was helpful!
I live close to the gold areas of Prescott and Wickenburg. I've been told that platinum shows up in these areas as well. Any history of that? Thanks for your vids.
There is no confirmed platinum nuggets in Arizona, but there are reports that it has been found. I'm glad you enjoyed the video.
Love the videos thank you. I live in southern ontario . And its a three hour drive to gold or other minerals . Amd they say theres no gold in southern ontario.have u ever been .if not you should really go to colling wood, blue mountain area . Cause guys have been mining there for years .
I've never been to Ontario.
Should really try and visit i live right beside the precambrian sheild . The amount of meteors that have hit .is pretty wild . Im actually going to visit "Bancroft" "El Dorado " ontario next weekend . To look around. I e found some marker trees and stone .markings that say" oro "on them .(im sure you know what that means . But any how thanx for the reply .hope u get the chance to visit ontario . Its beautiful in many ways .
Enjoyed a lot, definitly answered a couple ?'s of a claim ive been workin im sure i got a lil plat.nuggie ! It has to be its not mercury i find that too lol! Yeah gonna be gettin that book for x-mas!
Glad you enjoyed the video.
Great video full of great info!
Were would I go to sell my platinum ore?
Thanks for watching, I'm glad you enjoyed the video. A mining company might purchase platinum ore.
Juan Torres a company that refines catalytic converters might also buy it.
Where in Alberta Canada is alot of platinum?
Near Whitecourt in Alberta. Google platinum in Alberta and you will find a government report on it. Glad you enjoyed the video.
@@ChrisRalph interesting country. spent a year in Windfall, Alberta. the biggest moose and biggest grizzly in the Alberta record books are there. pack two cans of bear spray!!!!
Great info thanks!
Glad it was helpful!
I found a rock recently that resembles a geode but it’s flat and there is a round circle in the center that’s made of metal. I believed it would be iron but it’s not magnetic. Inside is solid metal, outside looks like a regular geode with small crystals. Anyone familiar with anything that sounds like that?
Doesn't sound like anything I've ever heard of. I'm glad you enjoyed the video.
Hey Chris! Amazing video! I saw the maps but is there any platinum or Gold nuggets close to San Francisco
there is some fine gold on the beach near Fleishhacker Zoo (the SF zoo). I do not know the legality of prospecting there or if you can get legal access.
Omg thank you so much!!! What I found was in a wet- weather creek back behind my house where there is over 5000 acres of untouched woods here in the ozark mountains. It wasn't a nugget but more like a smashed mushroom.... small though like a nugget. It had a lot of black and brown in fact that's what color I thought it was but I could see what looked like shiny pencil marks bleeding through it. I noticed it was bumpy and had shiny spots like pencil heads chunked here and there. I thought it was odd that there was litter there cuz I have lived here 50 years and the 2500 acres my house sits on has been in my family since my ancestors settled here during the trail of tears. But I thought it must be a piece of aluminum can. So I had to get in the creek to get it out. But once I did it was obviously not. For one reason it was way too heavy. Well I had a 10 week old puppy that got ahold of that rock one day and chewed and chewed and chewed that rock clean! I had actually washed it with water and soap but that little slobbering puppy got down in those cracks I guess and when I came home and found it all I saw was what looked like a shiny piece of silver with very little of the brown and black left! It was still the same shape as it was before the puppy got ahold of it! The foothills around me have been declared as prehistoric volcanos and we have huge elephant rocks that are suppose to be prehistoric lava. I'm in southeast missouri where quartz limestone and almost every other element and mineral is. In fact there are lead mines, silver mines, copper mines, colbalt mines, all with in thirty miles from my house. There is rumored to be a gold vein going across our county that's over five miles wide. I don't know how to go about finding out what this is but I bet there's more somewhere on that mountain where the water flows down and feeds that creek during our rainy season. There was not a bit of rust and it was in the bottom of the creek bed. We also have several artesian wells all around here. No salt water here though! We are land locked! I live in Madison county missouri. Please give me advice on what I should do now.
I wish you the best of luck in your prospecting efforts but I get many requests for help, training, evaluations, mineral ID. etc. every day. There simply is not enough time as I have many projects and commitments of my own. This is why I do not offer a service to consult and do all the things I am asked to do every day.
Take it to a place that buys jewelry, like a pawn shop - they can test it...
Find more platinum
Great job and easy presentation so everyone can pick up on the facts.
Glad you liked it!
I need a hobby when I retire, I guess I'll have to move for the metals I love, I live in N.E. Pa. Lots of rocks, but not the right ones, and laws are not for the people!
Glad you enjoyed the video.
Thanks Chris super educational and great to be educating myself from your videos so love the videos,
Thanks for the Geology.
Thanks. I'm glad to hear you enjoyed it so much.
There's easier ways. When I was a contractor I was giving the homeowner the rundown on what we contracted for on his home he just purchased and he drove up in a Toyota pickup and parked it in his driveway where I was waiting. We went to the backyard to finalize the expansion plans which took all of maybe 10 minutes and walked back to his vehicle, he gets in and starts it up...loud as hell...in that 10 mins someone had come by and stole his hot catalytic converter.
I wouldn't call that easier... Glad you enjoyed the video.
Hi Chris, great video. Rock collecting, Rock hounding, metal detecting and the like are in my blood. My Grandmother taught all of us kids about these activities ever since we were knee high to a Grasshopper. I truly enjoyed your video and have marked your Web site. Thank you.
Thanks, I'm glad it was helpful for you.
Igor lot of rocks,minerals,metals&cristals
Me too.
Chris, thanks for the lesson. I found two rough, dull, dark grey rocks that were rather heavy along the path of a dried-up river bed. It had no inclusions and I did not have a magnet with me. Both rocks rang up a solid 7 on my Equinox. I assumed that they contained iron even though it had no rust. But it still bothers me and will go back to get them.
Some iron minerals do not look like rust.
Fantastic. Have you ever looked at what was attached to the Australian reef area about the time it’s thought to have been developed? I did.
There are many, many reefs in Australia.
@@ChrisRalph the platinum reef formation
I have been finding platinum in Vermont since the flood happened this last summer.
I’m finding small bits at a good gold sight I’m working it’s all flake no nuggets.
interesting...
I found several large veins of arsenic when I was prospecting north of Fairbanks, AK
Ok.
I live in Rutherford County, North Carolina, and we have platinum and palladium here as well. We also have gold and diamonds. Bechtler’s Mint is located here. It’s a museum now though. I wonder why Rutherford county is never mentioned in a lot of prospector videos I see when it comes to gold. There’s a gold belt here in NC, and there was a gold rush before the California gold rush. I am kind of glad a lot of people don’t know about all of the amazing minerals we have out here. 😅
There was a gold rush to Appalachia before the gold rush to California.
Great video! Fascinating stuff. A professor once took us on a field trip to nearby Paradise, California, where a bunch of serpentine rock is located, and told us about it being asbestos. It’s a beautiful shade of green.
Interesting!
Another informative video, I hope your book arrives in the mail tomorrow, can't wait to read it. Thanks again, Chris...!
Glad you enjoyed the video.
Great video, wish I would have seen this when it first came out. I spent a couple of years of working in Alaska and this would have been good to know to give me something to look for when I had time off from work
There are platinum nuggets in Alaska....
Great educational video. Subscribed. Thank you
Thanks. Glad you enjoyed it.
How small does platinum nuggets or flakes get? Can platinum be hand panned like gold panning techniques?
Yes it can be panned.
Thanks alot.
I have platinum in my area so I will go and find out now.
Best of luck to you!
Here in Ashtabula Ohio we have Playdium and titanium an aluminum mines and I think Arcola
Sounds interesting.
It's truly nice to know that there are some really respectable people out there that know a lot of information that they like to share I've done a lot of tests panning in the last 15 years in the same areas that I do my videos in used to have better luck with panning before I got shot in the arm but like I was saying the areas that I've been working I've test pan over and over I always follow the spec count and trust and believe in that system
Hey I'd like to ask you a question if you're interested can I send you a sample on some of my concentrates from the area that I think has Playdium titanium in Arcola and I think maybe there might be some Platinum but I'm no geologist so if it's not too big of a deal can I send you some and have you analyzed it and tell me what you think
I like my area of Northern California. Thank you Chris and would enjoying a day of prospecting with you and I could run the camera for you also.
Northern California is great, perhaps we will run into each other one of these days.
Talk nerdy to me!!! 😂 I love a good nerdy video!!!
Glad you liked it.
Thanks for doing these shows I share them with my friends.
thanks for sharing. Glad you enjoyed the video.
The Tulameen river in southern British Columbia in the town of Princeton has placer platinum deposits. Back in the day, during the gold rush, before platinum was determined to be an element, the old prospectors referred to it a immature gold, and would throw it away, or gave it to their kids to play with.
It took a while for platinum to be recognized.
I metal detect and I found some platinum ore tested it and it’s confirmed. Looks like the dark ore pics from Montana, and has spots of platinum with the dark black spots and ashy grey and white color
Best of luck to you.
I love all of your videos, Super informative and exciting! I'm a new prospector getting in to this awesome hobby and need all the help I can get ha ha. Have you ever mined in Utah before?
You want a book called gold panning in Utah by Dan (I can't remember his last name) - you can find it on Amazon.
How would platinum read on a meteal detector similar to gold ? Or more like silver. Love the video thanks.
Generally more like gold - a non-ferrous conductor that is a good conductor but not a great conductor.
Chris Ralph, Professional Prospector how are sir love your knowledge and videos I’m investing in my first metal detector I’m thinking 300$-900$ what brand is a good one so I can even put it under water ???
I've that shirt. I'm expecting THE encyclopedia by mon.thanks for sharing.
glad you enjoyed the video.
Given how there's lots of videos about platinum in automobiles, that makes it sound like it's very common. Like, imagine being an auto mechanic, and spending all day around all that platinum inside those cars.
There are tiny amounts of platinum and palladium in all gasoline powered modern car exhaust systems - these are the catalysts that make the catalytic converters work. That does not mean they are common. The auto makers use as little as possible because the stuff is expensive.
Good morning, have found such a similar stone, and I wish I could share some pics with you for possible identification
My email address is chiyotaprosper@gmail.com
I dont offer an identification service, its hard to tell from pictures.
@@ChrisRalph I good evening sir, I understand you very well and I appreciate for your positive response
@@kflietentertainment hello there
@@ChrisRalph hi
Great video Chris some great information had found some platinum nuggets gold panning on the Similkameen river in British Columbia and by nuggets I mean pieces the size of a grain of rice lol .
Similkameen river in both BC Canada and Washington state USA, is a known source of platinum.
A great book someone could write is about speculation of Spanish silver in southern Utah coming from silver in petrified logs. I read somewhere some think the silver the Spanish found in the desert were from silver deposits in petrified logs. That’d be cool to find a log with silver in it. It’d be a beautiful specimen for collectors.
I'm really a miner and not a treasure hunter. I've never done books on hunting things like Spanish silver. There is a spot with gold in petrified wood in Nevada.
kolton crane, that area in southern Utah is known as Silver Reef, mainly a sandstone base rock area. At the time of its discovery no one believed silver would precipitate in sandstone, but it did. The miners would sometimes find pockets with buried trees that had all of its carbon replaced by depositing silver. It was so rich in silver that no samples were saved. And, yes, it would make an interesting book. The same type of precipitate occurred a little northeast of that location near Moab. Here, uranium was deposited, not silver, in trees trapped in ancient rivers. Silicone deposits in trees, as well, and we call that "petrified" wood, aka agate and jasper.
I'm in s Arizona and I explore where old trees were. Giants. Anyways, in the creek beds, I find that the bottom sides of certain pieces are silver in color with black flakes on them. Look at my channel petrified reality. I have videos of these locations proving they were trees
@@ChrisRalph it's my belief the old silica trees, used quartz, as it's sap. I've proven this on my channel. All mountains are old trees that were cut down
@@Otis-Tank 😢
And now after watching your video I'm pretty sure I've found a bunch of that before 2 the Platinum The Creeks are chock-full of it around here but there's no Prospectors in this area but me but I mostly go after gold which I find mostly West from this area but you do owe find a lot of whitish silver metals throughout the creeks and streams in this area
Good luck to you in your prospecting.
Would you be interested in a sample of concentrate from this area and maybe you can tell me what you see in there I'm curious to see for myself
Jasimkhan
Thanks.for shsring your knowledge .its really great of you.
I'm glad you enjoyed the video!
Thanks for info!
You are welcome!
Thank You.
You Have Been a Big Help.
Glad to hear that!
Ive found some platinum flakes and pickers on Cow creek in Oregon while dredging for gold. I would get 1 piece for every 100 pieces of gold i estimate,,considerably more rare to find....never been fortunate to find any big beauties like are displayed in this video. That would truly be magnificent.
Bigger nuggets of platinum are quite rare.
A good amount of mines in the Goodsprings area, also have significant amounts of Uranium, so be careful if you decide to dig around the area. Also, we went to Boss Mine last year because we had found that it was a closed mine; not anymore. It's an active mine again.
Most of the mines around Goodsprings are claimed.
I am having alot of trouble with a sample that I have found. It is not Al ,Pb, or Galena. It is dense, hard enough that you need steel to scratch it so I'm saying 6.5, 7 hardness. It is metallic I chipped it off and polished a part with fine sandpaper. It is metallic silver in color and got a pretty decent shine with just a 10 minute job with a palm sander.
Get a lab analysis.
My nugget resisted scratching too and that's convinced my old ining partner that it was platinum.
Glad you enjoyed the video.
I've found platinum gold dredging on the Smith rivet in northern cal.
Nothing large but probably found close to half ounce or more .
But the largest platinum nuggets I ever saw were from the New River in denny cal.
Up off the trinity River.
Seen numerous ones found by dredgers 1/4 to half ounce .
I've prospected around Denny - been many years ago, but yep, I've been there.
Thank You Very Much For The Information
How are colloidal gold nuggets formed?
Glad you enjoyed it.
Thanks for the video leaning from you❤
You are so welcome! I'm glad you enjoyed the video.
Thanks so much Chris for all your generosity to teach us .
Greetings from Europe 😊
Glad you enjoyed the video.
Sorry my phone made an error . i wanted to say generosity and express gratefulness
The John Day,Ore. area has lots of chrome mines too.
Yep, Chromite and platinum are a common association.
I’ve been in that area looking for gold once and found one speck but I didn’t know there was chrome there.