Rock Identification

[Guacahunter]

Hello, just joined this forum and want to jump right in with some of my stuff.  I live in Mexico and collect various things here.  I have these rocks that may be loaded with precious metals. Any info would be appreciated. 

[Guest]

It does look like you have some mineralization... Can you break off a small chunk of  sample and take it to a jeweler  or pawn shop for testing? Local college or university? There are inexpensive tests that can quickly determine a rough element breakdown of what  is there(on the surface. )

  At least, some mica  minerals , maybe a little copper  and lead.

Find a local to identify more detail.

 Picture ID , when many minerals are present, can be difficult, at best.  Unless you can provide  some nice  micro photographs of some individual  crystals in your rocks...

I have to say that the last picture looks very delicious.

Edited May 22, 2021 by Guest

[Morlock]

It looks like you might have some sulphides in those specimens. Even if they do contain precious metals, unless you have a whole mine or a large vein you're not going to get rich on those alone. The cost of processing those specimens would outweigh any potential profit.

Depending on what you have it might be more profitable just to sell them as mineral specimens.

[Bedrock Bob]

You have a polymetallic ore.

The only values in a rock is free milling gold. Other metals require reduction and smelting. Unless you have marketable ore in a quantity that warrants processing the rocks are virtually worthless for the metals they contain.

Rich ore often has rare minerals.  Some forms of silver are worth much more as a mineral than the silver in the rock. There is a market for mineral specimens and rocks like yours may contain them.

If you can crush it up and pan free gold out of it you can sell it. Otherwise you are going to have to deal with an ore buyer to find out what a ton of it may be worth in metal value after processing fees.