What Is a CRYSTALIZED Gold Nugget?

   That’s an easy question you may ask maybe you might answer… “ A gold nugget is a lump of gold in its natural form mined from hard rock or panned out from a placer stream. ’’ Well you are right and wrong. Nuggets come in many shapes, forms and sizes ranging from the well known yellow lump of metal from a stream to highly crystallized gold that is highly prized by mineral specimen collectors worldwide. Crystallized gold is gold in its most pure and natural form, It is the gold that fuses itself tightly between the cracks of white quartz filling every crevice. Gold also forms very slowly in deep underground open vugs under high heat and pressure slowly depositing gold in crystal form via steam and pressure creating geometric shapes of all sorts. Eventually some of these crystallized nuggets through natural means of earth movements or erosion are exposed to running streams and tumbled around smoothing out the sharp crystals and removing the rock matrix eventually forming the gold nuggets most of us are familiar with. Those nuggets mined from hard rock and saved from the melting pot can be cleaned up with a number of methods, most involving dangerous acids that should only be handled by an experienced handler. Please do not attempt to do this at home acids are hard to use and dispose of and most likely you will end up with more headaches than it is worth. There are several classifications of crystallized gold including the following…



Dendritic Gold: Gold that “grows” in delicate almost fern like branches.





Crystalline Gold: Gold that is crystallized with thousands of minute crystals that can be seen under magnification.






Crystallized Gold: Gold with geometric crystals visible to the naked eye. Very rare






Leaf / Foil / Plate Golds: Gold that grow in thin to extremely thin sheets usually very shiny but not always. I know some will disagree with me but these golds look similar to each other except for thickness essentially.



Octahedral Gold: Gold growing in octahedral crystals similar to diamonds this is the most common form of gold crystallization.



Trigon Gold: Gold crystals in a pyramid or triangular 3d shape. This is the second most common gold crystallization. The specimen at right is exhibiting several crystal formations including both trigons and octahedral along with many other types. This is a 12 gram specimen for sale for $6000 US dollars!!!




Wire / Rope Gold: Gold that grow in the form of thin wires or thicker “ropes” This is an extremely rare gold formation and highly prized by collectors, the photo at the left shows an impressive nest of wire gold from a very famous location called Olinghouse Mine. I own many specimens from this location. The second photo is of the even more highly valued rope gold.







Hopper Gold: The second most rare gold formation and again very highly valued by collectors, usually starting in the hundreds per gram!!! Hopper gold is gold that forms step like structures otherwise known as chevrons. Trigon crystals are the most common type of crystal that will show hoppers.




Cubic Gold: And last but certainly not least! Cubic gold formations, the must have for any serious collector, this is the absolute rarest form of gold crystal even very small specimens are highly prized larger ones selling for obscene amounts of money in excess of $2000 per gram!!!




   Believe it or not that is not the full list of types of gold crystals that mother nature creates but that will do for now. I hope this article has given you a greater appreciation for the natural beauty of gold specimens, a beauty no jeweler could ever replicate.


Gino Del-Ciotto
Prospector & rare mineral dealer.