I worked as a haul truck driver for Cortez Gold Mines in Crescent Valley, Nevada. Our shovels,electric powered, scooped 76 tons in one scoop. The smallest haul trucks were 240 tons. We had 240 ton,300 ton and 400 ton trucks. That's the load they carried. Those trucks run 24 hours a day,7 days a week. That's a lot of material being moved. There is a LOT of overburden to remove to get to the gold ore. They produced,on average, 76,000 ounces of gold a month from a big deposit. The ore contained microscopic gold. When I was there,from 2003 til 2005, gold was around 400 dollars an ounce. We were awarded gold,from 10grams to 1/2 ounce to 1 ounce coins for safety bonuses. Don't know if they do that now. At any rate, Barrick Goldstrike Mines bought out Cortez. Just a little info from me. Sorry for dragging on.

The story is told about a miner who struck gold and carried his bag of nuggets with him everywhere. One day he died and went to heaven, still carrying his precious nuggets. When he arrived, an angel asked him why he was carrying asphalt. “This isn’t asphalt,” he explained, “it’s gold.” To which the angel replied, “On earth it’s called gold, but here in heaven we use it to pave our streets.”

I didn't expect to watch all 40 minutes continually but I could not stop watching. Thank you for the information. Very well done video.

I was very fortunate to be able to buy two small rocks with gold in them. Beautiful quartz rocks with gold vein running through them.

That was great!! The bit where your missus came in was hilarious. Shows you are a decent bloke willing to share your life and knowledge. Thanks mate. 👍👍

Few year's ago I was gold hunting in the high desert of California by tehachapi and found a old solid gold tooth. Great video

Thank you for showing specimens in their raw state/ore. This is very helpful.

WOW. Best vid I've seen on this subject. I've lived in Tucson for 50yrs and have been an avid hunter and fisherman. I know Southern and central Az, as well if not better than most alive today. Its just been recently that I've started having an interest in gold because of you tube. After watching this vid I should have gotten interested in gold sooner as I'm certain I've chucked some quartz that had gold in it back down because it had pyrite as well and I thought gold and pyrite didnt come together like that. I saw pyrite for sure so I figured the other gold there was also pyrite and chucked back down. Thanks for this vid. I learned a lot!

That was nice of both of you to understand you was in a project ,and would give her full attention to her later. Then she understood. Now that's true gold. You both truly love eachother...

Another fine video Chris. Thanks for taking the time to teach the rest of us. Great book too.

Love the conversation with your Wife. Perfect.

I had a young fellow from England working for me at northern Alberta we burnt a big barn down that had big rocks for a foundation .one rock split up from the heat and you could see gold in it He got gold feaver and was trying to look for more rocks I had to pull him away when he was getting on the plane to go home his suitcases weigh a ton .he had put most of the big rock in them

The very best ever, I have LESSION to as well as have seenshown.The many selections "( types) of Gold" that many have passed over because feeling it's a nugget or diamond shaped cluster .(When their are many types of gold to be found. Best class ever. You should be a Professor . ( I still believe " fools gold " is gold" becoming" real gold).Thank you. Just wonderful !

"Hi My Dear," that was Sweet

I was in Franklin N.C. at a garnet flume. I met a guy there complaining about what he was finding. ' Better ones on his gravel road' . A conversation ensued. Hey Travis! Anyway, back to the story.... This nice lady came up and showed me a rock. " Is this worth anything?" " Ooooh....", I said. " That's Leverite! " The whole flume went silent, everyone was looking at the us . " Is it expensive?", she asked. I threw the worthless stone into the flume. " Leverite. Right where you found it." The whole flume roared with laughter! I then showed her a nice Almandine garnet i found. ( Only one ) She smiled and said thank you. She found more stones than I did that day. Beginners luck, I suppose. Travis showed me a nice pink sapphire deposit the next day. It was a lot of fun. I had never looked for corundum before. That day, I was the green horn.

me and wife were rolling along on the backside of el cajon in 1985,had to take a leak,pulled over and watered the lilies and looked down,saw some dirt with bull quartz in it grabbed a couple of samples,and went about another 5 miles,wife had to go,hard to find areas where a woman can whiz off the road,found one,took samples out of floorboard of car and crushed them with a hammer,the shine was amazing,took the samples to a pawn shop,guy bought all of it for 961.00 in 1985,paid for the whole trip went back a few years later,and they bulldozed the whole small area away to widen the road,moral of the story,is get it all,i've found it several times,mainly in the searchlight area between nev and cali,hell its everywhere if you look,usually pays for my trips,thanks for the look of other samples,i've never seen silver in lode or formation,any way you'd upload those ,be interesting,thanks

Thank you for this video. I watch a lot of mine exploring videos, in fact I watched a tour of the 16-1 mine yesterday and always wondered about what it looked liked when the miners see it in the ground.

Gold ore breaking the surface in the area I live ranges from tellurides to quartz bearing rock to ironstone bearing rock. Where there's nuggets always look for a source either from a reef or ancient river bed ( deep lead). Some deep leads are easy to distinguish from surrounding bedrock, others are from pipe clay / calcrete. Western Australia where I live, work has many gold mines both surface and underground, geologically it's a very mixed bag of rock structure due to massive upheavals millions of years ago. Where you find gold, you'll also have silver, platinum, copper, zinc, nickel, arsenic in some metals and sulphide derivatives.

Thank you so much for this brilliant video. I will now go looking for gold in the Dominican Republic.

Hi Chris, this is the second time I have watched your presentation. I have learnt a lot more on this second viewing. It's taken me almost 15 years on but more often off panning and then detecting to find a bit over 30 grams of gold. I have it locked in a small safe but have lost the keys. Australia, Cheers.

I found so much gold just hiking and walking trails Backcountry with railing here in Tucson Arizona. I think I'm going to make a Channel with all the stuff I find. Metal detecting is absolutely fun and you're absolutely right it is very profitable and a great Hobby I'm learning so much daily

Thanks for taking the time to put this up here.

Hello Chris, I remember pestering my dad when i was a child Dad is this gold is this gold is this gold , he would take a quick glance lob it back on the floor Nope. Well Dads been dead for 20 years and after four brain operatios I've been disabled for the last 16. After watching this video tonight and many nights to come I will be dreaming a different life for our family .Thank you Chris

My grandpa was a minor in Cripple Creek and Victor in the 30s. We still have land in cripple creek about 100 acres i love it up there!! Love the video thanks

Thank you so much for sharing maybe I have found here like that kind of rocks thank you and God bless

Exactly, gold ore identification with a metal detector is the new way to mine. Thanks for the informative video. I was looking for some Black Hills green schist. - Doug

I come from a family of Jewelers &my dad worked with acid testing quite bit. He would buy estates & test all the gold stuff, deliver watches & watch movements to Jewelry people who were interested in gold. My mom would grab all the jewels that he would throw away & make stuff out of them. I developed a love for gold in Quartz. She bought a bunch of charms. earrings, pendants & Victorian cane tops. I have never cared about prospecting or digging up mountains to make myself rich, but the beauty of the pieces of Gold in quartz grabs me. Now it is very scarce. Sadly they didn't leave any for me. My dad used to take the gold to the San Francisco mint for $35/oz.

My son works at Fort Knox gold mine in Alaska Fairbanks. Alaska is a Gold Country I found this video quite informative

Thanks for sharing. Specimens were fun to look at. I can tell you where the gold is.

I have some stones of such kind, one may be weighing 40 kg, but it is yellowish quarts. But looks beautiful. I have collected many such nature's treasure...stone.

Hallelujah, Hello Sir i really appreciat for your time which you use to teaching us this very important and and expensive lessons but you do it for free may God bless you,I'm a small minner in Tanzania please welcome to our country and help us to grow for better results.

"ONYA CHRIS" YOUR VAST KNOWLEDGE OF EVERYTHING TO DO WITH GOLD HAS HELPED ME TO FIND GOLD😉 IN MANY MANY MANY WAYS.I LOOK UP TO YOU CHRIS YOUR A BLOODY BRILLIANT COMPLETE LEGEND.STAY SAFE MATE.FROM SHANE BATHURST AUSTRALIA N.S.W 😉😀😃👍👌✌

I shake my head thinking of all the gold I've walked over fishin Montana without this knowledge.

Thank you! That was such an interesting video about identifying gold in ore. I sat here with my magnifying glass. Very nice, thanks again. 😀

👍 Thank you for your presentation. . I enjoyed your video.

I went up to Virginia City yesterday hoping to find one of those gold finds you showed. I checked the tailings off the lower-grade road (the one that doesn’t go through Gold Hill/Silver City). I found an old car jack and a half bucket of rocks that have traces of quartz. I’ll keep looking for the gold. Thanks for the tip.

Carlin Ore, it is my Experience after acquiring said Ore that the Gold is the Mustard Color on the Rock, and yes, there does appear to be a lot, but you need to remember that gold can be flattened down to an Atom Thick and One Troy Oz. can make a Sheet of Gold that is 300 Square Feet.

I've found gold in an area where it's rare. It was a vein through a Quartz rock about 3" and it had a melted type look/luster

You mention in several places that miners did not recognize ore as gold bearing; or as in the case where they tossed the decayed pyrites to get at copper below, and always it was back in or before the 60's. But, gold was still held by the government at $35 per ounce and private bullion holdings were still illegal. At that artificially low price they might have recognized it as ore but at $35 was not economical to refine it out. If it cost $20 or more per ton of rock to get half an ounce of gold they just dumped it in the tailings. There must be some fabulous fortunes laying around already mined and just unprocessed.

Thank you so much! Its so great to have someone willing to show what to look for. I sometimes hate watching these videos because i used to go "gold and crystal" hunting with my grandfather when i was a little girl and now see how much gold my grandfather got out of me.lol he would tell me it was fools gold, or the gold ore i would hammer out of the side of the mountain he would tell me was just a yellow fungus, but he had me give it to him to send to a friend who collects the "fungus" rocks.lol what he told me was fools gold was a big nugget the size of large grape. He held onto it for me of course and took it to his friend. Well, i found some real fools gold which was a far bigger chunk that he told me i could keep. I realized then the difference in the looks and when i asked him about why it was different, he got very mad and told me he knows what hes talking about because hes been doing it longer than ive been alive etc. Lol looking back now, i see why he was so defensive. But i honestly dont really blame him in some way as what would an 11 year old girl do with all that gold? Haha.lol jk. I have so many stories. As we lived right on a mountain with all kinds of old gold mines in Kellogg. I found so much gold and crystals. And i wish so bad i knew more then. I was learning from my grandfather and had complete trust in him. He doesnt go "gold or Crystal" hunting with me anymore.lol hahaha. I should add that at the time i wouldn't have cared if it were gold anyway as i was mostly interested in the crystals and probably would have happily given any gold to him anyway.

Excellent video, this is exactly what i was looking for after getting hooked on watching old mining videos etc... very nice!

Very comprehensive and thoughtful. Thank you. :)

I love how you ask the question people don't know to ask and answer the questions with clarity great videos and information.

Chris, thank you for showing us all that high grade gold ore...it's a special treat because most of that material went thru the mill and was turned into gold bars.

Thank you Chris for your insights into gold. I have come across a few of these samples that you talked about in my lifetime. Maybe I should revisit those areas. Cheers.

great information! looking forward to your video on the silver ore! thanks! 👍

You are awesome at describing how the gold settles! Thank you Thank you Thank you!

Shortly after moving to Utah, our family took a drive up one of the Wasatch Range canyons. The Roadside had recently been regraveled on it's shoulder with rocks about half the size of my fist. My wife wanted to take some scenic photos, so we pulled over and parked at the roadside. As she photographed, I just wandered about looking at the rock. In the half hour I looked, I found three quartz stone rocks with thin layers of gold color running through them. My wife said, "Oh, it's just pyrite," and I figured she was right. A couple weeks later I took the one with the thickest strip and I Pounded it with a sledge and found a few grain sized bits of metal so I put it on an anvil and took a regular hammer to it, expecting it to shatter. But holy crap! It flattened out instead. Eventually I pulverized all three, panned out the gold and melted it into a .7 gram button. I've been back up the canyon, but never found more. However, I've had a bit of the gold bug ever since. (I come from Kansas, so wasn't used to gold being in my environment)

This was such a great video! Very pleased to discover it in my suggestions. Totally informative, easy to understand, thank-you for your time and for sharing your knowledge.

My old house I used to rent, there was a rock that held the porch door open, it was quartz rock, I remember one day when I was sitting on my porch drinking a few beers and smoking some cigarettes I loved and I thought and I saw gold in it, but I thought to myself that can't be gold because that rock would not be left here holding my porch door open. Rock was there when I moved in to the house, I thought maybe I can extract it it was spot response and small veins Meandering Through The Rock The Rock was used to hold my porch door open and it was there when I first moved in, I live in the house for 2 and 1/2 years, and now that I moved out 4 weeks ago I realized for my memory that someone probably replace That Rock with a similar Rock because none of the Rock I think it was replaced with is different and it's all white, anyway I should have took in that rock with me, either way nice video thank you for the information, I live in Missouri so who knows about gold around here in Missouri,

i spent several years in northern california and was always fascinated with the geology of the place. thnx for the discussion.

Thanks ive bien looking for ages for one of these video

I did enjoy this video extremely. Your presentation was awesome, lots of samples and you explain each one uniquely . Rock on!👍

Hey Chris. I would like to personally thank you for the knowledge you have shared. I’ve been able to use your videos to identify some beautiful gold, and If everything pans out… it may very well be a life changing discovery. Wish me luck and thank you again! 🎉

I live in Nevada I always thought that was Sulphur! I'm gunna start grabbing yellow rocks here!

The specimen you showed at 17 minutes and 25 seconds I have thousands of tons of that material on my property and there's gold here too and copper and bismuth and tellurium ... Learning what the different or types look like is very helpful thank you

I have always enjoyed rock and mineral collecting...even as a little kid many years ago. Thanks for posting this informative and interesting video. Your enjoyment of the subject is evident.

Very enjoyable audio program , am buying this book , well explained thank you.

This video is good in that it shows the average person how "fool's gold" (pyrite) does not actually look like gold. Pyrite is normally more brassy yellow or greenish yellow and is usually pretty obviously not gold even when not in nice crystalline forms. On the other hand, all those beautiful specimens with spectacular gold occurrences might lead that same average person to think that gold is often found that way, and it really isn't. Just finding any visible gold at all is fairly unusual, and a good portion of that VG is really only viewable using a hand lens. Most of the gold ore I have seen has no actual visible gold in it except in some very isolated spots. Only need a few grams per tonne to make a mine profitable, after all, if the volume is large enough. In fact, a lot of gold deposits are found because of the associated base metals. The metal ores just happen to also have decent gold contents, but the interest in the rock was driven first by the obvious base metal enrichments, and gold was just a bonus, even if it eventually became the main reason to develop the mine.

Thanks for a great vid. From a part-time prospector in New Zealand.

Thanks very much for sharing this info with us!!!

Beautiful specimens, thanks for the video...!

Thanks I enjoyed listening to you talk and the way you are detail oriented and specific most KZfaq channels are often hard to follow or confusing ...leavening out pertinent information and talking too fast . Thanks keep em coming ...👍

I live in the randsburge ,garlicky area of Cali and have found lots of gold in my area but now have a better chance of success thankyou

Good presentation on the southern gold fields. I'd like to see something like this covering the ores of the pacific northwest.

Thank you so much! This video is awesome and perfectly done!! Love it!

Great job Chris. Love your magazine.

I been walking by very similar material, many thanks.

20:24-HELLO! Consider me subscribed. I’ve been binge watching you and two toes so much that you’re probably gonna make more money off of me than Gold itself! I’m a beginner prospector thank you so much for your videos!

very informative! Answered many questions for me, Thank you so much. I found a heavy iron/copper ore in southern california about the size of my fist. I know now its probably Gossin gold ore With some visable gold/ pyrite or both along with copper as well. new to this so hoping im right.

I grew up by Elko Nevada and remember people laughing at prospectors who were talking about how much gold is in Carlin Trend. Laughter quit when first mine opened.

Thank you Mr Ralph, very informative. I look forward to getting your book in February! A little bird informed me it's going to be a birthday gift! 😎

Thank you for this very informative video. I never knew that gold came in so many different forms. This video will be of tremendous help next time we are out prospecting. We love going out metal detecting or panning gold but we are total amateurs so any help is appreciated. Good hunting.

Fantastic video, wonderful to hear the history and story with each piece. Thank you #thefinders 😁

Such a wonderful video . Thank you for taking the time to make it.

Really liked this video. I will be looking at rocks much more carefully now. Great video and very informational and easy to follow. Thanks

Amazing rocks, grreat sharing

Fantastic video!! Every minute was “golden” !! You are so knowledgeable, and speak so eloquently! I also loved how you thoroughly described each of the many specimen slides you showed - taking it beyond the general makeup to include how the specimen was formed, value, where and how it was found, etc. I even loved how nicely you handled the phone call **smiles** I’m in North Texas - we find lots of quartz and iron here when hunting for dinosaur and shark teeth, and I thought I saw tiny pieces of gold in the same gravel.. I decided to turn to KZfaq for information (because I came here knowing NOTHING about gold!!), and so happy that your video was at the top of search!! Have you done any prospecting for gold in North Texas? Thank you again for sharing, and I look forward to hearing back from you! Best wishes!

I'm actually new to this channel and I am going to be subscribing and looking forward to more videos from this guy, because of the details contained within this video. Very nice video

Thank you Chris that was a great video. Can't wait for the summer to get here so I can take my weekend trips to the mountains in eastern Pennsylvania and pan the streams and creeks that I usually hike along. And now I have an idea what some ore rocks look like.

I'm happy i watched this. I'm looking into ways to start looking for gold, i've panned a few pans in local area rivers, and found exactly 1 single flake about the size of a pin head. Utah isn't really known for its gold.

What a beautifully presented video. Thank you for explaining so clearly the possibilities of quartz. I am finding some quite large pieces on my land with silver bits and possibly gold bits and iron and maybe copper. I have a lot of research to do but at least now I understand what might be present. Will be getting some pieces analyzed.

Amazon doesnt have it in stock. Thanks Chris i will be waiting for more videos.

Great show. Last time I was in Carson City, Nevada the nugget casino had a great display of different types of gold. The leaf gold reminded me of Canadian bacon. Yup!

Thank you for the fine presentation. Makes me want to go up in the mountains with my metal detector!

Thank you, that was an education, I have never found gold before but after watching this I just might have but didn't recognise it. But I am going to revisit a stream where I found clumps of Iron pyrite that weighed more than a pound. It was embedded in the bank of a stream in a sandy placer type deposit. I will look much more closely to see what else I can pull out of it. The area is glacial deposits.

You have taught me so much and I've only known this Chanel for a couple days now thanks for making videos that people like me can understand

Great job laying it out for us weekend explorer type.

Sir, you are a very talented teacher. Keep the videos coming! I'm definitely interested in the details you explain. Wish I could be right there!

This is all so interesting to me, Thank you for producing this video, I am subscribing.

Just watched your diamond vid...great. Thanks for the lessons.

Amazing presentation, thank you! 😃🙏💓

Great job on the video !!!!!

Love the vid! Extremely informative and engaging to watch. At 32:13 I've found something that looks similar to that in the back of my fridge... it wasn't gold ore. 🤣

Thanks Chris. This really helps newbies like me!

I found a very quartz-rich area with a lot of quartz rocks (in Southern California) that look very similar to the ones in this video. Found a lot of other rocks nearby that have flaky goldish powder attached to them. My hunch is it's just mica and not actual gold powder. You'll find gold looking flakes on it but when you touch it - it crumbles into goldish powder..

My left ear enjoys this.

I just started looking in Kansas after I found a nice crystal piece which was full of gold and went and looked today for about an hour and found more then a handful let's just say I'm hooked and will be looking every chance I get thanks

I really enjoyed the video. In particular I liked the fact that you are so knowledgeable, easy to understand, and easy to listen to. You should have been a broadcaster! Lol. Thanks for putting this info out there. I've always had a passing interest in prospecting, but never took it up. Maybe now that I'm retired. It's a fascinating subject, and apparently one that takes years to get a true handle on. So, your video is a big help for anyone getting started. New subscriber. Peace!

As a lifelong rock climber, it's nice to know more about what I'm climbing on and how it formed, even if I'm not interested in prospecting.