I'm going to look for Emeralds - any tips?

Ok so a buddy of mine has about 50 acres up in Hiddenite, NC, which is an area pretty rich in emeralds (the largest emerald in the world was found there recently.) So we’re going to go mess around and look for emeralds Sunday. Neither one of us have ever dug or mined or really done anything like this at all. We’re mostly just doing it for something to do and the adventurous spirit of it, I’m not out looking for a nest-egg or anything (though it would be nice to find something worthy of a small necklace.) So does anyone have any tips for us? What kind of spots to look in? What kind of tools or equipment we need? How to spot an emerald or other precious stone (or signs that they might be nearby)? Any info (even anecdotal) would be appreciated. Thanks!

THEY’RE GREEN. :smiley: :smiley:

Yeh, Tiffany’s is on 5th Ave and 57th Street.

:wink:
With Emeralds, the deeper green the color, the more valuable they are.

Take a chunk of quartz (Hardness 7) with you. Emeralds (which are a variety of Beryl) have a hardness between 7.5 and 8 and will be able to readily scratch the quartz, whereas the quartz won’t scratch the emerald. Pretty much every common mineral has a hardness <7 and will be scratched by quartz, so it’s a pretty quick-n-easy test to see if you’ve got something worthwhile.

(Test with clear, clean surfaces and press hard when you are scratching. Wipe away what powder forms and use a hand lens to see if the mineral was scratched).

If it has “Mountain Dew” written on it, it’s probably just glass.

If you like, you can send any suspected emeralds to me. I’ll let you know if you found any;)

Ok, so we went and dug for emeralds. We mostly dug in and around a creek bed. We found tons and tons of quartz. Beautiful, clear quartz was just everywhere and some it that had been laying in the creek was covered with a thin layer of green slime and fooled into thinking we saw some rather large emeralds a few times (btw - quartz is worthless, right?) But alas, we didn’t find any emeralds. For some reason I kept getting the feeling that we were in the wrong place in the creek bed. I don’t know much about geology but creek beds just don’t seem “old” enough to me to have emeralds laying around. I was thinking of just walking out in the middle of a field and starting to dig.

So anyway, the reason I’m posting to this thread again is because, even though we didn’t find anything, we both want to go again, and we want to be more prepared this time. Are there any books to read about this kind of stuff? I tried searching amazon but I don’t really know the proper name for “going to your buddy’s house and looking for rocks.” The kind of info I’m looking for is stuff like where to dig, how deep to dig, what kind of rocks you should break open and look inside…etc. Any help at all would be greatly appreciated. Thanks :smiley:

Here are some web sites that may be helpful. Sounds like fun, and hard work. Hope you get more than muddy.

http://www.nando.net/ncd/week7/hiddenweb.html
http://www.rockhounds.com/rockshop/ncsites.html
http://rockhoundingar.com/contents.html

I just call an emerald store in the Virgin Islands, that has a main branch in South America. Boy,
do they ever have some cheap ones.

When my in-laws were still living in western North Carolina, we would go visit and the Perfect Child[sup]TM[/sup] liked going to the gem-panning places. They’d sell you bags of dirt that had gemstones in them. Every once in a while, someone found one that was really valuable, but most were salted with little stones that they hoped you’d take to their store to be cut and mounted for ridiculous prices.

Anyway, she has a bunch of garnet, amethyst, rose quartz, some rubies, emeralds, and a few other things I don’t remember. Some of the amethysts were quite large and nice, but mostly the gems were little chips. Still, I was cheap fun.

My point? I have no idea where they got the dirt. So I guess I’m not a lot of help. So you don’t have to read this if you don’t want to.

:smiley:

This site has some good information about finding:

  1. Emeralds
  2. Rubies
  3. Opals!

Haj

Emeralds, aquamarine, Goshenite, and Morganite are varieties of beryl. They will not be all shiney in nature. They may appear translucent.

Hell, take the quartz and put them up on eBay as “New Age Healing Crystals” or something. You’ll sell a ton.

There’s a ‘spot’ in NE Vic called Toomb…HANG ON, I"M NOT TELLING YOUSE BLUDGERS…that used to be the site for picking up alluvial gems of all kinds, including diamonds apparently! I’ve found many sapphires, but there are also rubies, garnets, and other ‘gems’ to be found. IMHO, the BEST gem I ever found there was a Tiger Snake that was crawling into the tent of a camping mate! That was a bewdy, especially as my ‘mate’ was inside the tent at the time…(Don’t worry, he survived!!)
Another adventure at Toombu…shit, nearly got caught that time…was when the ‘waterfall’ was running at peak capacity, but unfortunately no hunks of gems were coming down in the cascade!
But, if you live in Aus, and you wanna check out some bonza bushland, and some gem sites (and incidently, the site where Ned Kelly shot Kennedy), then head to Toombullup. There’s no town there, and unless you have a decent map you may not find it, but it’s between Tolmie and Tatong.