This would be a good suggestion for the OP. Any Non-Destructive Examination (NDE) company would have a handheld X-ray fluorescence Positive Material Identification (PMI) device that could give you the exact chemistry of the metal in seconds.
Gold fillings from teeth???
Any dentists in the family tree? Or Nazis?
I was thinking more of a connection at a crematorium, He may have been buying them. I think they are about 33% gold.
Note that this will only be accurate if the coins and the mystery metal (or where they are hanging from on the cross-beam) are both the same distance away from the fulcrum. (Remember how the smaller kid can balance the teeter-totter by moving farther away from the center)
Not to my knowledge (on both counts). I’d also be very surprised if he was collecting them, and there are mouthfuls full if that were the source.
Much better photos. They could be natural nuggets.
Borrow a few from dad and send them to me. I’ll test and return. email me for my address if you do.
Darren Garrison already tried that …
Man, in the new pics, i think thats gold flake possibly.
does not quite look like gold amalgam or what ever you call filling material, the color seems better.
You might have a little treasure in your hands
Take a piece into any jeweler or coin place, they should be able to atleast give you an informed idea
I bet his dad will be headed for the jewelers before his car turns the first corner when he leaves.
From the MPSIMS “[Ask the Funeral Director who’s a] New Member” thread:
Emphasis added.
So, I find it improbable that anyone is harvesting dental amalgam from the deceased. At least, I hope that’s not what’s happening. Unethical. Illegal, at least in some jurisdictions.
Thus the Skippy jar down in the basement …
Did he find toothless skulls in the basement too? Now THAT’S a mystery!
Yeah, new photos look more like gold. Note the more rounded appearance. Pyrite forms squarish crystals.
Okay, have sent a few small sample pieces off to get analyzed.
My grandfather was really into electronics - I remember playing with an oscilloscope when I was a kid - could these bits all have come from disassembling electronics? (If it matters, my grandfather died ~1988.)
A couple of the pieces, upon closer inspection, do appear to have small chunks of something else “stuck” to them, as if the pieces were “carved” off another object (rather than found in a river, etc.)
Congratulations! This is the first thread I’ve subscribed to to make sure I see how it turns out.
FTR, from the first photos my first impression was iron pyrite. But seeing how rounded the samples are in the second set I’m really doubting my first guess.
I’m in the Colorado mountains. I’ve managed to pan out a tiny amount of what I would call gold dust. Total amount about the size of a bb.
Just took a magnifying glass to it. Looks a lot like your pictures.
When I saw a flake I thought might be gold, I would pick it up with a tiny wet paint brush, and dip it in a test tube. If it dropped off the brush to the bottom NOT like a rock, but a ROCKET, I new it was gold.
It drops so fast in water, it’s almost like a magic trick.
Which of course is why panning for gold actually works (but you don’t see this happening in the pan due to sediment and other materials)
If it is gold, the peanut butter jar is not so mysterious. Storing something valuable in such a mundane container is a pretty good way to keep it from the attention of would-be pilferers, especially if they didn’t know what to look for.
To me, they look like normal, unmodified, natural flakes of gold panned from a river. Not that I have personal experience with that, but they are consistent with the many photos on the net. As for the flat surfaces, in natural deposits, gold precipitates around quartz, including around large crystals (just google gold quartz for examples.) The flat surfaces could be where a growing lump of gold touched a face of a quartz crystal.