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People at the flume. *PIC*
Posted By: King In Response To: Doing some gem hunting. *PIC* (King)
Date: Saturday, 11-4-17, at 3:07 a.m.
This was Doc's Rocks Gem Mine last Saturday. They had a big crowd that day and had the outside flume going I was dropping off a few to have cut.
I liked both places and both were very helpful. Doc's Rocks took more time with kids and the other was more for pro with a campground beside it.
Doc's Rocks were all stones from NC and Foggy Mountain used South American and had emeralds in it. I only found one nice emerald with good color.
My best finds at Doc's was a nice dark true NC sapphire and 2 more light ones that were showing up as a ruby he said was the biggest he had seen.
I found my best colored ruby there. I picked darker dirt because I thought it might have heavier stones the largest find was a big quartz crystal.
The most valuable to find are emerald, sapphire and ruby because their prices have been going up, emeralds are worth more than diamonds right now.
The ruby from over here is not as pretty as the ones from India. They have to use the bigger size rocks to cut for all not the smaller size rocks.
They do not know what your going to get before cutting it. If it has a lot of fractures it's no good, I found a blue topaz there too cracked to do.
The rest I found was the usual color. That is a neat rock you can hold it in your hand and it will stay cold, it has to do with the aluminium in it.
There was a mix of different gems some of the bigger stones that I was finding in that was amethyst, citrine, chrysocolla, moonstone and tourmaline.
It also had fossils mixed in it from the phosphate mine in Aurora and I was finding little pieces of reeds, broken shells, small dark whalebone rocks.
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