3078

Native Gold in Quartz, Alabama Hills, Inyo Co. [190344]

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Rocks, Fossils & Minerals Start Price:100.00 USD Estimated At:200.00 - 500.00 USD
Native Gold in Quartz, Alabama Hills, Inyo Co. [190344]
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[?]Live Online Auction Starts In 2024 Nov 23 @ 08:00 (UTC-8 : PST/AKDT)
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About 18 small pieces of white quartz with crystalline gold from the Honest Abe Mine in the Alabama Hills. Very rare location. The Alabama Hills are perhaps best known to non-mining folks as the home of dozens of western movies, as well as Gunga Din. Today, the rock climbing community has discovered the place, and it is common on any summer day to find hundreds of vehicles parked in the remote expanse of the Alabama Hills with their occupants climbing boulders. But before all this, there were prospectors climbing the hills in search of gold and silver, panning the creeks, and searching for their el dorado, while all the while the rest of the prospectors were up in the California Mother Lode or in Nevada.
Indeed, it is difficult to find early info on prospects of the Alabama Hills. But Goodyear's paper in the 1888 Report of the State Mineralogist gives us important clues. In that report on p243, is published, perhaps for the first time, a hand drawn map of the Alabama Hills. And right smack-dab in the bottom center of the map is shown a placer gold mine, marked "old placer mine."
I spoke wit our "Nugget Ace", and he had found several placer areas in the Alabama Hills, and did quite well. One of the areas had been previously mined, but they missed "all the small stuff", and others were yet untouched. he remarked that the gold was all bright and shiny.
This group of about 18 small pieces is important because it is from one of the small gold lode deposits. Each of the pieces has visible gold, albeit small. The gross weight of the specimens is about 40g. The gold weight is small, perhaps 2g or so - very difficult to estimate. see the map we posted with this lot.
If you are a crystalline gold collector, this may be your only chance. [ Alabama Hills, Inyo Co. California