Found these in an area where they mine silver,copper and gold, No signal with my metal detector

If that’s not giving a signal, maybe a mica or something.

Pyrite does not register on a metal detector
See if a magnet sticks to it

Cut on it with a sharp edge to see if it’s soft or hard.

First picture; iron pyrite, other pictures iron pyrite and probably fine divided sulfides of a different nature (the grayish colors).
Could be one of or a combination of any of the following sulfides. All of these sulfides (metal and sulfur) often carry gold with them, but the gold is not visible to the naked eye, it can only be determined with a fire assay.

galena, lead
Sphalerite, zinc
Arsenopyrite, arsenic
Tetrahedrite, copper, silver, zinc, iron
Or one of many other combinations of arsenic, antimony, silver, lead, zinc, bismuth, etc..

granite

I just took this picture of a chunk of ore from a mine that I am currently working on.
It is about 40% arsenopyrite, 10% iron pyrite, and a few percent of very finely divided grayish color sulfides mostly composed of lead zinc copper and the little antimony.
However, its primary value is in its gold and silver content. This is considered a very high grade ore that runs nearly 2 oz of gold and 6 oz of silver per ton. It is also very dense, about 10 cubic feet to the ton.

Thanks Waggler

so not to steal this thread Waggler what will you do with that chunk of ore to get its gold and silver usable?

I know the first step is to crush tons and tons of ore but I too am curious on the process. How fine and is it a gravity type system or some sort of binder to extract the minerals?

Is it just the two precious metals extracted or can other minerals be extracted and marketed?

BTW, I assume the arseno is arsenic? If so how is that dealt with?

Some rich veins of gold have been found here.
Just south of me the old crosus mine was 600 oz to the ton.
Some places you can easily see the gold right in the quartz veins.

That is the multi million dollar question.
I have about 125,000 tons of this material; you do the math.

In decades past the ore was simply sent to a copper smelter where the gold was recovered as part of the copper refining process. The arsenic converted to arsenic trioxide and went up the smoke stack. This practice has been banned world-wide. There is a smelter in Namibia and has recently installed a state-of-the-art exhaust cleaning system; this smelter might be an option.

Arsenical ores are also treated by expensive hydrometalurgical processes that are custom tailored to a specific ore. Not really an option at this stage.

I do have an ore broker working on the project.

Yes, years ago when I went caribou hunting I drove to LG4, and then flew north to the Nastapoka River. On the way home I stayed at a motel in Val Dor ,where as you probably know is a huge gold mine. They had core samples of quartz on display, and you could see the gold in them.

Very interesting. Amazing how anyone discovered the different ores and what to do with them.

Went for a walk one sunny summer afternoon, when in the army in Co. A little creek above where we lived, that the bottom was covered in gold like that. At first, this old flatlander went wowza, but quickly realized that it was fools gold, it was on a road that. led to the towns water supply. If it had been worth squat, it would have already been got! lol

Basically your sitting on a fortune in gold and silver buried in rock with no way to dig it out due to the arsenic. Just out of curiosity how much have you spent to get your pile of rock?

I got a few chunks of quartz with pieces of gold in it..
Dont want to say where I got it,there might be a big gold mine start up and wreck someones trapline.

The silver mine here by me used to produce 700oz/ton. It was a by- product of lead , that was the primary target, there's gold as well. It'll probably never reopen because of current regulatory red tape.

Warrior,
I've probably only got about $10K out of pocket and a lot of sweat into it. Mostly opening up a collapsed mine portal, a lot of underground sampling and things like that.