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I have found small pink gems, cannot identify
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Author:  acefaceshot [ Wed Apr 15, 2015 10:57 am ]
Post subject:  I have found small pink gems, cannot identify

Attached is a photo zoomed in 60X, these are about the size of large sand grains...about diameter of rice. I found these during a half hour recreational search. Can anyone narrow the possibilities down for me?

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2015-04-15 11.56.42.jpg
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Author:  Stephen Challener [ Wed Apr 15, 2015 11:20 am ]
Post subject:  Re: I have found small pink gems, cannot identify

From the photo alone, it's impossible to identify it for you--lots of stones come in that color and it's hard to see any features that would give helpful hints.
From context, however, I'd feel good guessing that it's almost certainly garnet. Garnet is pretty good at surviving as loose grains, and that color would be quite typical. It's also relatively common so recreational looking isn't too unlikely to turn some up. Could you give some more information about where you found them?

Author:  acefaceshot [ Wed Apr 15, 2015 11:39 am ]
Post subject:  Re: I have found small pink gems, cannot identify

I am very new to all of this. I have scratched it with stainless pocket knife and it colours the gem silver. These gems stayed in pan with hemmatite and magnatite. The colour is very consistant amoung all pieces. Light passes through very clearly. Fracture the same as quartz (common gem fracture). The region is not known for gems, northern appalachian mountains. Where I looked has many different types of bedrock in the area, all within a stones throw (granite, limestone, sandstone, gypsum, shale). Garnet has been found a few hours away, and ruby has been found about 100km away from here. I have found orange and red gems too (all similar properties and small). Other corundums have been found in southern appalachians.

Author:  acefaceshot [ Wed Apr 15, 2015 12:16 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: I have found small pink gems, cannot identify

I apologise if I am repeating the answer, it seems like it didn't the first time. I appreciate you taking the time to help me, I realise I am very ignorant to this stuff. I scraped gem with stainless steel picket knife and pieces of the knife coloured the gem. The gems are quite dense for they remained in pan with hematite and magnatite. I am in the northern appalachians, garnet & ruby as been found somewhat near by. Other corundum has been found in southern appalachians. Colour is very consistant, light passes through clearly.gem appears quite transparent, no fractures. I have broke a piece and it displayed same fracture type as quartz. Other similar gems (size and appearance) found are orange and red. Please let me know if I can supply in other information.

Author:  Barbra Voltaire, FGG [ Wed Apr 15, 2015 11:06 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: I have found small pink gems, cannot identify

Do you have a grain about 3mm? If so. send it to me and I'll see what I can do for you. I'll do it for the price of return postage.

Author:  acefaceshot [ Thu Apr 16, 2015 9:34 am ]
Post subject:  Re: I have found small pink gems, cannot identify

I do not have a piece quite that size, I am going to go out again. I have done months of reading and youtubing on the topic and need a little thing called a prospectors license as well. Attached is a photo of the pink gems with light being shone from the side. I will attach one or two photos of other stones to show how consistant the colour & hue is.

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2015-04-16 10.23.37.jpg
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Author:  acefaceshot [ Thu Apr 16, 2015 9:35 am ]
Post subject:  Re: I have found small pink gems, cannot identify

Another stone

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2015-04-16 10.21.18.jpg
2015-04-16 10.21.18.jpg [ 97.14 KiB | Viewed 2593 times ]

Author:  acefaceshot [ Thu Apr 16, 2015 9:36 am ]
Post subject:  Re: I have found small pink gems, cannot identify

Another stone

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2015-04-16 10.25.14.jpg
2015-04-16 10.25.14.jpg [ 72.38 KiB | Viewed 2593 times ]

Author:  acefaceshot [ Thu Apr 16, 2015 9:43 am ]
Post subject:  Re: I have found small pink gems, cannot identify

I have another question. Where so much of the appalachians have been eroded (being the oldest mountain range on earth). And participating in majority of earth's glaciations, would all the good gems have been washed out to the oceans?

Author:  Stephen Challener [ Thu Apr 16, 2015 2:33 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: I have found small pink gems, cannot identify

There is a really easy way to tell if you've got garnets or rubies. Step 1: get an LCD monitor (flat monitor, laptop, most smartphones) and go to a white screen. Step 2: get a pair of polarized sunglasses. Step 3: hold the stones against the screen, or lay the screen flat and lay them on it. Step 4: hold the sunglasses above them, and rotate them until the screen looks black while looking through them.
Garnets will look black or almost black through the sunglasses. Rubies will still look red.
This is because your monitor puts off plane-polarized light, and the sunglasses only allow plane-polarized light. If your monitor and sunglasses have their orientations exactly reversed, no light from the monitor will get through the sunglasses, unless something happens in between to change the polarization. Garnets don't change the polarization of light that goes through them, but ruby does, so some of the light that goes through the ruby will make it through the glasses.
But they're probably garnets if they have a quartz-like fracture.

Re: weathering: some gems get weathered down and swept away, but in the process more are being exposed from below as well.

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