COIN GEEKS

[Cracker]

My dad always carried a loupe to look at ore.


Did you know turquoise is aluminum-containing metamorphic rock (usually from prehistoric alluvial plains of long-receded oceans)/copper and is mineralized by water seeping up through it containing substances that harden it? It is blue in the Southwest because of all the copper and green in Nevada because of all the iron.

Without the copper and iron it would be red (garnet is aluminous, too).

They find gold deposits in the west with iron ore deposits (and quartz). Most iron ore was formed in alluvial plains in the ancient oceans (too much oxygen in the atmosphere now for it to form like it did in past eras and not hot enough) and they think gold was also formed during the same natural processes.

Gold steaks yellow and fool's gold steaks black.

Useless information from my childhood, although my brother did work in the gold industry for 15 years, so not worthless to him.

I like the history of the mining and smelting more than I like the coinage...