Welcome to The Ohio State Prospectors Association

The premiere club for all things prospecting in Ohio.  Gold panning, highbanking, dredging, sluicing, metal detecting, rock hounding, gem grubbing or fossil hunting?  Discussions about all of these outdoor activities in the Buckeye State can be found on our forum.

Wondering if there is Gold in Ohio?  Click Here to find out.

There is Gold in Ohio and the OSPA has three of the best properties/gold claims in the state.

If you want to see for yourself, Contact Us now for info on visiting our properties as a guest of a member.

Announcements:

February 2012 Meeting

Next meeting is scheduled for Feb 26th at the Gander Mountain Hilliard meeting room.  More information will be availabe on the Forum.  Thinking about joining a propecting club or interested in learning more about gold prospecting or the OSPA?  Come to a meeting and introduce yourself. Guests are always welcome.

January 2012 Meeting

Another meeting is complete.  Congratulations to all of the raffle winners and thanks to all that attended and brought stuff for the potluck.Meeting minutes will be available soon on the Members section of the Forum.

Gold Lesson

Golds atomic number of 79 makes it one of the higher atomic number elements which occur naturally. Like all elements with atomic numbers larger than iron, gold is thought to have been formed from a supernovae nucleosynthesis process. Their explosions scattered metal-containing dusts (including heavy elements like gold) into the region of space in which they later condensed into our solar system and the Earth. On Earth, whenever elemental gold occurs, it appears most often as a metal solid solution of gold with silver, i.e. a gold silver alloy. Such alloys usually have a silver content of 8 - 10%. Electrum is elemental gold with more than 20% silver. Electrums color runs from golden silvery to silvery, dependent upon the silver content. The more silver, the lower the specific gravity. Relative sizes of a an 860kg rock ore, and the 30g of gold that can be extracted from it. Toi gold mine, Japan. Gold left behind after pyrite cube dissolved away.Gold is found in ores made up of rock with very small or microscopic particles of gold. This gold ore is often found together with quartz or sulfide minerals such as Fools Gold, which is a pyrite. These are called lode deposits. Native gold is also found in the form of free flakes, grains or larger nuggets that have been eroded from rocks and end up in alluvial deposits (called placer deposits). Such free gold is always richer at the surface of gold-bearing veins owing to the oxidation of accompanying minerals followed by weathering, and washing of the dust into streams and rivers, where it collects and can be welded by water action to form nuggets. Gold sometimes occurs combined with tellurium as the minerals calaverite, krennerite, nagyagite, petzite and sylvanite, and as the rare bismuthide maldonite (Au2Bi) and antimonide aurostibite (AuSb2). Gold also occurs in rare alloys with copper, lead, and mercury: the minerals auricupride (Cu3Au), novodneprite (AuPb3) and weishanite ((Au,Ag)3Hg2). Recent research suggests that microbes can sometimes play an important role in forming gold deposits, transporting and precipitating gold to form grains and nuggets that collect in alluvial deposits.