What does mined silver look like

These are just a few of silver's important properties. When performance is more important than price, silver is often the material of choice. Silver wire: A specimen of wire silver with a heavy tarnish of acanthite on a calcite matrix. Specimen is approximately 6 x 4 x 3 centimeters in size. Related: The Many Uses of Silver. Silver is rarely found as a native element mineral. When found, it is often associated with quartz , gold , copper , sulfides of other metals, arsenides of other metals, and other silver minerals.

Unlike gold, it is rarely found in significant amounts in placer deposits. Native silver is sometimes found in the oxidized zones above the ores of other metals.

It persists there because silver does not readily react with oxygen or water. It does react with hydrogen sulfide to produce a tarnished surface that is composed of the silver sulfide mineral known as acanthite. Many specimens of native silver that have been exposed to the atmosphere or to hydrothermal activity have an acanthite coating. Most native silver is found associated with hydrothermal activity. In these areas it often occurs in abundance as vein and cavity fillings. A few of these deposits are large enough and rich enough in native silver to support mining.

In most cases, the economic viability of the deposit depends upon the presence of other valuable minerals. The mines are usually underground operations that follow the veins and cavities where the native silver occurs.

Native silver is usually without a characteristic crystal habit. When it forms in the open spaces of pockets and fractures, some interesting crystal habits sometimes develop. The crystals are rarely the cubes, octahedrons, and dodecahedrons expected of an isometric mineral. Instead the silver's habit is usually thin flakes, plates, and dendritic crystal clusters formed in the narrow spaces of joints and fractures. Filiform and wire-like habits are also seen.

The number of minerals that contain silver as an essential constituent is surprising. The green table on this page contains a partial list of silver minerals that includes 39 different species. Each of these is a distinct silver mineral. Sterling silver is silver alloyed with another metal, usually copper. Silver bromide and silver nitrate are used in photography. It is used in various photographic materials and processes. It is also used in electrical products because it conducts electricity more efficiently than copper.

It has been used by dentists in amalgam fillings. Skip to content Return to Minerals Database. Related topics: Silver the Element. Gold Minerals. Of the base metal ore minerals, the most common primary ones are argentiferous galena, sphalerite, and pyrite, while native silver and the sulphides and arsenides are less common. Rich silver ore from the town of Tonopah in Nye county Nevada.

Tonopah was one of the great epithermal silver and gold strikes of the early 20th century. The bonanza ore is rich in silver sulfides and also contains some free gold as well. Dark colored minerals of an almost sooty appearance are rich in silver. Rich lead - silver ore from the famous mines of Wallace, Idaho.

These mines have been mined to very deep levels below the surface. Although Silver was the first metal discovered here, Battle Mountain has also produced a significant amount of both gold and copper ore as well as silver.

This sulfide rich silver ore from Nevada is dark gray and colored by a heavy content of metallic sulfides. The rich silver minerals pyrargyrite and stephanite boost the silver content of this bonanza grade ore.

The Silver Peak mining district in Esmerelda County, Nevada was very productive in the late s, but work continued through the early s, and is still a site for ongoing open pit gold mining to this day.

This area produced many millions of dollars from silver ore which looked like this specimen. It is colored gray by rich silver and lead sulfide minerals. This bonanza grade silver ore is from Nye County in Nevada. As with a number of the samples, the sooty black minerals are rich in silver.

It also contains silver tellurides. Telluride minerals such as calaverite, are also important silver ores in some mining districts. This sample of rich gold and silver ore comes from the Cripple Creek district in Colorado. The mossy metallic colored mineral on this specimen is calaverite, a mineral rich in both gold and silver. The Comstock lode district was perhaps the largest single silver ore find ever made in the USA.

The Comstock lode is famous for its ore bodies of bonanza grade silver ore rich in sooty silver sulfide minerals like acanthite formerly known as argentite. The ore also contains considerable other sulfide minerals and some free gold as well. The Comstock is famous for great bonanzas of crushed, mineralized quartz, in part exceedingly rich in silver minerals, were found at intervals along the lode, especially in chambers or vertical fissures probably produced by normal faulting of the hanging wall.

The ores consist of quartz and some calcite, in places banded with pyrite, galena, chalcopyrite, sphalerite, and finely distributed rich silver minerals. The valuable minerals are mainly native gold, acanthite argentite , stephanite, and polybasite. Virginia City silver ore: This is another sample of bonanza grade rich silver ore from the Comstock lode in northern Nevada near Reno.

Rich silver sulfides like acanthite and polybasite, together with base metal sulfides like pyrite, galena and chalcopyrite are sprinkled though quartz and adularia feldspar vein material. Virginia City is still an interesting attraction for tourists in mining for silver was conducted through the s. Austin, Nevada, in the central part of the state, was known for its high grade silver ores which occurred in a network of narrow veins.

The district produced many millions of dollars worth of silver during the mid to late s. The oxidized surface ores like this sample shown here were easy for the miners to process.

However, the deep ores, which contained a large percentage of base metal sulfides was very difficult for the miners to process and extract the silver. Eventually new technology and methods were developed to capture the silver out of the rich deep ores.

Calico Silver Ore In the Calico District, deposits of silver chloride in fissure veins, and in small fractures and pockets in volcanic tuffs and sandstones, probably of the Pliocene series. Below the oxidation zone, rich chlorides give way to silver bearing sulfides as shown in this specimen. They occur in Southwestern California, in that portion of the State belonging to the Great Basin geologic province. The ore was thought by Lindgren to have come in heated solution from below and to have filled the fissures and overflowed, forming the surface deposits in the tuffs.

They are considered epithermal in origin. The sooty black colored material in this specimen is cerargyrite, an important ore of silver.