mbasko said:
Australian native gold is sought after because it has a high purity regardless of state.
Can't remember where this came from but the below was supposed to be the median average of each state. Could also be lower or higher.
Tasmania 92 - 98%
Victoria 92 - 98%
New South Wales 92 - 98%
Queensland 92 - 98%
South Australia 88 - 96%
Northern Territory 88 - 96%
Western Australia 85 - 95%
Some other countries can be as low as 60% I believe.
Mbasko, that is about the same as saying that a man with one foot in ice and the other in boiling water is at a nice average temperature - as I noted above it varies all over the place within a State. To quote the Geological Survey of Victoria "The mineralogy and geochemistry of the gold mineralisation show broad regional variations. The fineness [1000 gold/(gold + silver)] of most mesozonal orogenic gold is greater than 920 (92%), but in the Stawell Zone it is commonly less than 750 (75%) and occasionally less than 300 (30%)." It mostly varies with type of deposit. A different price per ounce was paid for gold in each different Victorian goldfield (so it could be less than half as much in parts of the Stawell Zone (e.g. St Arnaud) compared with say the Ballarat goldfield. One cannot assume unless you are very familiar with local variation and very sure where gold comes from. Try selling parcels of alluvial gold from mixed sources to a gold buyer.....
As usual well above the intent of my post (which was only to show good gold purity can come from all states of Australia) & over the top for the majority of hobbyists wanting to sell small parcels of gold found detecting or panning/sluicing.
