What Does Real Gold Look Like

Gold can look many different ways in nature but it is important to know the difference between gold and the other minerals.

What does real gold look like.

Natural gold looks like gold it looks like jewelry it s a buttery yellow color and it s soft looking. Gold ore can look like quartz with streaks or spotty areas of gold. Real gold weighs about 1 5 times more than fool s gold or iron pyrite. The tiny nugget weighs 0 0035 troy ounce and at a gold price of 1200 ozt the nugget if it were pure gold would have a gold value of 4 20.

A copper penny and a tiny gold nugget on a black streak plate with a small streak made by the nugget. This sheen will not change regardless of what light it is in. Fool s gold and other minerals that look like gold will not produce a weight difference between the pieces of quartz. Real gold particularly when it is in nugget form has a yellow almost waxy sheen.

Most types of fake gold may look shinier or duller in different lights and may appear almost silver at times. The environmental protection agency says that gold is commonly alloyed with silver and other metals. In fact the piece with gold colored particles inside may even be lighter than your other piece of quartz if the gold is not real. However just because it looks like gold and is in the same place as gold doesn t mean that it s gold.

The copper penny is in the photo to serve as a scale. Check out some of the pictures throughout our website of the various gold nuggets and gold specimens. Most people have no idea what to look for and even if they do find gold they might throw it out accidentally. If you look closely at the piece and see that its structure consists of what looks like small and sharp cubes then it is fool s gold.

Gold panning whether it s professional or recreational is supposed to yield gold flakes and nuggets washed out of the soil. Fool s gold is made up of crystals and has sharp edges while real gold is a metal with a smoother texture and rounder edges. But real gold stays bright even when out of direct sunlight and though soft does not fall apart when you touch it like fool s gold can. If you look at this picture you will see a gold ring next a couple of different kinds of gold naturally occurring in their rock.

I am using a light source to show the difference between gold which shines and pyrite which sparkles. Fool s gold can be mistaken for placer gold gold found as rounded or flat nuggets in dry and wet stream beds and rivers or creeks because they both look golden.