What Do 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 do real gold look like.

Fool s gold tends to be bright and shiny much shinier than actual gold. Gold ore can look like quartz with streaks or spotty areas of gold. Real gold will still maintain a diluted glow though not as bright as it would be if in full sunlight. 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.

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. Check out some of the pictures throughout our website of the various gold nuggets and gold specimens. Once you have seen a few pictures of real gold it is pretty easy to distinguish from the other stuff. If it floats it s probably not real gold since gold is very dense.

If you search online some will say that real gold tarnishes while others will say that real gold does not tarnish. Most native gold is alloyed with silver and if the silver content is high enough the specimen will have a whitish yellow color. Fool s gold is glittery and bright but if you shade it in your hand it will become dull and drab looking. Real gold weighs about 1 5 times more than fool s gold or iron pyrite.

Gold has a golden to yellow color. Pyrite has a brassy color. 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. Fool s gold and other minerals that look like gold will not produce a weight difference between the pieces of quartz.

So indicators of the presence of sulfides like arsenic copper iron and silver may also appear within gold ore. To tell if gold is real try dropping it into a glass of water. Most specimens of pyrite found in nature will have at least some tarnish on their surface. Look at how the gold reflects light.

Nuggets or small flakes of gold are usually bright and untarnished. Gold tarnishing is the slight corrosion of the gold surface and is evident as a dark discoloration of the gold item also called a tarnish film. The environmental protection agency says that gold is commonly alloyed with silver and other metals. 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.