Deposit types/Gold, Tin, Platinum

Placer gold and tin

Gold, platinum-group alloys or cassiterite concentrated in river gravels and beaches.

What it is

Gold, platinum-group alloys or cassiterite concentrated in river gravels and beaches.1

How it forms

Running water and surf concentrate heavy grains eroded from lode deposits into gravels where river speed drops.1

Host rocks

Alluvial gravel, sand and conglomerate.1

Where it forms

Tertiary conglomerates along fault zones, shield areas and stable foldbelts.1

How old

Cenozoic to Holocene1

Mines of this type

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Story cards

Where next

Mines

An example ofKlondike (Bonanza Creek)See Klondike (Bonanza Creek), an example of this deposit type.1An example ofGabriel's GullySee Gabriel's Gully, an example of this deposit type.1An example ofSutter's Mill (Coloma)See Sutter's Mill (Coloma), an example of this deposit type.1

Sources

  1. Mineral Deposit Models (Bulletin 1693, Cox and Singer, eds., 1986) US Geological Survey

From the Prospector Trails mining history dataset: each fact links to the source it was checked against. Figures are as the source gives them, in the money of their day. Not investment advice.

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Cover photos from Wikimedia Commons: Super Pit, Kalgoorlie by Kgbo, CC BY-SA 4.0. Pictures: Pangkalpinang. Mijn 3b. Een reeks koelies bezig met het transporteeren van grond, Europeana (Public Domain Mark 1.0); Gold prospectors constructing a long box with a filter for panning gold. Process print after H.M. Paget, 1899., Henry Marriott Paget (Public Domain Mark 1.0); South Africa: a crowd of people gathered outside The Goldfields offices in Johannesburg. 1896., Unknown (Wellcome Collection) (Public Domain Mark 1.0).