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What is alluvial gold dust?

I just got an email offering to sell me some "alluvial gold dust" and have no idea what that is. Can you tell me whether it has any value on the market and if so, roughly what it's worth?

Dave's Answer:

Let me guess, you got a message that started out like this: "I AM IN POSSESSION OF 1600 KG ALLUVIAL GOLD DUST OF 23 CARATS PLUS AND DIAMOND OF 25000 CARATS WHICH I WANT TO SALE ON THE INTERNATIONAL MARKET."

First off, stop. It's a scam and you're not going to get what you think you're buying, even if you were to buy it. Secondly, lets briefly consider the amounts here. 1600KG = 3527 pounds. That's almost two tons. That's a lot of dust, "alluvial gold" or otherwise.

But it gets more amusing. A 25,000 caret diamond is unimaginably, idiotically huge. The largest cut diamond in the world is the The Golden Jubilee, which weighs in at only 545.67 carats. (I say "only" but the fact is it's worth so much money that if you had a diamond of this quality, you wouldn't be bothering emailing people trying to get help from out of the country!)

Here's what I could dig up about alluvial gold dust:

"The word Alluvial describes a type of soil. It can be made up of sand, silt, clay, gravel, or other matter deposited by flowing water. The term "Alluvial Gold" specifically refers to gold dust found in that type of soil. When riverbed soil is scooped up and panned for gold dust, that ist alluvial gold."[ref]

If indeed the person who contacted you has alluvial gold dust, one can only wonder how they propose they ship it to you and what you're supposed to do with gold dust once you receive it, since we're not in 1849 where gold merchants are happy to see you walk in off the mine with a dirty bag full of nuggets.

How much is it worth? Does it really matter? :-)

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Categorized: d) None of the Above (Article 8411)
Tagged: alluvial gold, diamonds, gold dust, spam, spammers
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Comments

You are just confusing the little boy by saying he is not going to get what he wants to buy.
Why did i say so? because we are a gold mining company and we constantly and seriously looking for buyers of the product or even agents that could link us to buyers for a commission.
Even if the proposal he got was scam it is good as you alerted him about that. But, you should have gone ahead to make him understand that there are real sellers of the product.
Presently we have up to 500kilos of 22 carrats gold in dust form for sale at $20,000 per kilo.
You could equally be our agent.
Regards
Abdul

Posted by: abdu at February 3, 2009 7:07 AM

I have something to say, now that you mention it, but ...

I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a cup of coffee!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!