[Rockhounds] Smelter Nickel

[John Junkroski]

I have a similar specimen which I bought at an auction. It had only "  
Nickel No.43 " on the label but the seller said it was from a plating  
operation, not a smelter. Since nickel plating was so common during  
the early part of the last century and he was dealing mostly in  
antiques, I accepted his explanation as reasonable.

But now that I've gone and looked at it closely, the form resembles  
molten wax that has dripped from a candle, and it shows a rough,  
broken-looking place where it might have been broken away from a  
crucible or a casting mold, so apparently it was liquid when it formed.
It's really a visually attractive specimen, and I would like to know  
more about it.

John

On Jan 6, 2009, at 2:34 PM, Lawrence Rush wrote:

> OK...this time I DO have a  real puzzle..................
>
> In the 1980's, I used to attend a swap session every summer in New  
> Hampshire. For several years there, a gentleman would approach me  
> (he did not have a booth), and offer to trade me a Nickel specimen.  
> These came out of a smelter somewhere, and were attractive, being  
> kind of globular, and kind of dendritic, and shiny metallic. It was  
> maybe 4x8cm in size. No label, and I wasn't sophisticated enough to  
> ask for one.
>
> I re-traded one of these (don't remember what happened to the rest)  
> to a friend in Arkansas. That owner died and this particular one  
> recently showed up on an auction site on the web, and was sold to  
> another collector. Since it had my label on it, he contacted me for  
> locality information. I know nothing about the specimen or the  
> person who originally had it.
>
> Is there any member who knows anything about this trader? Would  
> anyone know where Nickel might have been smelted in the 1980's, and  
> how it might have got out into the hands of a mineral trader? I  
> would like to be able to add something to the label besides the  
> specimen (and my) name.
>
> Thanks.....Larry Rush
>
> -- 
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