Chris Blattman

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The other kind of New York gold digger

“The percentage of gold out here on the street is greater than the amount of gold you would find in a mine . . . It comes close to a mother lode because in the street, you’re picking up gold left by the industry.”

New York City’s only urban diamond miner (though probably not any more).

With a reporter in tow, Stepanian took his Styrofoam cup of mud to a friend’s polishing studio on 47th Street near Sixth Avenue and demonstrated how he “pans” the precious particles like an old-fashioned prospector — by hand, in a small metal basin with water and a strainer.

Over six days, he says, he collected enough gold for two sales totaling $819 on 47th Street — where he first got the idea to mine the sidewalks after finding gold scraps on the floor of a diamond exchange.

Source.

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