Wendy & Frank Melanson Collection Farncomb Hill in Breckenridge, Colorado is known around the world for its fine specimens of leaf and wire gold. Notable mines in the area include the Gold Leaf and the Wire Patch. The sheer beauty of this “Breckenridge Gold” led many miners to save the better specimens from the smelters, preserving them in their natural state. Like this specimen, the majority of gold specimens from Farncomb hill are very tabular- long in two dimensions while very thin in the third dimension. This results from the way the gold was formed, within very thin but elongated veins which formed between bedding contacts within shale units on the summit and slopes of the hill.