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Gold Panning Kits 
The most economical way to get started gold prospecting is to purchase a gold pan kit. A gold panning kit contains all your must-have gold panning basics and a few extras: a couple different sizes of pans, classifiers, tweezers for picking up pieces of gold, a snuffer bottle to suck up tiny pieces of gold, vials to put your finds in, and instructional, how-to information. A rock pick and a treasure scoop also come in handy to first break up soil and rocks, then get it into your pan. Gold panning champion Don Robinson's DVD is an excellent resource for learning the proper technique of gold panning. Sluice Boxes 
After learning to gold pan, prospectors usually step up to a sluice. Sluices can process a lot of material in a day and provide really efficient gold recovery. After your basic gold pan, it can't be beat among non-powered, hand-fed equipment. A sluice uses the force of running water to do the same thing a gold pan does — just quicker and in much larger volume. The idea is to position a sluice box in running water so that the force of the water does the work of separating the dirt and rocks away from the gold. Since gold is heavy, it will stay in the bottom of the sluice, trapped in the miner's moss or matting. A power sluice or highbanker really ramps up your ability to recover gold even more!
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Classifiers 
Classifiers, also called sieves or screens, go hand in hand with a gold pan. Designed to fit on the top of 5 gallon plastic buckets used by most prospectors, and over most gold pans, the classifier's job is to screen out larger rocks and debris before you pan the material. Classifiers come in a variety of mesh sizes. The mesh refers to the screen size. For example, a 1/2 inch mesh is about 4 holes per square inch; a 1/4 inch mesh has about 16 holes per square inch; 1/8 inch contains about 64 holes per square inch and so on. 1/100 inch is the smallest mesh that is commonly used for microscopic gold recovery and ultra fine gold dust and flakes. Spiral Panning Machines 
After mastering panning, classifying and sluicing, many prospectors want to recover gold easier and faster so they step up to an automatic spiral panning machine, a Gold Cube, or a highbanker. These items recover gold in different ways, but are more efficient and effective at getting the shiny stuff than what you can generally do panning by hand. Although these items are a few hundred dollars each, at today's gold prices, you don't need to find very much to completely pay for your equipment (which is built to last), and the rest is pure profit! Gold miners who really want to move more dirt invest in gold trommels.  |
Where to Find GoldAfter wondering about how to get started gold prospecting, your next question might be, "Where can I find gold?" The simple answer is if you know where gold has been found in the past (the Mother Lode area in California, for example) that usually means you'll find gold there again. Since streams are always changing, gold washing down from mountains or other gold bearing areas is always changing, too. Storms, floods, or man-made changes to a waterway all affect where you'll find gold. A great number of topo maps and books have been written on how and where to find gold, so doing a little research on the state where you live or where you plan to prospect will greatly increase your chances. The western US has seen many gold rushes over the decades, from the California '49ers and Colorado strike in 1859, to the Yukon in 1897, and since the 1980s it's still going strong!
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