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Posted: 8/24/2015 6:47:15 PM EST

I've always wanted to. How did you do ?

Posted: 8/24/2015 6:48:33 PM EST

[#1]

I've always wanted to try it too. Not to make money, just to do it. And if I make a bit, that's fine too.

Posted: 8/24/2015 6:52:52 PM EST

[#2]

Yep, one of the benefits of having a father who is a geologist was family vacations that including panning for gold, collecting rubies and garnets, carrying bags of rocks and dirt home, etc. I've still got some panning equipment in storage.

Posted: 8/24/2015 6:52:56 PM EST

[#3]

Yeah, I found it wasn't worth my time....

Posted: 8/24/2015 6:55:14 PM EST

[#4]

YES! It's fun (If not too profitable). Google or YouTube it. We're all (On the West coast) about 165yrs too late for the

BIG stuff (

) but, hell, there's still shit out there

Posted: 8/24/2015 6:55:27 PM EST

[#5]

Yeah, usually did okay or found nothing. It's fun for an hour or two.

Posted: 8/24/2015 6:55:51 PM EST

[#6]

Yeah, usually did okay or found nothing. It's fun for an hour or two.

Posted: 8/24/2015 7:02:51 PM EST

[#7]

When I was a teen I went to Co with a church group backpacking north of Durango, couple of us panned out a coupl hundred and found several pieces of quartz in an old slag heap. I think we found $600 over two weeks, we gave it one of the preachers for his church.

Posted: 8/24/2015 7:05:50 PM EST

[#8]

I dig for gold.

Posted: 8/24/2015 7:06:18 PM EST

[#9]

Quote History

Quoted:
I've always wanted to try it too. Not to make money, just to do it. And if I make a bit, that's fine too.

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Same here, always wanted to try it while on vacation. Just hasn't happened yet.

Posted: 8/24/2015 7:06:35 PM EST

[#10]

I did okay, found some flakes. It's allowed in the forest but you really need to wait until after a thunder boomer and obey the restrictions. Don't quit your day job though; you're not going to get rich. If you cover the costs of your hobby you're wildly successful.

Posted: 8/24/2015 7:13:11 PM EST

[#11]

Backbreaking work in freezing cold water. At least hard rock mining involves high explosives and dangerous chemicals.

Posted: 8/24/2015 7:15:49 PM EST

[#12]

Took a pan on a backpacking trip once. Panned for about an hour. Found 1 flake.

Posted: 8/24/2015 7:22:00 PM EST

[#13]

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Quoted:
Took a pan on a backpacking trip once. Panned for about an hour. Found 1 flake.

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Did you keep it?

Posted: 8/24/2015 7:22:10 PM EST

[#14]

I've mined for gold, but it involved explosives, haul trucks, and cyanide leach solution

I have a couple friends who have some serious placer mining equipment. One has easily spend a couple grand on sluice boxes, concentrators, rocker boxes, and pans. I think he's pulled a couple hundred dollars worth of gold out over the few years he's gone out. You basically go out where there may be gold in a riverbed and spend hours swirling dirt around in a metal dish only to go home cold, wet, and tired.

Edit: I do think it would be fun, if only to have an excuse to be alone in the forest for a while. Finding gold would just be an added bonus.

Posted: 8/24/2015 7:27:01 PM EST

[#15]

A few times in AK. Found some dust.

Posted: 8/24/2015 7:27:06 PM EST

[#16]

Bought a few pounds of paydirt off eBay and such and got 10-12 pans like this:

I might have broke even to my costs, but I had a blast panning it in the back yard!

Posted: 8/24/2015 7:27:23 PM EST

[#17]

Get a sluicebox for a more efficient waste of time.

Posted: 8/24/2015 7:27:26 PM EST

[#18]

My brother and I panned for gold in Colorado. Found a spot on a river with an abandoned sluice box and decided that would be a good place to try. Found a couple of things:

1) A little bit of gold. and
2) Colorado rivers that are fed by mountain snow melt are DAMN cold!!!

Still have my pan out in the garage.

Posted: 8/24/2015 7:29:01 PM EST

[#19]

Quote History

Quoted:
I've mined for gold, but it involved explosives, haul trucks, and cyanide leach solution

I have a couple friends who have some serious placer mining equipment. One has easily spend a couple grand on sluice boxes, concentrators, rocker boxes, and pans. I think he's pulled a couple hundred dollars worth of gold out over the few years he's gone out. You basically go out where there may be gold in a riverbed and spend hours swirling dirt around in a metal dish only to go home cold, wet, and tired.

Edit: I do think it would be fun, if only to have an excuse to be alone in the forest for a while. Finding gold would just be an added bonus.

View Quote

It's something to do when you go remote moose hunting and you tag out early and you have killed your fill of grouse/ptarmigan.

Posted: 8/24/2015 7:33:36 PM EST

[#20]

A friends uncle made a pretty good amount of cash panning in Colorado, of course he would go into some really rough areas that rarely see people.

I went with them one year and the hike in was killer but I still have a test tube full of gold in the safe.

Posted: 8/24/2015 7:35:05 PM EST

[#21]

When I was 13 we took a Summer vacation to the Black Hills of South Dakota in the new 1977 Ford LTD Wagon aka "Family Truckster". We bought a gold pan from a roadside shop and paid extra for the rusty pan because the guy said the gold sticks to them, and just slides off of the new non-rusty pans. We tried a few streams on the route and I think we actually saw a few really tiny specks that we thought were gold.

Posted: 8/24/2015 7:38:35 PM EST

[#22]

Quote History

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Did you keep it?

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Quoted:

Quoted:
Took a pan on a backpacking trip once. Panned for about an hour. Found 1 flake.

Did you keep it?

I still have it. It is in a tiny glass jar. I should have put something in there for comparison, but it is about 3/4 the size of a grain of rice. Was a tiny bit bigger, but I had a buddy who owns a pawn shop test it and he had to scrape a little off for the test.

Posted: 8/24/2015 7:40:37 PM EST

[#23]

Yes I have and I found about $5.00 an hour worth and my hands were frozen, no thanks, and it was hunting season in Colorado as every needle dicked asshole was shooting across canyons at anything that moved.

Posted: 8/24/2015 7:45:40 PM EST

[#24]

When I lived in AK behind the house was Indian Creek, it had an old sluice box from years past, so I panned that area. Somewhere in the house is a small vial of flake.

It's fun if you do it expecting nothing then finding something makes it worth it.

Posted: 8/24/2015 7:46:15 PM EST

[#25]

Did it once at Knott's Berry Farm when I was 12.

Posted: 8/24/2015 7:52:29 PM EST

[#26]

I just strain my goldshlagger before I drink it

Posted: 8/24/2015 7:57:20 PM EST

[#27]

Since I own part of a gold claim, why yes I have.

Didn't find more than a few flakes, but it was pretty interesting to see how the old miners found cold and where to pan.

Posted: 8/24/2015 8:03:11 PM EST

[#28]

Quoted:
I've always wanted to. How did you do ?

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hell of a sore back. A few flakes. Wasn't expecting much where I was. I was right.

Posted: 8/24/2015 8:03:22 PM EST

[#29]

I helped a buddy run gold mine tours when I was in high school.

Tourists would pan after shaft tours, in a seeded trough.

Every $1k in seeded gold these dudes pulled in about $1.5k in a slow season.

The rest of the mine was still active, but operating on a much different level.

Posted: 8/24/2015 8:03:32 PM EST

[#30]

I'd like to someday

Posted: 8/24/2015 8:08:16 PM EST

[#31]

We panned some flakes. Maybe a total of a cc between grandpa, dad, and me over three or four times going. Grandpa did get a small "nugget" about 1/8" chunk.

But, it's fun. Found garnet, ruby, pirite. Worse ways to waste your time.

Posted: 8/24/2015 8:09:54 PM EST

[#32]

Quote History

Quoted:
I did okay, found some flakes. It's allowed in the forest but you really need to wait until after a thunder boomer and obey the restrictions. Don't quit your day job though; you're not going to get rich. If you cover the costs of your hobby you're wildly successful.

View Quote

The money and gold is still out there. Metal detectors on tailing piles. There is a whole market of buying and selling claims in the motherlode area of Cali. You really need an x ray machine and the ability to separate the gold from the quartz rock. The guys that are making money arnt selling the gold for weight, they are separating it from the quartz and leaving it in a crystal like form still sitting on a base of quartz. It is sold as natural art. Shit is cool. I bought my dad a Fischer Gold Bug. Still waiting for him to find something other than minnie balls, square nails and the like.

Panning is fun. You can pull color in nearly every stream in that area.

Posted: 8/24/2015 8:10:23 PM EST

[#33]

In Alaska, I would collect 10-20 homer buckets full of river bottom every summer and pan it in the garage/at work after hours to pass the time in the winter. I found some good pay dirt once and made a whole $147 doing this in a winter. Most winters were $40-60

Posted: 8/24/2015 8:11:02 PM EST

[#34]

I live on a mining claim.

Never mined for gold.

Posted: 8/24/2015 8:17:19 PM EST

[#35]

I did in alaska when I was 13.
I have the vial of gold flake and a little nugget around someplace, maybe at my parents.
Just in a pan down by the river. It was a operation with a tourist section. It was fun.

Posted: 8/24/2015 8:20:53 PM EST

[#36]

mining for gold right now, We average about a million or so ounces a year so I think we are successful in the venture

Posted: 8/24/2015 8:22:06 PM EST

[#37]

Quote History

Quoted:
hell of a sore back. A few flakes. Wasn't expecting much where I was. I was right.

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Quoted:

Quoted:

I've always wanted to. How did you do ?

hell of a sore back. A few flakes. Wasn't expecting much where I was. I was right.

Do you remember a old real early sat morning show The GPAA Gold Prospectors of America Association with "The Buzzard" early 90's

Posted: 8/24/2015 8:22:12 PM EST

[#38]

Dad was into it for a couple of years. Once I went with him to a lease in Hickory NC and we spent an afternoon by a stream with his highbanker. Didn't amount to much but it was a pleasant trip. He gave me a vial afterwards with about a gram or so of flakes in it.

Posted: 8/24/2015 8:23:04 PM EST

[#39]

Found some in the Sangre de Cristo mountains, in northern NM a couple of years ago and staked claims that I maintain with the BLM, but haven't been able to return back to the actual location since due to time and distance. I found it in a proterozoic era serpentine strata. It's a 14 mile hike to get back in there, but I plan to spend the time and take a rotary hammer, generator and other tools to the area and work it one of these days...It will take several planned out trips to pack equipment in, but I will eventually get around to it.

Posted: 8/24/2015 8:24:54 PM EST

[#40]

yes. it's long and boring, and a good bit the joy is realizing that you picked a smart place to pan, and came out of it with a half-gram of gold amidst all that black sand.

excellent beer-drinking pastime.

Posted: 8/24/2015 8:31:24 PM EST

[#41]

I have. Found gold too.

Posted: 8/24/2015 8:38:56 PM EST

[#42]

Sure have.

Ain't found shit....and I'm sticking to that story

Posted: 8/24/2015 8:39:46 PM EST

[#43]

Quote History

Quoted:
mining for gold right now, We average about a million of so ounces a year so I think we are successful in the venture

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Placer mining?

Posted: 8/24/2015 8:58:39 PM EST

[#44]

My mother and godfather gave my father a "millionaire's do-it-yourself kit" consisting of a gold pan, a derringer, and a book on cheating at cards.

It didn't help.

They did tell a story of a young man kicked out by his father as a no-good. The son bought a pack horse, gear, and headed into the Medicine Bow mountains of Wyoming, where he panned enough gold to buy the land surrounding the family ranch, cutting them off from the nearest road and water.

His father told him "I knew you could do it. Gven the right motivation." He then transfered the now larger ranch to his son.

Posted: 8/24/2015 9:08:55 PM EST

[#45]

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Quoted:

Placer mining?

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Quoted:

Quoted:
mining for gold right now, We average about a million of so ounces a year so I think we are successful in the venture

Placer mining?

If placer mining involves pulverizing thousands of tons of rock a day, grinding it up into baby powder, roasting it at 1000 degrees, and then soaking it in a solution of cyanide..... j/k Hard rock open pit/underground refractory ore mining

Posted: 8/24/2015 9:10:32 PM EST

[#46]

Yes back in the early 70s

@ Knotts Berry Farm

Posted: 8/24/2015 9:11:36 PM EST

[#47]

I did. When I was like 5. And my grandmother put fools gold in the stream when we weren't looking.

Posted: 8/24/2015 9:19:36 PM EST

[#48]

Quote History

Quoted:

If placer mining involves pulverizing thousands of tons of rock a day, grinding it up into baby powder, roasting it at 1000 degrees, and then soaking it in a solution of cyanide..... j/k Hard rock open pit/underground refractory ore mining

View Quote View All Quotes

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Quote History

Quoted:

Quoted:
mining for gold right now, We average about a million of so ounces a year so I think we are successful in the venture

Placer mining?

If placer mining involves pulverizing thousands of tons of rock a day, grinding it up into baby powder, roasting it at 1000 degrees, and then soaking it in a solution of cyanide..... j/k Hard rock open pit/underground refractory ore mining

Cortez?
or Goldstrike?

Posted: 8/24/2015 9:19:45 PM EST

[#49]

I've panned a little color out of Lynx Creek up in northern AZ. A buddy panned out a "rattler" (very small nugget) from there. The panning I've done in the central AZ deserts produced only black sand and lead in the form of bullets and shot.

Still a lot of fun but you aren't going to make a living at it.