One great thing about gold prospecting is that you can get started with very little investment!
Please believe me when I tell you that you don’t need the latest, greatest gadgets on the market in order to find gold. Learn how to find gold first, then you can worry about how to recover it. You can waste thousands of dollars on the new “must have” items, but it won’t find you a speck of gold until you’ve learned the basics.
Below is some of the equipment that we recommend. Don’t get too carried away if you are new to the hobby. Get yourself a basic gold pan, shovel, classifiers, etc. You can spend less that $100 and get a nice little setup that will get you started finding gold.
A knowledgable gold prospector will have no trouble finding gold with even the simplest gold panning setup. You will find it worthwhile to invest in things like classifiers and snuffer bottles. The kits are a good deal as you can get everything you need all together.
You will quickly find that there are some really basic tools that will make your gold panning efforts a lot easier. Little items like these will easily fit into a fanny pack and you will be glad that you have them when you’re trying to clean out the bedrock cracks or recover tiny flour gold from the bottom of your pan.
Gold pans are required equipment as far as I am concerned. But eventually, just about anyone who gets into gold prospecting will want to upgrade to something a little bigger. Sluice boxes let you move way more material than you could move with just a gold pan alone. You can shovel directly into the head of the sluice and the flow of the river does most of the work for you.
Ok, now we’re getting more serious! One of the challenges that miners have to deal with is capturing fine gold and separating it from heavy black sands. There is some really good equipment on the market that can do this for you. They will really speed up the process of gold recovery, but they do cost some more money. Before you buy anything I suggest you read a bit more about your various options.
Here are some articles about some different types of fine gold recovery equipment:
Motorized gear will obviously allow you to process more material and ultimately recover more gold in most instances. However, before you buy any motorized prospecting gear you need to check your local regulations to make sure it is legal. More and more states have limitations or even outright bans on motorized gear. It is a shame, but it’s the world we live in these days. Don’t waste money on something that you can’t even use.
Metal detecting is one of my favorite ways to find gold. It takes a long time to learn how to do it effectively. You have to search in areas where gold nugget actually are, and you are going to dig a lot of iron rubbish and modern trash that is scattered throughout the goldfields. It takes perseverance! Good gold detectors are not cheap… you can spend anywhere from $500 to several thousand dollars for a good one.
I recommend you first read this article: What is the Metal Detector for Finding Gold Nuggets?.
More Articles about Gold Prospecting Gear:
Basic Equipment to Get You Started Gold Mining
Best Metal Detectors for Small, Crystalline & Spongy Gold
How to Classify Gold Bearing Materials