Gold Prospecting

gold Gold GOLD GOLD GOLD EVERYWHERE!!!!!!

Today's Gold and Silver Prices:

OK. Gold is everywhere but it is very finely distributed. About 0.005 ppb or .000000160 ounces of gold. That's not much fun.

What we want to find is concentrated gold and there's lots of ways to do that. But first you need to actually be working an area that has gold in concentrations above the normal background level. You'll need to do your own research to find those areas or you can join a club which has mining claims available for its members. There's a lot of government land out there where you may legally prospect for gold. Just make sure you're not on someone's mining claim as they own the mineral rights. You can freely hike and camp on the land but you may not pick up and take away anything that has minerals and that's everything. With the value of gold taking a small nugget of gold could be treated as Felony Grand Theft. Ouch!

You'll find we have books and maps for mineral collection along with lots of specialized tools to make the job easier. You'll also find much of that same information by using the Internet. Not the tools though. Make sure you fully understand mining claim law and how to locate whether or not a claim exists where you want to collect. It doesn't take much to stake (mark) a claim and a lot of prospectors don't make them easy to see so that their claim is not jumped by other prospectors. It's YOUR job to find out whether you're on claimed land.

Areas that have gold and similar areas are also the areas where we find other collectible minerals. The process of hydrothermal fluids circulating through the deeper rocks and up near or breaking the surface is what creates those quartz veins with concentrated gold or gold nuggets. They create the nice quartz crystals we want to find along with so many other collectable minerals and valuable ores. Quartz is not required for the minerals or the gold, silver, platinum and other valuable minerals but for most of us it's a nice marker for finding those.

If want to play around and try to find our own gold the tools such as picks, shovels, and gold pans are available here. If you really want to find gold a metal detector such as the Fisher Gold Bug-2 Prospector's Gold Detector is a great way to go. The detector will find the enriched area for you and you can continue to use this detector to find the nuggets or flakes our you can start panning or dry washing for the gold.