Prospecting Equipment to Get Started

This site is called Pick and Pan because those are two items of very basic equipment you can use to get started.

You will find it useful if you also have small vials and labels for them. When you find any quantity of gold you would want to be able to store it along with some data. A notebook can help you correlate a specific vial's contents to a time, date and location so you know where you'd like to look again.

Getting your gold from the pan into a liitle vial may look like a good way to lose some, but with a snuffer (or sipper) bottle, it is a simple matter to transfer your finds to vials. See the video here, supplied courtesy of Black Cat Mining that shows you the simple steps to pick up every flake and get it all safely into vials.

We discussed Gold panning equipment in another section but there's a slue of basic equipment that would be helpful to get you started in recreational prospecting. Now, this section is not about rockhounding even though the two hobbies share some similar equipment, and it does not pretend to cover anything about metal detecting treasure hunters. We are talking about the hand tools, gizmos and whatnot that you would use to help you find gold and profit from it.

Along with a sturdy pick to dislodge likely sample materials, a small rock hammer is helpful and a PaleoPick too, which is like an extra large rock hammer. Sieves will help you sort through materials and a full set of prospecting classifiers (different screen mesh seives) is ideal. A jewelers loupe to magnify your finds is a pocket sized tool you'll find yourself using more than you might think. An underwater viewer is another goodie that can save you hours of trial and error; it lets you get a clear view of the bottom and examine fresh sediments to see if there could be worthwhile material before you even unpack your gear.

Books to help you learn techniques may be helpful and there are also books that help you find where to look, several volumes actually, for various states and different parts of the US. In some areas, the dirt is so iron-rich that you may want to use special magnets to keep it out of the material you're checking.

Specialized digging tools help you loosen soil above and below the water level and tweezers for handling specimens carefully come in handy. As you get more involved in this hobby you will find more specialized equipment like Gold Concentrators which we will cover in another section, but these are the basics, almost neccessities to get you started. Happy hunting!