SOS General Store

With gold over $1500/oz, why not head up to some of the gold laden streams and try your hand and luck panning for some gold.  Gold panning is simple to learn and there are a number of great books that will help beginners like: Gold Mining – “For Fun and Profit”.

Equipment and supplies to get started and cheap, and most of the items you probably have laying around the house, but really, with a shovel, gold pan and a container to put the gold in, you could head up in the hills and start panning.  Gold pans come in all shapes and sizes, but the most common is the round gold pan.  The gold grabber pans are an excellent alternative to the conventional round pans, I have used both myself and prefer the Gold Grabber.  The gold grabber pans come in two sizes, see below:

Mini Gold Grabber

For those interested in trying to find some real gold, there are a couple of pieces of equipment that will help get to the nuggets quickly and efficiently.  The Desert Fox is a lightweight portable powered unit that can be taken up into the mountains and run on a 12v power source.  The Pro Camel and Mountain Goat Concentrators can be set up on site or at home and used to process dirt back at home quickly.  Although these powered units are a little more investment than a gold pan, the increased processing and accuracy of this equipment will pay for themselves.  The first ounce of the gold you find would almost pay for all three of the units: Desert Fox, Mountain Goat, and Pro Camel.

Good Luck on the gold trail.