The most important thing to learn when you begin prospecting is how to pan, but you don't know if you are doing it right if your materials have no gold in them. You will have to pan to test a site, and then your final cleanup depends on how well you can pan.

For new prospectors I recommend you buy a bag of concentrates, and not from "GOLD RUSH". Watch youtube videos to learn the technique if you don't have somebody to teach you, and then try it out on some concentrates over a tub so you don't lose any material.

Practice again and again until you get your technique perfected even with flour gold.

I cannot repeat this enough, learning to pan is the most important first and last step to gold prospecting.

Benjamin Crain

President of the Western Colorado Chapter of the Gold Prospector Association of America

214-733-6096