How to Choose the Best Gold Pan For Your Needs

The gold pan is the prospectors most important tool in the search for gold. During the Gold Rush there were not that many choices to make when choosing a pan, it was basically a matter of choosing a size that felt right for you. Today you will find there are lots of different shapes, sizes, colors and materials to choose from. Here are the four main factors that you should take into consideration when buying a pan:

• Size: The most common sizes on the market today ranges between 10-17 inches in diameter. The size determines both the pans portability and also how much material you can process with the pan at the same time. A 10" pan is great as a backup pan and its smaller size makes it easy to fit in your backpack. It is also a good size for kids or for people with smaller hands. 17" pans are big and they allow you to process a lot of material, but the large size makes it tiring to use for a longer duration. 14" pans are just right in size for most people and that is the size that I would recommend for a beginner prospector
• Material: Gold pans today are made of either metal or plastic. Metal pans are what the 49ers used to recover millions worth of gold from the stream beds of California in the 1800s. Even though the metal pans can double as cookware, plastic pans actually has a lot going for them. They are lighter and still durable enough for years of gold panning, and thanks to them not being magnetic you can more easily remove black sand from them using a magnet. The choice of colors also makes it easier to see the gold. Both metal and plastic pans often have riffles that acts as a gold trap, but on the plastic ones they can be molded into any shape which makes them more effective in trapping the gold.
• Color: You will find that the large majority of the plastic gold pans are either blue, green or black. Those colors in particular makes it easy to see the small flakes of gold in the bottom of your pan. I recommend going with a blue or green pan instead of a black one because a black gold pan can make it hard to see the black sand during panning.
• You: The most important factor to consider is you, the user. Why are you buying a gold pan? If it is for purely historic reasons, go ahead and buy a metal pan. The truth is many prospectors prefer metal pans even today. If you are choosing a gold pan for your kid that happens to love the color black, then buy a black 10 inch pan even though a blue one might make it easier to spot the gold.

There you have it, the four most important factors in choosing a gold pan. The shape of the pan is not included as a factor because there is no good enough reason to buy a gold pan that is anything other than round. Now you can start looking for a gold pan to buy, which will set you back around $10-15.

You need more than a pan to be effective though, take a look at this list of other essential gold panning equipment that will make your gold recovery efforts so much easier. My name is Daniel Westman and I write about prospecting over at http://www.operationgold.com. Happy gold hunting!

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