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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Can You Still Make Money Panning for Gold?

Gold's current high value and the ailing global job market has led to a surge in regular folks exploring the sometimes lucrative career of gold mining. It is believed that billion of dollars worth of gold are still hidden in the United States! Who wouldn't love a piece of that?

In fact, large amounts of gold have recently been found at the gold mines in North Carolina, Colorado and California. If you're interested in giving it a try, there are a few things you need to keep in mind. First, one needs to select a suitable area that is both potential for gold's existence and is legal for gold panning. National parks are off limits as they are usually restricted for public digging. However, there are many other public lands where minerals can be sought. Researching the records of mining and public land will give clues about where to fix the sweet spot for digging gold.

Stay away from hobby gold-mining sites that you see advertised in brochures and road side billboards. These locations are usually setup for tourists and thus offer little hope for serious gold miners.

After selecting the spot, one can stake a mineral claim to prevent others from intruding into the spot. For gold panning, you don't need to buy a lot of tools. Just a gold pan, a shovel, buckets, gloves, and camping supplies would be enough at the starting. A pair of tweezers and a magnifying glass will help to detect the tiniest pieces of gold. One can buy a metal detector and dredges too.

A fair forewarning - gold mining is a very hard work! One has to be willing to put in long hours and be patient enough to taste the fruit of success in gold panning. The best way would be to take it as a means of passing weekends and leisure periods than a fulltime job.

It can also be a good way to spend time with family and friends while having fun. It is a very tough job for the newcomers because knowledge and experience are the two important keys to get success in gold panning. It is also true that very few people can make their livelihood from gold mining.
While it is true that finding large amount of gold is quite difficult, the possibility of finding a little "color" in a gold pan is hard to resist.

For more tips on how to make money check out ThePennyHoarder.com. It's a daily blog with weird and wacky ideas on how to make extra money, like how to make money cricket farming and how to make money shopping. It can even answer the question as to whether or not people can make money panning for gold.
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8 Best Places to Pan For Gold

Caribbean Cruises, long sandy beaches, and Disneyland are the places that most often come to mind when one speaks of vacation time. Places to pan for gold would probably not make anyone's top ten list! It's certainly true that the aforementioned places are really terrific for having family fun and relaxation. But what you may not know is that one of the most rewarding hobbies in the world is searching for tiny specs of gold.

The country is so in possession of abounding mineral resources and gold is one of them. Panning for gold can be a good recreation for the family. If the youngsters are fascinated with the great California Gold Rush of the great California Gold Rush of 1849, it may not be a bad idea if they can also have this type rush.

During the year 1849, the streams and streams of California were exploited by the early Yankees in the expectation of finding pure gold. Successive history can have a unpleasant face, but who knows? To this date, there might be some loose gold just waiting to be found among the sands.

Just make sure that these places to pan for gold are environmentally safe and free from human risks. The dust will be nothing when one of your folks members is ready to extract gold from the dirt.
Here are, what I believe to be, the 8 best places to pan for gold:
  1. California being the third in gold production
  2. Alaska, particularly in Chitna and Slana River
  3. In the Ouachita Mountains in Arkansas
  4. Blairsville City of Georgia
  5. Colorado Mountains
  6. Benton to Yakama in Washington
  7. In the glaciers of Wisconsin
  8. Turquoise District in Arizona
And before packing up to these places to pan for gold, make sure that you have got enough supply of food, water, necessities, as well as maps to make this gold rush adventure a remarkable one. You may also need the right gold panning tools.

Now that you know about the best places to pan for gold, you need to be aware of certain laws concerning gold panning. Learn more about gold panning regulations at: ==> http://panningforgold1.blogspot.com/
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Prospecting for Gold in Pre-Foreclosures

The days of the "foreclosure fairy" dropping deals down from the courthouse steps may be over. But, according to savvy real estate investors, there are still thousands of deals out there. The trick is knowing where and how to find them - before the competition beats you to it.

It is during the period called PRE-foreclosure that real estate investors can strike gold. Pre-foreclosure refers to the time during the foreclosure process when a lender files notice of default in official public records, and the date the property is scheduled to be sold at a public foreclosures auction or trustee's sale.

Many homeowners who are facing foreclosure have been struggling
financially for as long as a year before they throw in the towel. And, while some people feel uncomfortable - as if they are taking advantage of someone else's misfortune, the reality is quite the opposite. Legal experts say that, fraudsters have moved into the foreclosure business and are positioning themselves as "rescuers," They are stealing large numbers of homes and fleecing owners out of money across the country. Honest investors who know how to buy a property in foreclosure can literally help a homeowner save his credit and his dignity. Many homeowners end up being grateful for getting helped.

Apparently relationship building is key to the process. Some distressed home-owners are more motivated to sell than others. Some just need direction to finding proper solutions to their foreclosure process. There's no way to turn an ugly situation into something beautiful. The goal is to create a scenario where everybody comes out ahead.

To accomplish a successful purchase, experts have outlined the following seven steps:
o Locate loans in default
o Evaluate and narrow selections to pursue
o Inspect the property
o Evaluate property owner's needs
o Determine property market value, fix-up costs and potential sales price
o Arrange default work by negotiating with owner and lender
o Close on property, repair and resell quickly

Not all foreclosures are previously owned homes. In some areas, a slow economy has left builders of new mid and upscale homes at the end of their construction loan periods without finding buyers. In such cases, the banks involved take possession of the homes and attempt to sell them using real estate agents to handle the deals. These are called "hidden foreclosures."

The term "hidden" is used because no one associated with the sale of these properties will refer to them as foreclosed homes. They are not as easy to identify and rarely appear on national lists. Another term used is "before foreclosure." As you'd expect, this is earlier in the process, where a homeowner is about to go into default. Rather than losing all equity, a property owner accepts a position of the difference between the equity and the home's market value.

The number of homes facing pre-foreclosure has reached an all time high. While no one claims to have a crystal ball, if you're thinking of dabbling in the real estate market, it appears that now is prime time to start the learning process.

So what appears to be the cause of all this? Falling behind on mortgage payments can be precipitated by job layoff, divorce or even illness. But a new phenomenon is at work -- homeowners who pull out the equity in their home to pay for cars, college, renovations or even credit card debt.

Also because of high housing prices, many first-time buyers have been enticed by adjustable rate and interest-only mortgages. They hold down costs in the early years of a loan, but can create problems when payments rise later. The sad fact is that some people who would have been laughed out of the bank years ago because they had poor credit or no down payment are eagerly sought after today.

Mortgage rates can only rise from where they are now so, when you add 2+2 together, everything suggests that the default rate will only go higher. Since the key to making money in real estate is finding motivated sellers, investors who are organized, informed and persistent are bound to make a bundle.

The deals are out there. The ones who will make the most money and who will get rich are the people who get the inside information and the proper training.

You can easily get $300,000 in cash from my money system found @ http://www.cashflowexperts.biz
Take advantage of these once in a lifetime investing opportunities now while the trend keeps growing.

About Thomas Kish.

Thomas Kish is an author, speaker, business consultant and an active real estate investor. He is a national expert in the area of business credit and has shared the stage with best selling authors Robert Allen, Mark Victor Hansen, and Robert Kiyosaki. Tom has bought and sold 8 million dollars worth of real estate using business lines of credit instead of using his own money. And he has helped thousands of people change their lives with business lines of credit.
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How To Make MLM Prospecting Fun and Effortless

Often times, prospecting may seem like a daunting task. Many network marketers shy away from prospecting because they fear rejection. Contrary to widely held belief, prospecting can be actually a fun and effortless activity if one understands and puts in to practice couple of key principles.

The key to being a master prospector is letting go of all your fears. Fear is probably the number one reason why your MLM business is not progressing as you want it to. If you want to become wildly successful in your prospecting, you simply need to let go of fear all together. You've got to let go of "What will my friends think?" and "What will people think about me?" By rationalizing your fears, you are simply limiting yourself to the opportunities that may come along the way. Just don't let fear hold you back any longer. By being intrepid and asking people to look at your opportunity, you will be well on your path to success.

If you think about it, prospecting is a beautiful term to describe what we do as network marketers. We can certainly compare ourselves like miners panning for gold. There are abundance of prospects and opportunities out there. You can think of them as an inexhaustible stream that cannot be depleted. If you have this kind of 'abundance' mentality, you will abandon the sense of desperation to chase after a prospect and ask him/her to join your opportunity. You really want to filter out the gunk and keep nuggets of gold, the kind of people that will build your opportunity without flaking out or giving excuses.

Prospecting certainly does take practice and it takes quite of bit of time to perfect. One way to become a effortless prospector is to talk about your opportunity when people ask you "What do you do?" When you encounter people they naturally want to know what you do for a living. This is probably your best shot in telling them about your opportunity.

This strategy of course, requires bit of tact and discreetness. Recently, I was at a house warming party for neighbors of mine and they happen to have a Bichon Frise dog. So I naturally struck up a conversation and told the host, "You know Rob, my friend who is a top income earner in his company has as Bichon too." This naturally got him curious and we both had a productive conversation where he agreed to take a look at my presentation at an appointed time.

You can certainly become an excellent prospector by habituating yourself to prospect wherever you go. A couple days ago, I was waiting in line in a grocery store and the guy in front of me wore an auto mechanics shirt. I supposed that he worked for the dealership, so I struck a conversation.

Somehow, one way or the other, the conversation lead to vehicle incentive awards program in my company and he got curious as to how folks in my company are awarded vehicles for their efforts. So I asked for his business card and at that moment I had a lead!

The most important thing to remember is to get rid of fear altogether and put on prospector's thinking cap. Always strike a conversation wherever you go and try to get a lead if you can. By doing so, you will be able to build your network marketing empire one step at a time.

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Sources of the Gold - Quartz Veins

The intelligent men who worked the gulches and rivers in the early days, soon sought the sources of the gold they found in the gravels. Sometimes gold was found with quartz adhering to it, or occasionally a quartz pebble riveted through and through with gold.

 The veins of quartz seaming the hills in the vicinity of the richest placers, also served to point to that rock as the original source of the gold. At Carson Hill, in what was then Mariposa county, quartz had been found immensely rich; but the expense of blasting the rock out and crushing it was such, that no serious attempts were made, until 1851.

 The whole California gold country abounded with quartz; in some places there were mountains of it, which had filled the ravines with broken quartz, but not all the quartz had gold in it - most did not. The miners found that the search for auriferous quartz was a tedious affair until some more experienced men were put upon the scent.

The first discovery of gold in quartz seems to have been made by a man by the name of Davidson, a Baptist preacher, in February, 1851, on the south side of Amador creek near the spring then used by the miners. Boulders of considerable size were lying on the top of the ground, supposed to have been detached from the vein. Gold was found in some of these, and subsequently, in the vein from which these came. Associated with Davidson were Glover, Herbert, and P. Y. Cool, all ministers; hence the claim was known as the "ministers' claim." Samuel Hill, afterward a resident of Buckeye, was taken in as a capitalist, and the company organized as the Spring Hill Company.

About the same time, Thomas Eickey, and his son James, afterward residents of lone, located the vein on the north side of the creek, since known as the Original Amador. Gold could also be seen in this rock.

 None of these men had ever seen or done any quartz mining; in fact, there was none in the world to compare with what may be seen now at any mining town. Hill, of the Spring Hill Company, went to Sacramento and bought a steam engine, aged and ancient in style, which proved a mine of trouble to them, as it took an enormous quantity of wood to make steam. The main shaft was wood with bearings of round bar iron, two inches in diameter, which were driven in with a hammer, the end of the log being banded with iron.

 The cams were large spikes of bar iron driven into the shaft and afterward bent. The stamps had wooden stems, and spikes driven into the stems for tappets or projections, against which the cams should play to raise the stamps. The gold was saved, or rather lost, by means of a rocker about eight feet long, worked by the same power as the stamps.

The machinery proving a failure, the gold mill was soon rebuilt with improvements suggested by experience. The mill on the north side was started about the same time, September 5, 1851, with somewhat better machinery. The shaft was of wood, but had axe-bar iron four inches wide and half an inch thick for cams, the bars being bent after they were put in the shaft. The stamps also had wooden stems with slots in the middle to receive the cams. Dan Fiddler was the master mechanic, and J. T. Berke the superintendent of this mine. It made dividends as well as wages for its owners, who were all workers.

Quicksilver was tried, but from some cause failed to give satisfactory results. It was also discovered that much of the gold was lost, being too fine to settle into the ordinary riffles. While experiments were being made to remedy the matter, a German who had had experience in mining in Peru, proposed to crush and amalgamate with arastras. With his assistance the company took out about seventy-five ounces a week, the German receiving one-thirteenth part for his share. This was some of the first successful gold-quartz mining in California.

For more tales of the life, hopes and the humor of California's Gold Rush, see California Gold Rush
Basic information on Prospecting for gold, including how to get started, can be found at: Gold Prospecting

Chris Ralph writes on small scale mining and prospecting for the ICMJ Mining Journal. He has a degree in Mining Engineering from the Mackay School of Mines in Reno, and has worked for precious metal mining companies conducting both surface and underground operations. After working in the mining industry, he has continued his interest in mining as an individual prospector. His information page on prospecting for gold can be viewed at the website noted above.
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Spectacular Gold Nugget Found In Mariposa County - California

A California man recently dug a spectacular gold nugget weighing 5.17 ounces in the mother lode region of Mariposa County, California. The gentleman who found it made his discovery while using a metal detector to look for gold nuggets in an area previously worked by the 49ers. The finder valued his amazing chunk of gold at approximately $10,000 because of its beautiful specimen quality.

The nugget was resting beneath about one foot of soil, and was recovered in late April of 2007.

Several friends have been working this area with excellent results, and a good number of valuable finds have been made. Only a few weeks before this most recent stunning find, another nugget, over three ounces in weight, was recovered only about 50 feet away from the spot the five-ounce nugget was found. The location is on private property, and is not open to the public. Locations containing concentrations of large nuggets like this one are known to prospectors as "nugget patches", and finding them is the goal of prospectors everywhere.

Modern metal detectors are proving to be quite a boon in recovering large gold nuggets, as the old time prospectors had no tool in their arsenal that was anything close to it. Although there is work and special skills required to find this type of big gold, experienced prospectors in the western US and Australia are having some considerable success finding rich nugget patches missed by the old time miners of the 1800s.

The recent increases in the price of gold, now standing at nearly $700 per ounce, has spurred the interest of many in pursuing the recreational art of prospecting for gold, and many are still heading to the hills to see what they can find.

Mariposa County is a historic location in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountain range at the southern end of California's Mother Lode region. The town of Mariposa is a popular tourist attraction, touted as the "gateway to Yosemite Valley". There are a number of other popular family oriented tourist attractions in the area as well, including California's State Mining and Mineral Museum.

 The collection contains mining artifacts, rare specimens of crystalline gold in its many forms, as well as beautiful gem and mineral specimens from California and around the world. This includes the Fricot nugget, a 200-ounce crystalline gold specimen from California, thought to be one of the most beautiful pieces of natural gold in the world. The town also allows gold panning in Mariposa Creek, which runs through the town.

A photo of the five ounce nugget can be viewed at: http://nevada-outback-gems.com/prospect/gold_specimen/Natural_gold.htm

Basic information on Prospecting for gold, including how to get started, can be found at: http://nevada-outback-gems.com/basic_prospecting/Basic_placer.htm

Chris Ralph writes on small scale mining and prospecting for the ICMJ Mining Journal. He has a degree in Mining Engineering from the Mackay School of Mines in Reno, and has worked for precious metal mining companies conducting both surface and underground operations. After working in the mining industry, he has continued his interest in mining as an individual prospector. He can be reached at P.O. Box 3104 Reno, Nevada 89505. His information page on prospecting for gold can be viewed at: http://nevada-outback-gems.com/prospect/chris_prospect.htm
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