What is Placer Gold?
The word "placer" (pronounced - plas-er) originates from a Spanish word which refers to an alluvial or eluvial deposit of gravel containing particles of valuable minerals such as gold, silver or platinum.
As such, placer gold is gold that has weathered from the host rock where it was formed and has been placed either on hillside (eluvial placer), in stream bed or alluvial fan by the action of water, glaciers, or other geological forces.
Subjected to millions of years of weathering, upheaval, and the action of water, lode gold tends to expose itself and erode from it's source to naturally distribute itself among the other rocks and earth subjected to the same forces, forming into a secondary or residual deposit called a gold placer.
As time moves, so does the placer gold.
It can be found embedded in the placer gravels and alluvial fans as specimen gold (gold still attached to the host stone), gold nuggets, small flakes, fine gold and even down to micron gold smaller than can be seen with the naked eye.
Gold is heavy. It is roughly 19 times heavier than water. As such, gold particles of any substantive size do not tend to move far from the source. Being subject to the forces of gravity, placer gold tends to move downward, sinking as deep as it possibly can and following the path of least resistance. As the gold comes into contact with rocks and water, it breaks up slowly over time, becoming finer and finer as it moves away from the auriferous vein or lode from which it came, eventually depositing on a beach or even in the ocean at the foot of a river.
Extremely small particles of fine gold can travel hundreds of miles from their primary source while the larger nuggets, specimen gold and crystalized gold remain closer to the source, trapped by their own weight and the features of the surrounding bedrock or gradient property of the stream beds.
Much of the gold that existed in ancient times was derived from placer gold. Man, since ancient times, has been mining placer gold because of the ease with which it can be recovered. Although most of the placer gold from ancient times and even from later gold rushes has been melted down for jewelry or bullion, more recently it has found it's place as a precious gemstone and treated as something beautiful in it's own right.
Placer gold nuggets are often used to fashion gold nugget jewelry or placed on display in museums or in private collections. Indeed, placer gold in it's untouched form is quite often worth even more money than the weight value of the gold itself. Finding gold nuggets suitable for jewelry is just one reason recreational gold prospecting continues to surge in popularity. Its one of the few outdoor activities or hobbies that can actually generate real cash and profit.
Tags: gold bullion, find gold, gold detector
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Buying Mining Claims
Mining claims, gold or otherwise, sell for just about any dollar amount. They are often priced not so much on the value of gold or other precious metals and gems they actually contain, but rather on some 'subjective' value attached by the seller!
Mining claims can sell for $200, or they can sell for a million dollars!
Price can and should also be influenced by the productivity of gold finds in the immediate area of the mining claim. But...
The best way to determine the actual real value that a mining claim holds for you is to sample it thoroughly. If you are considering buying a mining claim that you intend to dredge, it's not enough to just take samples up on the banks with a gold pan. Instead, it requires going out into the river with your equipment and dredging sample holes to obtain an accurate idea of how valuable the claim will be for dredging gold. It also is not good enough to dredge just one or two sample holes and stop there if you find paydirt. If you are going to pay a lot of money for the claim, it is wise to dredge more holes to see how long and wide the pay streak really is. Sometimes you can choose just the right spot (or the seller tells you where) to dredge a sample hole and get into awesome paydirt, only to later discover that it was just a single deposit or very small streak. This does happen, and it can be very misleading.
If a claim owner is asking a high price for a mining claim based upon his assurances that it is "extremely rich and productive," he should have no objections to you doing some sampling and testing to determine for yourself. It would be unreasonable for a seller to expect you to rely entirely upon his statements.
Watch out for a seller who play it up big and large, trying to get you all pumped up and seeing dollar signs about all the gold you are going to recover - so much so that you don't feel it necessary to do any testing! This is where a less-than-honest seller (con man) is going to try and get you.
When considering buying a mining claim - If it is worth a lot of money, it is worth sampling first! And not just a poke in the dirt here and there - Enough due-diligence sampling and testing to determine the gold recovery potential of the claim and if that 'potential' supports the purchase price.
Most typically a seller of a mining claim will invite interested bidders to go out to the claim to look it over and do some testing. And it is quite acceptable to request to just that, if the seller hasn't specifically stated.
Another thing to watch out for on a mining claim deal is by buying a mining claim from someone who does not really own it, or by paying royalties to someone who has given you permission to dredge on the claim, but who doesn't really own it.
With some easy research, you can locate any active mining claim in the County recorder's office and the Bureau of Land Management records to find out who really owns it and make sure the yearly paperwork has been kept up. You can research at the same time to see if anyone else has filed a mining claim on the very same location. If two or more people have filed mining claims on the same land, future conflicts are likely. So it would probably be wise to look for another mining claim to buy.
Perhaps it is not necessary if you make a percentage deal on a claim with a person who claims to own it. But definitely when you get into large amounts of gold, it may well be worth the slight bit of extra time it takes to verify the legal, registered owner of the mining claim being sold.
All this being said, a very good place to learn more about mining claims and to find gold mining claims for sale is eBay. There is a strong and growing gold prospecting community on eBay, with many cottage industries springing up that sell custom built, high tech prospecting equipment. There is really a lot to be learned just by watching and reading the gold mining listings there. Not to mention finding some very, very good prices and deals on everything from gold pans to gold mining claims.
A Few Mining Claims for Sale on eBay
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US $100.00
| Finding Gold and Treasure |
Tags: gold value, gold detector, flakes of gold
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