Have you ever watched Gold Rush on the Discovery Channel ? My son got me hooked on watching this a few years ago and at the time we both became very interested in the idea of prospecting and learning how to pan for gold .... we started doing research into some of the known “historical” locations of placer gold in our area and there are few rivers that we have tried — with limited success — meaning we had some really fun adventures and good family time on the river.
Now that we are stuck inside and busy doing Spring cleaning in the basement we stumbled upon an old bag of unopened Paydirt ... a what ? A bag of dirt ? Yep, a bag of dirt with a little gold to shake out.
Ahh ha .... an excuse to stop cleaning for a few days !
If you are looking for something interesting to do with your kids while stuck in Quarantine Lockdown you should definitely give this a try. We picked up these bags of Paydirt from Goldbay.com along with a few gold panning pans (Amazon for about $5 - non affiliate link below)
We set up a few buckets and large basins of water right on the Kitchen Floor and started panning for Gold.
Hours of family fun. The kids used these small suction bottles and tweezers working to get all the tiny specs of gold out of the heavy black sand. They learned a lot about geology and the weight of gold, the fact that through shaking the gold pan back and forth the heaviest particles fall to the bottom and the act of gently swishing the pan back and forth causes all of the lighter sand and gravel to flow off into the water.
This is our set up in the Kitchen ...
Sometimes the bags of Paydirt have some pretty chunky pieces of Gold.
This is the really fine gold that takes hours to get at.
Sometimes, if you are really lucky you get a nugget that looks like a meteor.
(Please note : Extreme Magnification here )
Anyway, I’m not sure how much longer this Lockdown will go on, I see from the News that some places are opening back up.... and if we are allowed to head back out to the rivers for weekend Prospecting trips this is really good practice.
These are the pans we use (not an Amazon Affiliate Link) .... https://www.amazon.com/SE-GP1013G12-Green-Plastic-Riffles/dp/B00IKY42AW
Goldbay adds 1 gram of Gold to their gold Paydirt to ensure you will get at least 1 gram of Gold.... These are the bags we bought : https://www.goldbay.com/paydirt-store/1-gram-Paydirt-LESS-than-SPOT-10-mesh-and-smaller-p160515458
I am going to contact Dave, the owner, and ask him if he will accept Hive, or Hive backed dollars (HBD) for his Gold... I know that he used to accept Bitcoin, and Ethereum.
Product Details from Dave at Goldbay:
Chunky Paydirt for sale - LESS THAN SPOT! 1 Gram of gold Guaranteed!
Approximately 3 lb of PayDirt – This Paydirt bag of gold concentrates is guaranteed to contain at least 1 gram of #10 mesh (and smaller) gold flakes and nuggets and weighs about 3 Lb
You can "Build a Bag" and add more gold, bigger gold, or just give it a try with the 1 gram, be assured you will be 100% happy or I will refund you 100% of your purchase price including shipping when you send the gold back.. You can use options to add MORE and BIGGER gold to your order!
Once you have tried our paydirt gold concentrates you won’t go anywhere else! Our Paydirt has been reviewed independently on Youtube and you can see that HERE and HERE and Klesh Guitars did a great review of my 1 gram bag If you shop around you will see that our paydirt prices are very competitive and we have hundreds of reviews.
Note: These are not affiliate links, just products I have bought and used many times and was very happy with.
Haha, just bought a pan before the lockdown and am raring to go! I have identified an area near a river which is around 1 hour away.
That’s excellent... make Some movies of your adventures and share here. It’s a lot of fun.
wow! great... I like to try it... :D
Thanks. It is a lot of fun.... we watch an episode of gold rush, do some research online, look at maps, cook up some hotdogs and beans in the Dutch oven, pan for gold.... and pretend we are out on a river somewhere.
My Twitter #posh #hive #ocd Tweet to the World ...
Thank you very much @drakos .... I have a million different hobbies.
Nice clicks from kitchen
Yeah.... big adventures all the way over in the kitchen. We are camping out in the living room tonight.