Let's not beat around the bush.
Too long, didn't read. Klesh Beginner Gold Paydirt is guaranteed to have 0.25 grams of gold, and it does! I opened 2 bags, finding 0.29g and 0.28g. If you are in a situation where paydirt is your best way to find gold, I highly recommend Klesh for beginners!
You got someone to ship you dirt? I can do that for you if you want!
You're probably thinking right now. But does your dirt come from a gold-bearing river in Colorado? And do you seed it with a certain amount of gold to make sure it has at least 55% ROI? 'Cause if you're willing to guarantee me a certain amount of gold, I'd be willing to trade some HIVE for some dirt!
Alright, So What Is Paydirt?
I'm glad you asked. As a general definition, paydirt is dirt or ore that is profitable to a miner. Now, in our context, we are doing some backyard mining, we are not in it for profitability. This is not a good investment. If you want to collect gold as an investment buy gold bullion.
So in our context, gold paydirt is seeded dirt that you can purchase online which is guaranteed to have a minimum amount of gold. Some don't guarantee a minimum and I would not buy those paydirts. Gold Paydirt is intended for practice and fun. Say you are wheelchair-bound and can't traverse the rocky terrain to collect your own gold paydirt. You could order some paydirt online and a gold pan, and pan out the contents of the package into a Rubbermaid tote to find some gold in your own home! You want to pan it into a tote, 1 - in case you miss gold, this way you can collect the dirt and pan it again. And 2 - you do not want to send rocks and sediment down your kitchen drain!
If you wish to know more about what paydirt is there's this handy video made by Klesh himself!
Now that you know a bit about paydirt, let's take a look at the listing!
https://kleshgold.com/products/gold-beginner-paydirt
Gold Beginner Paydirt - Limited amount available, check back often or sign up for email notifications below if I’m sold out!
An easy “Beginner” paydirt for kids or those just getting started into the hobby of panning for gold!
There will be at least 1/4 Gram of Gold in each bag. Some bags have a lot more gold and a nice big gold nugget thrown in - I call these “Bonus Bags”.
Gold will be easy to find Pickers and sometimes smaller Flakes. Any flour gold will be naturally occuring. You will always get MORE than 1/4 gram of gold in each bag!
Material is “Plus and Minus” 1/4” Real Placer Mining Concentrates obtained by myself here in Colorado. I removed most of the “black sand” to scale down the difficulty as much as possible. No rocks bigger than 1/2”. Weight per bag will vary somewhere between 8 ounces and 12 ounces.
Every bag will have bonus items such as Gemstones, Metal Detecting finds (coins), even pieces of lead and iron, old coins, silver coins, jewelry etc. - some of these items were found by myself during the filming of my treasure hunting videos. You will also most likely find a “Klesh” guitar pick in your beginner bag.
Gemstones/Minerals you may find: Amethyst, Quartz, Emerald, Garnet, Ruby, Moonstone, Sapphire, Apatite, Aquamarine, Chert, Jasper, Agate, Tourmaline and more.
These are perfect for someone who is just starting out and has never panned gold before.
Difficulty level is about 2 out of 10.
Recommended for any “First time” gold panner. After you see how easy it is, try the “Gold Strike”, or the “Expert” bags to fine tune your panning skills!
Don’t forget to add a Pick, Decal or Shirt before checking out!
*Some Minerals/Gemstones may be larger than 1/2”.
Okay, but why are you panning paydirt?
For my particular scenario, I live in Nunavut which means that I live on land where I cannot take material because it does not belong to me or the crown. I'm also a beginner that wants to learn how to gold pan and play around by designing a 3d printed gold sluice. This gives me a measurable amount of gold I can use to make sure that my sluice isnt dropping an excessive amount of gold out the end. My plan is to then ship off some good sluice prints to my father and have him collect some North Saskatchewan River paydirt to try and find some wild gold! I also bought him 2 bags of Klesh Beginner Gold Paydirt so that he can practice his panning skills. Plus this allows me to support one of my favorite youtubers!
So, what did you do?
Well, if you follow along with the pictures, you get most of the steps. I opened up the paydirt bag and dumped the contents out into a gold pan. I then grabbed our metal mesh kitchen strainer and sifted the material into another gold pan to seperate the materials into + and - kitchen strainer size. This makes it a LOT easier to pan out the material.
Once you get the materials separated it's fun to pick through the larger sizes to try and find some pickers! I found 4 in this bag! Little pickers or nuggies. Pickers are pieces of gold large enough to pick up, but too small to be considered a nugget. Nuggies are chunky pieces of gold slightly too small to be called a picker. These are not technical terms and just silly things the Gold Panning community has named these types of gold. Within the larger material, I also found a nice terminated quartz crystal as well as a small chunk of amethyst and a larger chunk of raw emerald! Wow!
After you pick through the large material it's time to get wet! I forgot to take photos of this step, but it's not the easiest step to photograph. Maybe one day I'll do a step-by-step blog on panning. Anyway, it's time to pan! We start with the larger material and fill the pan with water, shake shake shake that pan to stratify the material and get the heavy gold to sink to the bottom. Then tip the pan forward so it's level with the water and dip the pan into the water then raise it back out, keeping the pan tipped forward. This will cause the lighter materials to wash off the top. Do this several times, then add more water and stratify the material again. Rinse and repeat until you are left with between a tablespoon and teaspoon of material.
Now it's the hard part. Add a small amount of water to your pan and shake all the material to the front of the pan. Tip the pan backwards so that the material is on the opposite side of the pan as the water, then gently swirl the water up into the material. This will cause the lighter sands and rocks to fall down with the water to the bottom of the pan. But the heavy gold won't budge as the water moves over it and the gold will stay at the top of the pan! One you get all your gold at the front edge of the pan, use a snuffer bottle to suck up your gold and leave behind all the rocks an sand!
This is a pretty basic overview of panning, but this is something you should really watch a video on if you want to get a better feel for how panning is done. Coincidentally, Klesh also has a video or two on how to pan! It's almost like this is his business or something!
Now we have our gold, we will need to dry it out so that we can weigh it. My method of choice is to drain off as much water as I can (over the tote in case I have floating gold) and then I simply wait. After a few hours, the water will be dry and I can remove the gold to a piece of paper to weigh it on a digital scale. Remember, we were guaranteed 0.25 grams of gold. So our return of 0.28 grams is really nice! After you weigh up your gold, move it to a glass vial for storage. I recommend containers with a plastic lid instead of these cork ones that I have.
Now, wrap this all up.
It was a very enjoyable experience to pan out this gold indoors. The first 2 bags I ran off on my gold sluice and that was fun as well but in a different way. Panning an entire bag out myself was more difficult, and took longer, but possibly provided more overall enjoyment as it was a relaxing hour. Personally, I find the Klesh Beginner Gold Paydirt to be an excellent beginners training bag of gold bearing paydirt. This is NOT for people with any amount of experience gold panning, as it is far too easy. If I didn't put those 4 pieces of gold back I would have only had some fly poop-sized specs of gold to find. For more advanced home panners, get the Gold Strike 1/2 gram bag or the 1/2 gram Expert bag He also has an Impossible bag if you really want to hate life for a bit, as it contains really fine gold and a metric fuckton of heavy black sand to keep you at the panning station for days!
If you are looking to get into gold panning this is where you should order your first bag of paydirt. And if you have a family member that may be interested in this kind of thing consider it as a gift option for them. Would you rather have Gold or an Amazon gift card?
it was interesting to see the process. i'd love to try it, but i don't think i'd have the patience :D
BTW you should check out some of the communities in ocd's incubation program. i think you would find some interesting communities to subscribe to and post in.
I find the whole process to be a relaxing and almost meditative activity. I am a very unfocused person, and this is one of the few tasks I enjoy doing from start to end.