You find yourself with a bucketful of concentrates that you have accumulated over the season and consider the logical next step: to reduce the bucket of cons to a gold bar. Where do you begin?

“The evidence is clear—mineral deposits alone are not enough to attract precious commodity investment dollars...”

This same concept is true of many of our modern-day rivers, and we have to find out where their gold originated if we can.

So let’s dive in and see what I can do to convince you that this is the year you should be out staking your own claims.

Because the forces of erosion and gravity tend to carry lighter materials like quartz away more easily, the heavy minerals like gold or silver will tend to be concentrated in the general area around the vein outcrop. These concentrations are what make residual placers so attractive.