…the excitement passed so quickly that little work was done, but they still have good potential, and I find they are not as well-known and not hit so hard by most prospectors.

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?

We descended hunched over, down a long, steep, wooden staircase to the 1,000-level.

Let’s examine why your placer gold looks the way it does and what you can tell about its journey based upon its appearance.