Pan spills

[Capt Nemo]

On the way back from dealing with my fathers funeral matters I stopped at Cabela's and found that the "Gold Rush" paydirt was in the bargin cave. Bought it all! Just got done panning all the mica laden playground sand off the 30 little chunks, and bumped the pan off the bench! Gold on me, in the pan, and on the floor! Recovered 27 and can't find the rest. Was suprized at how much of the gold stayed in the pan.(75%)

What's your worst spill?

 

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[IMAUDIGGER]

Brother dumped 100 grains onto the floor mats of his truck while driving with a pan of gold on his dash.

Another time I was showing my grandpa a collection of nuggets I had found that summer.
Somehow I managed to tip the container over and spill 30 nuggets onto the lawn.
Probably 1/2 oz. Spent 30 minutes trying to pick them all up. Checked with detector and couldn't find anymore so I figured I got them all.
Dad went out a couple hours later and found 3 more nuggets I missed. I still wonder if there isn't at least one we missed.

 

[KevinInColorado]

The very first gold I panned in 1989 was left in a vial of water on a shelf in the garage...over winter. In the spring my wife swept out the garage and commented to me that she cleaned up the broken glass I'd left behind

 

[huntsman53]

While Wild Boar hunting around 2009 or 2010, I took some samples from a creek called Gold Creek in an area known for Gold. I didn't have a shovel with me nor any buckets or sifters, so I made a scoop out of a discarded plastic bottle I found and used an old Walmart bag that I had in my' truck to hold the material. I dug down as deep as possible in the creek, using my' Buck #119 knife to dig and took a half bag of material from the creek to pan out later at home. My intentions were to see if there was decent Gold in the creek and if so, I would make it a point to do more prospecting on it. Well, I took the bag of material home and placed it on a shelf in the garage where it and some cans of Black Sand that had Gold in them kind of were forgotten. A couple of years go by and I can't find the bag nor the cans of Black Sand, so I ask my daughter if she had seen them when she was cleaning out the garage a few months back. Oh well, you know the rest of this story. Yes, she threw the material from the creek and the Black Sand with Gold out into the yard and threw the containers away. The good thing about it, is that I don't have to go far to find Gold!


Frank

 

[Bodfish Mike]

I HATE MY CAT.
No just kidding I love her but she does not like gold and she has used my cons as a litter box.

 

[Goldwasher]

one day i came in the house and my daughter only three at the time had the look. I asked what she was up to? She said her brother,five at the time was cleaning my gold. I look over on the shelf I normally kept my gold vial on at the time a 4oz vial about half full last weight like 54 grams. It was not there there was a stool below the shelf. I rush outside looking for the boy. Hes at the hose bib on the side of the house. Its over a deck which is over a concrete slab below. Water about half on bottle against the spigot. "NOOOOOOOO" so fighting back the urge to kill ones own children I grab the vial and theres about half the gold gone third of an ounce or so.

It took a while to get the gold off of the textured concrete below I still was a dwt shy I would get down there on my knees for weeks to come trying to find the missing color.

 

[Oddjob]

Never had a pan spill, not even close. But a few years ago after our yearly prospecting trip I forgot about the nearly one pound of nuggets we recovered.

We always separate the nuggets from the fines. The fines go to the refinery and get sold, the nuggets are sold online because people pay more money than the spot for some reason.

So a year went by, the family and I hooked up the travel trailer to head up to Lapland for some hunting. We got there, and it was like day two or three and my daughter grabbed her sand toys to play on the beach. She said she was going to go get us some gold so we did not have to kill Moose. She walked down about 40 feet to the bank of the river and played with her strainer and bucket for about an hour. We called her up to get cleaned up for dinner and she said that she was not done yet, so we told her she had ten more minutes and then she needed to come up.

She came up with her bucket and and showed her mother all the nuggets she found. Her mother looked in the bucket and acted really shocked, right away I complimented her on being a good mother for being able to act so enthusiastic in matters such as this because I never could emotionally embellish.

She told my daughter to come show me but I was cooking on the grill and told her I would have a look after dinner. We cooked and ate and my daughter then asked if I would have a look at them. I said yes sure but then it was nearly bed time.

Man my heart nearly stopped, O looked through them all, I went inside and got my little acid tester and they where real. I asked my wife to please clean up and I grabbed my daughter and son, we got the three strainers, a pan and shovel from the belly of the caravan (never leave home without it) I told me daughter to take me down and show me where she got them.

However it was dark and she said that she did not want to leave the lighted area. I said thats cool, I turned around SUV, put the lights on, and grabbed a Peli Light Set and put that up. Told her I had my guns and we have enough light now to see anything coming from far off and that it would surely die tired before it could charge us.

So reluctantly she took me to her little spot, I knew where she was but seriously a little girl with sand toys digging that much gold I wanted to be certain that I could find this freakish wealth. My son and I get to digging, my wife come down and my daughter said she wanted to go to bed. My wife takes her to bed and I am digging and straining and panning like a mad man finding nothing, but the proof on the table was enough to keep me going man.

An hour later my wife comes out and tell me that our daughter was crying, really more concerned about the gold and not my daughters feelings at the time I asked my wife if she sorted and she said no not really all the way yet. So I stopped just wanting to get this over with as fast as I could because I figured she wanted me to read to her or something.

No that was not the case, my wife tells me that our daughter found last years nuggets in the drawer. I was like what are you talking about I thought we sold those on ebay. My wife said she already checked our ebay account for sales in the last year and we did not but that our daughter even handed her the small plastic jug she found them in.

I was laughing so hard about that, my daughter was happy that I was no angry and she asked me if she had lost any. I told her heck if I know because we did not weigh it ever only weighed what my daughter claimed to have found.

The next morning my son is up early MDing the heck out of that area just convinced that his little sister dropped a few and he was going to cash in. LOL

So no, never had a pan spill. I would hate to do something so foolish like spill my pan. Better to loose nearly pound of nuggets and not know about it so your daughter can play with them in a 2 dollar sand toy set out in the bush. LOL Much safer. LOL

 

[russau]

This was a time Im trying to forget about and is very embarrassing!!!!! BUT about 10 years back I gathered up all of my gold from all the years ive dredged and got it into one pan. It really surprised me that I had 1 1/4 oz. of fine to chunky gold just sitting around in my shop all this time and that I hadn't got it together in all this time. well time ran short on me and since it was out in my shop where I keep locked ,I decided to stop where I was at and finish it up latter. My honey was calling me !(Happy wife happy life ! yadayada) well I kept putting off getting this gold into a vile and putting it away and I kept thinking (every time I passed by it) that , Im going to knock it over on the floor if I don't do something about it SOON! BUt I didn't!! and one day 9as I knew it would) I bumped the pan with gold in it and I watched (in slow motion) the pan tip over and hit the floor as the fine gold splashed all over...............................................................can you imagine a ole (F.O.G.) Greatgrandpa on his knees trying to get every speck of fine gold off the floor and back into his gold pan? It wasn't a very pretty picture (well to me anyway!) BOY DID I LEARN MY LESSON!

 

[Hoser John]

Nothing worse than finding out your cat used your pan load as a kitty box........ John

 

[HMiller]

I've learned that drinking alcohol and showing off your vials isn't a good idea, they can break when dropped.

 

[QNCrazy]

Well it wasn't a pan, it was a glass vial. I was showing off a gram of fines from a days work. Slip, shatter, and onto my office floor. It was quite comical to everyone but me. I told them to get out then proceeded to sweep the floor. Not once, but three times. I really need to work on sweeping my office more often. The ammount of dirt was embarrassing. Not that plastic won't break, but I learned my lesson.

 

[brianc053]

Thanks for sharing all these stories.
I'm reluctant to hit "Like" on any of them for fear of it being taken the wrong way...

- Brian

 

[johnh]

I spent about 4 hours a few weeks back on a nice stream I found got a couple pickers outa it and tossed them in a vial and then tossed my clean out into a bucket in the back of my truck then in a hurry to get back to my house and do the final cleaning of the days take didn't think to tie down the bucket or toss a lid on it....... fast forward an hour down a bumpy dirt road and another hour on highway at 70mph and I had an empty bucket a wind swept truck bed and a few heavier river stones in the corner under my tool box. in the future like a fish story i'll be sure to say I had ounces of gold in there but to be honest I have no idea how much shiny I lost that day. oh well live and learn

 

[wtetro]

I HATE MY CAT.
No just kidding I love her but she does not like gold and she has used my cons as a litter box.

My cat did the same thing...looked happy that he did too as he pushed my dried gold laden cons onto the carpeted floor...I think I got most of it up in the vacuum, don't know how much was actually in there, but recovered about a gram and a half...I cover and hide my cons now.

 

[goldenIrishman]

I've never dropped or knocked over a pan but broken vials... you betcha! Years ago I had gone down to my dads place to show him the take from one of my San Diego outings. We were standing in the disaster that my dad calls his garage (always looked like a bomb had gone off in there but he could find anything he wanted within seconds) and when I went to hand him the vial I fumble fingered it and down it went onto the cement floor. Where I lucked out was thanks to the fact that my dad had one of those Rainbow vacuum cleaners that filters everything through water. Sucked up half the garage floor and got my pan out of my truck and gave dad an impromptu panning demo. Managed to get at least 95% of it back and both my dad and I had a good laugh.

 

[Cave_Dweller]

I spilt an entire days pan in my flower bed. It was safe to say I dug half of them up, but panning compost is a messy job (got it all back though)

Another time I left my pan outside with gold in whilst I went to the toilet. Came back out and the dog had drank most the water out the pan and had taken some gold with it. I was not going to search his nuggets for my nuggets....

 

[Jeff95531]

I once took all the cons from my LeTrap (from about 10 buckets) and decided to pan them in the sun and in the grass. Dumped it all in to another bucket. But it wasn't a bucket...it was a planter with four cut outs in the bottom. I scooped up what I could with a table spoon.

 

[gold tramp]

last smelting, i sat the hot crucible down to get a better grip for the pour, ended up knocking it upside down into the sand, Picks was like that was a brilliant move, turned out it looked pretty neet.
so we sold as is.
it was 7.5 grms.
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