can you actually make any money extracting gold from sand or other substances?

Turbo8776 · Oct 4, 2016

I a total newbie. I been looking around at a lot of prospecting things online and its facinating and it had me curious if anyone can actually make a little bit of money doing this? is anyone willing to perhaps have a 1 to 1 message talk with me on this if they are not busy at all and tell me how these things work. Thanks.

kcm · Oct 4, 2016

Yes, absolutely. However, certain conditions MUST apply:
1) it must be a gold-bearing area
2) there MUST be gold in the sand/gravel
3) it MUST be in an area where placer mining is allowed, and
4) you have to know how to separate the gold from the sands/gravels

There's still a lot of gold out there - don't ever let anyone tell you otherwise. Usually though, there will not be enough quantity to make a living from, so keep your plans/goals realistic. There are still many folks that "do" make their living from gold mining. But for most, it's a hobby.

Back-of-the-boat · Oct 4, 2016

If you are talking about the sand bags video, not all sand in bags would come from gold bearing regions so find out where the sand is bagged.A river close by me has a sand and rock operation on it and just upstream a few miles guys are always pulling gold so the sand that comes from there does contain gold.Very fine flour gold but it is there.The way to pull enough gold would be in how much can you run.If you are wanting to get rich doing it you will need semi-trucks delivering bags around the clock, if you just want to do it as a hobby it would be a good time on the weekend.

kcm · Oct 4, 2016

The problem with having truck loads delivered is, how do you get rid of the excess sand??

There's a MUCH greater chance of finding gold in the gravels in gold-bearing areas. Gold is heavy - it will drop out much quicker than other minerals/metals. If there is nothing but sand, then there's a good chance that any gold would have already dropped out. However, that is not a hard and fast rule.

Tom_in_CA · Oct 5, 2016

Historically, there was actually persons who used mercury on certain beach sands of the CA coast (where the river's straight from the mountains emptied into the ocean) to extract gold. But I can't imagine it being worthwhile from a profitability/net-weight perspective.

Because, think of it: If a hobbyist can extract enough from hand-held tools to be profitable, the logically speaking, someone(s) would already have thought of this and extracted it on an industrial scale already. Hence the amount of gold appearing in routine sand, is probably not worth the energy and time to extract.

As KCM says: Just go to gold bearing regions, and work there.

kcm · Oct 5, 2016

I don't know about "most", but in MANY placer areas, even if an area is effectively worked out, just give a little time and Mother Nature will begin to replenish the gold within the gravels. Maybe it comes from previously unworked hard rock outcrops that have eroded away, maybe from lost gold from current hard rock mines, or maybe from traveling further downstream during flood events. Fact is, any place where gold has been found before in appreciable quantities is the VERY BEST chance that a newbie has at finding gold. Trying to find a virgin, untapped deposit somewhere (whether placer or hard rock) is difficult for experienced prospectors - nearly impossible for newbies. ...Note the word "nearly". That means that there are historically documented exceptions - but not many.

kcm · Oct 5, 2016

Turbo8776 said:
I a total newbie. I been looking around at a lot of prospecting things online and its facinating and it had me curious if anyone can actually make a little bit of money doing this? is anyone willing to perhaps have a 1 to 1 message talk with me on this if they are not busy at all and tell me how these things work. Thanks.

You have a considerable amount of studying ahead of you, and that will be #1 on your to-do list. Asking questions, reading books, searching gold forums, etc., is going to take a while. Once you're starting to get a good idea of the overall picture, then check out another very good resource called MyLandMatters.org This is an exceptional resource for current and future prospectors.

Feel free to ask any specific questions you may have. I only have general knowledge, but there are many here that have been mining for many years. Lots of good people and great info here!!

Deltanimal · Oct 5, 2016

My buddy works as a geologist for the mines in Nevada. He says they extract gold that is microscopic using chemicals, but the slurry is very toxic. But the processes they use are super effective. So yes, there may be gold, but you probably don't have the ability to extract it to a cost effective point.