I spent the last three months testing gold panning sluice boxes across six different rivers and creeks in the western US, hauling gear to spots from the California foothills to Colorado mountain streams. Our team ran 12 popular models through the same paydirt batches to see which ones actually capture fine gold versus which just […]

I spent 45 days testing 8 of the most popular gold panning kits on Amazon side by side at three creeks in Northern California, a tailing pile outside Nevada City, and a backcountry river in the Sierras. I'm sharing exactly which kits caught the most flour gold, which ones fell apart on the second trip, […]