Placer gold is native gold that has escaped the rock it formed in. Weather broke the host stone down, water carried the pieces downhill, and because gold is far heavier than everything around it, the current dropped it first — concentrating it into beds of sand and gravel you can work with a shovel.
Placer gold is loose gold, sorted by water. Lode gold is still in the vein where it crystallised and has to be crushed out of hard rock. Placer gold is that same metal after erosion set it free.
It is pronounced to rhyme with passer, from the Spanish placer — a sandbank. Most of it is fine, most of it is 80–95% pure, and almost none of it is nuggets.
The whole process rests on one number. Gold has a density of about 19.3 grams per cubic centimetre. The quartz and sand it travels with are around 2.65. Gold is roughly seven times heavier than the material surrounding it.
Moving water carries sediment in proportion to its speed. Where a stream slows — on the inside of a bend, behind a boulder, at the head of a gravel bar, in a crack in the bedrock — it loses the ability to carry the heaviest particles first. Gold drops out. Sand keeps going.
Every placer deposit is a record of somewhere the water slowed down.
Repeat that across a few thousand flood seasons and gold that began as scattered specks through a mountain of rock ends up concentrated into thin, predictable layers — usually on or just above bedrock, and usually alongside black sand, which is magnetite and hematite doing the same thing for the same reason.
That is also why prospectors care so much about black sand: it is not the gold, but it collects in the same places, so finding it means the water was sorting by weight exactly where you are standing.
Classified by how far the gold has travelled from its source:
The further gold travels, the smaller, flatter and smoother it gets. A piece that has been through fifty miles of river is hammered into a thin flake; one that has moved twenty feet keeps its rough, crystalline edges. Shape is a rough record of distance.
Native gold is a natural alloy. Silver is almost always present, sometimes copper, occasionally traces of platinum-group metals. Purity is quoted as fineness — parts per thousand — so 850 fine means 85% gold.
Fineness is a property of the district rather than the individual piece, because it reflects the chemistry of the original vein. That consistency is why an experienced buyer can estimate a lot’s purity from its origin before any test:
| Region | Typical gold content |
|---|---|
| Alaska | 82–93% |
| Yukon | 80–92% |
| British Columbia | 80–90% |
| California | 85–94% |
| Arizona | 78–90% |
| Nevada | 80–92% |
| Oregon or Idaho | 80–92% |
| Montana or Colorado | 80–92% |
| Georgia or the Carolinas | 80–92% |
| Australia | 90–96% |
Bands used by our calculator when a seller does not know their own fineness.
One quirk worth knowing: placer gold is often purer than the vein it came from. Silver on the outer surface leaches away during the years a piece spends in oxidising groundwater, leaving a higher-gold rim. A nugget can assay several percent finer at its skin than at its core.
Grades
Sorted by size, because size is what decides the price.
Fine material that sifts straight through a 40 mesh screen. It sells by weight, so the rate tracks refinery pricing closely.
The classic panning result. Jewelers and hobbyists both want it, which lifts the rate above plain melt value.
Big enough to pick up one at a time. Collectors buy these by the piece, so they earn close to full metal value.
Sold whole to collectors and never melted. That is exactly why the rate clears 100% of the gold content.
Most placer gold, by weight, is fine. Nuggets are genuinely rare — which is exactly why they carry a premium over their metal content and are sold whole rather than melted. A single visible speck in a pan is called a colour, and a good day for a recreational panner might be a few dozen of them.
What a nugget is worth → · Mesh sizes explained → · How placer gold is valued →
Any method that separates gold from loose sediment by weight rather than by crushing rock. All of them are the same physics the creek already used, run faster:
Hydraulic mining, which used high-pressure water cannon to wash entire hillsides into sluices, produced enormous quantities of gold in nineteenth-century California and enormous quantities of downstream sediment with it. It was effectively ended by Woodruff v. North Bloomfield in 1884, one of the first environmental rulings in American law.
Placer gold is native gold that has weathered out of the hard rock it formed in and been concentrated by moving water into sand and gravel. It is the loose gold found in creeks, rivers, ancient buried channels and beaches — as opposed to lode gold, which is still locked in the vein where it formed.
It rhymes with “passer”, not “spacer”. The word comes from the Spanish placer, meaning a sandbank or shoal.
Location, not chemistry. Lode gold is still in the vein where it crystallised and has to be blasted and crushed out of rock. Placer gold is the same metal after erosion has freed it and water has sorted it by weight into a deposit you can dig with a shovel.
No. Native gold is a natural alloy, usually with silver and traces of copper. Most placer gold runs 800–950 parts per thousand — 80–95% gold. Fineness varies by district, and a single creek is usually consistent enough that experienced buyers can estimate it before testing.
Any method that separates gold from loose sediment using gravity and water rather than crushing rock: panning, sluicing, highbanking, dredging and commercial wash plants. Because gold is roughly seven times denser than the sand around it, moving water does most of the sorting.
Alaska produces by far the most, followed by California, Nevada, Arizona, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Colorado. There are also historic placer districts in Georgia and the Carolinas. Anywhere a gold-bearing vein has been exposed to weather for long enough, water has been sorting the results downhill.
Per gram of contained metal, no — it contains less gold than a refined bar of the same weight. But coarse placer gold and natural nuggets often sell for more than their metal content, because collectors buy them whole rather than melted, and nature makes very few good nuggets.
Live gold price. No email, no phone number.
A troy ounce is 31.1 g, a pennyweight is 1.56 g.
Based on typical purity for Alaska (82–93% gold). Drag the slider if you know yours and this tightens up.
Estimate only, at $4,044/oz gold. Your firm offer comes after we weigh and test the actual lot, and you are free to decline it.
Free insured shipping both ways, weighed and graded on camera, and no obligation to accept.
Get my estimate