Gold Getting Gadgets!

I love mining history.  Anyone that has ever read about the various gold rushes knows that for every miner that struck it rich,  there were a 100 that went broke.  There were many reasons for this, lack of good ground, lack of knowledge on mining, and one of the most common,  getting taken by the manufacturers and merchants selling and equipping the miners going into the gold fields.  I recently attended a local Gold show, and guess what nothing has changed in 100 years!  Now don't get me wrong, I love to see innovation and new products come out to improve process but sometimes the old tried and true processes just can't be beat.  Case in point while I was at the show I watched a Demo of a new "Gold Getting Gadget"  that has gotten a lot of hype recently.  This device is touted to cut down the time it takes to classify material,  however after watching the demo, which was fairly clunky, the time it took to process the material after the initial classification could have been done faster with a gold pan,  In fact,  I am fairly certain, an experienced gold panner can pan material down faster than this new contraption, and probably with a better recovery rate.  Despite that,  I watched these contraptions fly out the door for two days.  I am sure they will all get used once or twice and then put on a shelf somewhere.  Sometimes innovation just can't beat a tried and true workhorse, the gold pan!  Over the years even the gold pan has been improved,  adding riffles to the pan significantly improved the loss of fine gold going out with the larger material.  So next time you are looking at equipment,  don't get caught up in the hype and maybe test it against what you already have,  you may find that what you have works just fine!