“My passion for gold prospecting/mining started out with buying Paydirt.”
Christian from Rocky Mountain Sportsman
Nothing is more disappointing than when someone buys paydirt and feels like they got a bad deal.
We want everyone to be happy and, with 4.8/5 stars over hundreds of reviews, we feel we’re doing a solid job.
People often ask us if it’s “worth it” to buy real gold paydirt. The answer, like most things in life is, “it depends.”
After talking to hundreds of customers and testing different offers, I can confidently give you five reasons gold paydirt IS worth buying, and two reasons it is NOT.
Reasons gold paydirt IS worth buying
If you love gold prospecting and want to do it from the comfort of home
The number one reason people buy paydirt is that they just love the experience of prospecting for gold. The thrill of seeing the first pieces of gold when you’re panning – there’s nothing like it.
Here’s what our customer Richard C. from Florida had to say:
“The anticipation of getting the bag, then spending the time figuring the best way to use my gold pan was the best. Seeing those specs of gold, then hearing a clunk in the pan was the best of all.”
People who are afflicted with gold fever (like Richard and us) just know there isn’t anything like the feeling of panning back that pile of sand and seeing that gold line reveal itself along the top edge.
Unfortunately gold is challenging to go out and get, which is why it’s so valuable.
Some folks don’t have the time or the energy to go on a prospecting trip, especially if they don’t live near any historical gold-bearing areas.
Some folks might have disabilities or health issues that won’t allow them to go prospecting at all!
Whatever the case, buying real gold paydirt is the only economical option for those people to feel the joy of panning for gold from the convenience of their homes.
If you want to practice your panning skills or test a new gold recovery device
“After buying several hundred dollars of Paydirt, I noticed two things. Number one, my panning skills had improved significantly.”
Christian from Rocky Mountain Sportsman
Buying real gold paydirt is virtually the only way to practice panning different kinds of gold deposits from different types of soils at home.
Even if you have some placer gold at home and can mix it with some dirt from your yard to make your own paydirt, you may not have the heavy mineral concentrations that gold is found with to replicate the conditions you’ll encounter in the field.
Our Diver Dirt, for example, is guaranteed to have 1 gram of gold. That means if you recover 1 gram of gold or less, then you know you lost some gold and need to continue to practice your gold panning skills.
If you do recover more than 1 gram you’ll know, since it’s mixed with real black sand and heavy minerals from the beaches and floor off the Bering Sea, that you can recover gold in some of the challenging conditions you’re likely to encounter.
For the same reasons buying gold paydirt is a great idea if you have new gold recovery equipment. It gives you a way to test the equipment before you take it out. The test will show how well the equipment can separate gold from other minerals quickly and easily.
We risked our lives for this dirt.
Real gold, magnetites, sands, and garnets dredged off the Bering Sea floor.
Free Shipping to USA!
If you want to give a unique gift with lasting value
“After ordering myself pay dirt and panning it I thought what a great gift experience this would be. I purchased Diver Dirt for my nephew along with panning accessories and he had so much fun and excitement from it! Thank you Emily and crew for giving us a glimpse into your adventures and world of gold!!“
Cheryl L. from Texas
Every time Christmas or a birthday rolls around I have to rack my brain to think about what to buy someone. If you have people in your life who seem to have everything, what do you buy them?
Bering Sea Paydirt is a unique gift. It’s unlikely someone else is going to think of giving that special someone the chance to pan gold like a real miner. Inherent in our gold is the amazing story of the Nome Gold Rush and all the brave miners who have faced the Bering Sea since that fateful day in 1898.
Plus half the stuff on Amazon these days is just junk. It’s going to break in a few weeks or months! Cutting edge electronics might have been cool 15 years ago, but giving someone another device is more like a burden than a gift.
Not only is it a unique gift with a story, but our paydirt has lasting value, because it contains real gold. It’s one of the very few gifts that is likely to be worth just as much in the future, if not more than it is today. That’s especially rare at a <$100 price point.
If you want a fun activity to do with kids
I married into a big family and I now have all these nieces and nephews and in-laws to think about when Christmas and birthdays roll around.
Fortunately, panning gold paydirt is a great activity to do with kids!
Panning for gold is a skill that you can teach older kids while sharing an experience together that doesn’t involve looking at a screen.
We get a lot of messages from people who buy bags of paydirt as gifts for young family members.
For example, our customer Lauren shared some pictures on our reviews page of her learning to pan with her son.
This was probably one of the funnest activities we’ve done! Thank you SO much Bering Sea Paydirt!!
I got a pan on Amazon and we tried our hand at it, and let me tell you…it looks SO much easier on TV! It’s definitely an art form, but we started to get the hang of it!
It’s so fun and rewarding at the same time. I have so much more respect for gold miners like Emily , knowing how difficult a small amount of dirt is to pan!
You don’t have to be a gold expert or exactly know how to pan to have fun with this!
Lauren H. from Nevada
For the young folks in your life it’s a great way to bring the adventure of gold prospecting home, and give them a taste of the real treasure hunting adventures that are out there in the world!
If you, or someone you know, loves Bering Sea Gold
Totally seems silly until you’re actually holding the gold in your hands from Nome, Alaska. The fever is for real people! In that little isolated moment on the fan level, opening [the bag] up and realizing you and your crew totally pull through is Awesome! Gold, stickers, certificate of proof is as big of a collectible treasure some of us fans can get. Not to mention every episode you and your crew bring us on Emily. Thank you so much!
Toscano from New Jersey
Not to toot our own horns, but this is a reason to buy Bering Sea Paydirt that no other paydirt seller can offer.
Let me tell you a story about how we met our writer Monica.
Emily and I put a notice out on her Facebook page looking for writers. Monica messaged us and told us about how she loves the show and loves building websites.
What we didn’t know was that she became a fan by watching Emily’s adventures on Bering Sea Gold with her father.
Monica’s dad was a big fan of many of the gold shows on Discovery Channel and watching Bering Sea Gold together was a way for them to connect and deepen their relationship with each other.
For those who feel a special connection to Bering Sea Gold, whether it’s through connecting with family or just being a big fan of the characters and stories, we can offer a real Bering Sea dredger experience for you at home.
You probably can’t eat a crab you know was caught on Deadliest Catch or a steak from one of the cows on the Kilcher Homestead in Alaska: The Last Frontier. You probably won’t get a chance to drive a car you see in Street Outlaws.
But you CAN pan real gold paydirt mined by Emily and the crew on Bering Sea Gold. We sell Eroica Paydirt which is gold and concentrates that came straight out of The Eroica’s sluicebox.
Each bag comes with a guarantee of 2 grams of gold and a certificate of authenticity signed by Emily Riedel herself!
Reasons gold paydirt IS NOT worth buying
If you want to make an investment in gold
Look, if you want investment-grade gold you should buy bullion!
You know exactly what you’re getting and it’s easier to value an American Gold Eagle than an ounce of raw placer gold. I would NEVER tell someone that paydirt (even ours) is a superior investment.
I could end the section here, but I want to talk a bit about how much gold you should realistically expect for your money when buying paydirt.
The most common reason people are disappointed by paydirt is that they’re comparing it to an investment in gold bullion, or expecting a “100% ROI.”
I think the whole paydirt industry is damaged by the prolific use of the term “return on investment” or “ROI.”
Traditionally “ROI” is a financial term used to calculate the amount of profit made on an investment.
Why is this applied to paydirt? Are customers expecting an immediate profit from their paydirt? What product do you expect to buy from a retailer that’s consistently worth MORE than you paid for it?
“ROI” in the world of paydirt is the term used to measure the value of the gold received in the paydirt versus the price paid for the product.
The way ROI is calculated in paydirt is this: let’s say you spend $100 on a bag of paydirt and you recover 1.4 grams of gold.
So you would take the spot price and divide it by 31.1 grams in order to get a value of gold per gram. At $1,718.10 per troy ounce, one gram of gold is worth $55.15. So 1.4 grams is worth $77.21, which paydirt customers would consider a 77.21% “ROI.”
Let’s take a look at bullion as a comparison.
An American Gold Eagle coin from JM Bullion today costs $1,962.32 if you pay with a credit card. It’s a few % less if you pay with an ACH transfer. Shipping is free.
The price of gold today according to Kitco is $1,631.50 if you split the bid and the ask.
By paydirt logic the “ROI” on buying American Gold Eagle coins with a credit card today is 83.14%.
Bullion dealers and paydirt sellers, like all retailers, need to make a profit. And if paydirt sellers are good to their customers they, like bullion dealers, are making pretty thin profit margins.
That said, some paydirt buyers are still obsessed with getting a “100% ROI.” It’s a strangely high bar that’s held up for this business that isn’t for others, and actually could set you up for getting a low quality product.
So what’s normal? I’d say anything below a 60% “ROI” is definitely subpar for a bag with a guaranteed amount of gold.
The one exception is if you’re buying a bag with an element of chance where a few bags have a LOT of gold then it’s going to fluctuate dramatically and ROI could be below, or way above that.
What’s high? I think an 85-90% ROI is EXCEPTIONAL and is probably the result of getting a bonus bag, spending a LOT of money on a huge purchase, or getting some very low-grade placer gold.
A lot of people don’t know that the purity of placer gold can fluctuate dramatically. Some placer gold is as low as 65% pure, while gold from the Bering Sea is consistently over 90% pure.
As a paydirt company, to ship a $100 bag of gold paydirt, we’re looking at $3-5 for shipping, $3 for packaging and vinyl decals and a glass vial, and $3 for credit card processing fees for every order. A 90% ROI would mean selling our gold at spot price.
That said, it’s important that buyers know they’re getting a decent amount of gold, because there are some bad actors out there…
If you don’t know if the paydirt seller has a bad reputation/is scamming customers
To be fair to customers and their use of the term “ROI,” it’s been important for folks to communicate which paydirt sellers are giving a fair amount of gold and which ones aren’t.
Paydirt can be an expensive item and bad actors will trick customers, essentially sell them a bag of worthless dirt for a lot of money.
Look at this list from MillerProspecting.com of the worst ROIs from paydirt sellers. Five of these companies sent customers bags of dirt with ZERO gold in it at all!
Some bad actors will keep starting different paydirt websites over-and-over when the scam gets recognized on the previous one!
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I believe i got involved with the people that own or sale goldnbadger— they i believe Goldnpaydirt also. .. here is what they do. they constantly bombard your emails, text even,that they are having a sale- and buy one get one. So i go to their website-it looks like everything is already marked down. I desided to try it, get some so i am looking at their page to pick out some..you see the bags / kinds you want. They are one size, but they ship you little sample sizes. Then over half of those has no gold- at all. I should of known something was wrong, when my package should of been a box, but it was an envelop package.total con ! They already have on their website that they dont refund-exchange sale or reduced merchandise-yet everything they sale is. They say, like in nature – your not always gonna find gold. But they cover that by telling you that if you didn’t find any gold or are dissatisfied..here is a coupon for your next purchase..lol. I spent almost $300. And there was maybe $20 bucks worth-if? Like 13-14 bags. I wanted to leave a review but i wasn’t able to add one.. somehow though, they have 2 pages of reviews- all good like 5 star- that is a joke.
Hey Robert I’m sorry to hear that happened! Unfortunately there are some bad actors in the paydirt space. They’ll spin up new websites with fake reviews and run paid traffic that’s profitable because they’re making 100% profit margins by scamming everyone. Sounds like that’s what happened to you. If you want to feel more confident in our product you can find reviews of Bering Sea Paydirt on Youtube by 3rd party paydirt reviewers as well as on our website. Thanks for your comment!