It is surprising how many folks ask me which is the best color to use to see gold in a finishing Pan.
The Maverick Finishing Pan
Your gut reaction would be that whatever is the opposing contrast color to gold would work best. Though this seems logical, it appears that it doesn’t hold true in reality when it comes to the individual. To look at what is on the market today and what you see folks using, Green seems to be the color of choice. This choice seems to fly in the face of a contrast color to gold. Green is more akin to Red by the Color Wheel. Violet to Blue is akin to the color of gold by the Color Wheel. So why is Green more popular? I personally think, “It’s in the eye of the beholder.” What I mean is that the Eye itself is probably the reason why certain folks see gold better in Green yet others see gold better in Blue.
I am certainly not an expert in the science of the eye, but I do know that seeing colors to various individuals can vary to even seeing only in Black and White. Since I am an Inventor and Producer of gold pans, I was curious to find what color/s to produce my pans for the market. Since Green seemed to be the color of choice, this was the path I finally took. This was okay, but I started to notice Blue being used by others including some folks I know. I decided to try out the color Blue on myself and found it to work best for my eyesight. Taking this into consideration, I decided to produce a limited number of my Maverick Finishing Pan in Blue and take them to the Gold shows with me to test the public. What I have found so far from this experiment and also from a few of my Dealers is that Blue is almost even with Green by individual choice. Go figure, but this is the reality of what I discovered. Because of this, I now offer the Maverick Finishing Pan in Green and now, also Blue. After all, color – “It’s in the eye of the beholder.”
Edwin H. Land founder of The Polaroid Corporation
Post Script:
Years ago I worked on an experiment with Holographic Color Information. Without going through lengthy explanations, what I did was create all colors from only one color. Believe it or not, I found that one color carried all the information to produce any other color that it reflected from. Sorry, what you learned in school was not entirely correct. For those of you that are interested in this subject I would suggest starting with the articles listed below based on the work of Edwin H. Land who was known for his inventions and contributions in the fields of polarized light, photography and color vision. He was the founder of The Polaroid Corporation… see PDF of his science paper The Retinex Theory of Color Vision from Science America. Also Harvard’s website has a good article about Land by F.W. Campbell, F.R.S. called the Theory of color vision.
Early Polaroid Land Camera
Coming up next:
Sluice Boxes Part 3 Riffle-less Systems.
Cheers and Happy Holidays,
The Fossicker
December 3014
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Gold Pan Prospectors Blog 
I think you are exactly right…there’s no one right answer to the question of which color pan is best. It really is just in the eye of the beholder! For me, blue is terrible even useless, green is ok until the gold gets really small, then it’s black all the way!
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