Yes to the seed shortages. Everyone is suddenly a gardener, it seems. ;)
My Dad actually did some gold panning in Wisconsin back in the day. He was also one to hunt gems and fancy rocks in Arkansas. Never did find anything, though.
He brought back a lovely chunk of ore with an Opal vein through it, from Australia. I recently had it polished and it is SO gorgeous!
This guy did the work. He is Mom’s and my go-to guy for Opals, by far:
The rock was appraised at $300, and HALF of that is what it cost for me to get it polished and appraised!
I guess I’m not that savvy of an ‘investor’ when it comes to pretty rocks, LOL!
Maddening! There you are sitting on big piles of undifferentiated glacial till loaded with little tiny amounts of gold flour which is unfortunately probably not worth the time to recover! :)
(But you could buy one of these and run your gravel driveway through it to see what you have (jus fer fun!) :O
https://highplainsprospectors.com/collections/sluices-accessories-new
(not my site, I don’t sell this stuff...I do think about it sometimes!)