You are very correct.
One Christmas, after spending all summer in a tent on a sandbar placer mining on the 40 mile, I made gold filled bezels for the ladies presents.
One of the ladies asked me how much gold was worth? I replied, that I knew how much it cost, but I was d@mned if I knew what it was worth.
Gold fever is a real, and often a terrible, thing.
Placerin is easier than hard rock stuff.
I still can't run that drill...
It's not the 8 foot drill bit that gets me, it's the 140 pounds of dead weight the drill itself has.
Panamanian rivers are a lot easier. There's guys here that go up stream and pan for a month and clear say, $100 --easy! A buddy of mine used to buy their gold at the going rate per oz. He had it checked out one time and found out that what he thought was pure gold was in fact contaminated with impurities --mostly platinum and iridium.