There are several varieties of placer deposits: stream, or alluvial, placers; eluvial placers; beach placers; and eolian placers. Stream placers, by far the most important, have yielded the most placer gold, cassiterite, platinum, and gemstones. Primitive mining probably began with such deposits, and their ease of mining and sometime great richness have made them the cause of some of the world's greatest gold and diamond “rushes.” Stream placers depend on swiftly flowing water for their concentration. Because the ability to transport solid material varies approximately as the square of the velocity, the flow rate plays an important part; thus, where the velocity decreases, heavy minerals are deposited much more quickly than the light ones. Examples of stream placers include the rich gold deposits of Alaska and the Klondike, the platinum placers of the Urals, the tin (cassiterite) deposits of Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia, and the diamond placers of Congo (Kinshasa) and Angola.

Eluvial placers form on hillslopes from weathered deposits. They are not acted on by streams but by rainfall and wind, which carry away the light materials; thus they may be considered intermediate in the formation of stream placers. Examples include the earlier worked gold deposits of Australia and the cassiterite placers of Malaysia.

Beach placers form on seashores where wave action and shore currents shift materials, the lighter more rapidly than the heavier, thus concentrating them. Among the examples of beach placers are the gold deposits of Nome, Alaska; the zircon sands of Brazil and Australia; the black sands (magnetite) of Oregon and California; and the diamond-bearing marine gravels of Namaqualand, South Africa.

Eolian placers may form in arid areas where wind, not water, acts as the concentrating agent, removing fine particles of the lighter dross. The gold deposits of some parts of the Australian desert are examples.