I like my bushpro tree planting shoval for my main unit for soil sampling. I am a horrible example as I would always have a pan in my old work van and own over 30 shovels cause i had to buy one cause i always forgot them haha.

I am a huge estwing fan for most tools.

Small tree plating shovels are great for soil samplng but sometimes if the horizon youre looking for is deep ( lots of till ) they are a little short of a handle ..other then that as long as the handle is strong i have no real preference

After 6 years of learning how to do both placer and hard rock prospecting, here are 3 of my favourite gold prospecting and hand mining tools:

Scotts Multi Purpose Garden Hand Tool (a Mini Mattock) - 16 bucks at Rona

This is the lightest and strongest mini pickaxe / mattock I have used. It's much lighter than every other one I have tried, and much easier than trying to use a geo hammer for basic scraping of crevices, veins, etc.

Forged Eye Hoe

Imagine a hoe that is way thicker than a garden hoe, and stronger. I use this to scrape material down the face of trenches into buckets, rip material, rake material, etc. Not commonly available at regular garden and hardware stores, I had to order this one online (or make your own if you can weld).

Small Hand Held Weeder Tool

Great for scraping out crevices, veins, and cemented gravels.

There are many others but I'll leave it there for now. Cheers!