Posted: 11/8/2011 10:03:43 AM EDT
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After watching the first season of Gold Rush and the first two episodes of the new season, I was wondering if anyone up there does this for a living or hobby. I read online that you can walk the beaches outside of Nome with a metal detector and have some luck finding gold that way too.
Discuss. |
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Quoted:
After watching the first season of Gold Rush and the first two episodes of the new season, I was wondering if anyone up there does this for a living or hobby. I read online that you can walk the beaches outside of Nome with a metal detector and have some luck finding gold that way too. Discuss. I bet you have a hard time covering your expenses walking the beach in Nome. |
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Quoted:
Quoted:
After watching the first season of Gold Rush and the first two episodes of the new season, I was wondering if anyone up there does this for a living or hobby. I read online that you can walk the beaches outside of Nome with a metal detector and have some luck finding gold that way too. Discuss. I bet you have a hard time covering your expenses walking the beach in Nome. I have no idea, Ive never been to Alaska before. |
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Quoted:
I grew up helping out on the family craim up near central. What do you want to know? Btw, never found anything more then placer and garnets. You know just general info. Can someone make a decent living out of recreational mining/panning for gold? If nothing else, make enough back to pay for the equipment that was purchased. |
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Quoted:
Quoted:
I grew up helping out on the family craim up near central. What do you want to know? Btw, never found anything more then placer and garnets. You know just general info. Can someone make a decent living out of recreational mining/panning for gold? If nothing else, make enough back to pay for the equipment that was purchased. thats like asking if someone can make a decent living playing the lottery (recreational mining that is) |
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Have you hear the one about the miner winning the lottery?
It helped him to keep mining a couple more years. But then, every now and then you see a big diesel 4WD with a 3" dredge in the back and wonder.... Or some guys whisper about their coffee can of gold and how full it is. Real claim miners can be the most tight lipped folks out there when the unintiated ask about how they are doing. Really, they would put the CIA to shame. One of my old bosses ran that deepwater dredge from Indonesia at Nome. He beleived the water chemistry conditions at Nome tended to precipitate gold out at the beaches. There was a very substantial nugget found there a few years ago over a beach that was picked over alot in the past. |
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The big thing would be to find the right spot. For someone who isnt already rich, it is either a lot of research, or if you are rich, geological samples.
Most of the big companies have already got the great sites. Now there are a few spots that (given the current price of gold) it would be possible to make a living at, provided you already had decent gear. If you dont have a sluce, pans, pump, etc on hand, the production cost way outweighs the output. On the crappy claim, we were getting a few oz of placer in an afternoon. Then again, we were running a big 2 man sluce that was 6'x2' that had to be picked clean regularly by hand in freezing water. That said, beautiful spot to sit and watch the caribou while taking a break 
Edit: Then again, there was the huge outfit upstream of us that had a grizzly running 24/7 feeding their production sluce. They were pulling out enough to have a smelter on hand to do ingots. Its amazing what 1/2 mile will do. |