Let's talk gold, /biz/. No, not shitty ETFs or buying bullion

>>1903353
I don't know shit about mining but my grandfather likes to watch Gold Rush and if that show is anything to go by, you need a million dollars worth of equipment before you can even start looking.

>>1903360
Probably because back in your granddad's day, you could just get yerself a pick and head off into the mountains.

Yessir, could get a whole messa gold just scratchin' at the dirt.

There was an anon who had purchased a couple acre plot with a riverbed that was downstream from a big gold operation way back when. He'd get residue that would amount to a few hundred to a thousand dollars a year in little grains of gold. It was his weekend getaway, he never really expected to make rich off of it.
>>1903360
more like a million dollars in gold ore to place in your plot to fool people on a fake tv show

>>1903360
>>1903360
This guy speaks half truth. I'm 2IC in a small gold mine operation.

If you had the rights to mine on a piece of land u know is rich with gold all you'd literally need is a trommel, an excavator and some transportation vehicle to move whatever you are washing to the trommel.

Bonus points if it's a third world country you'll get $1 a day slave labour type workers.

Also depends how big of a scale you wanna do it to.

>>1903378
>I'm 2IC in a small gold mine operation.

How'd you get involved? Any cool stories?

>>1903370
kek
thanks

>>1903391
>>1903391
My mum wheels and deals all sorts of stuff. She was buying gold off a guy that was practically a 1 man band, everyone else he had(11 in total I was the 12th) couldn't handle the living conditions. But iv passed the test a while ago and now make decent money and % of gold that's produced.

Stories.. Yeah.. I dunno where to start but any questions I may answer.

>>1903353
theres a whole array of other sweet minerals like lithium and opaque and nickel

>>1903373
>a million dollars in gold ore
That's barely enough to break even.

>>1903413
If'n you can swing a pick at it and sell it for more'n dirt, I reckon they're fine to discuss.

>>1903412
What sort of shifts do you work? Sounds like the mine's pretty remote, so do you do, like, 9 months in 3 months out, shutting down for the winter?

How are the living conditions? 11 guys not hacking it makes it sound worse than just "trailer innawoods".

What kind of things do you dig up alongside the gold? Silver? Fossils?

>>1903438
>What kind of things do you dig up alongside the gold? Silver? Fossils?
Just guessing, but I assume it's nothing but dirt.
The way you mine for gold is by shoveling literal tons of dirt into a machine that filters out the tiny flecks of gold.

>>1903438
>>1903438
So remote our closest shop is a 30minute boat ride and only sells like rice and bottled water and soap. I work sun-fri 6.30am start and I'm normally Finnished at 5-7pm depending on work load.

Living conditions are ok I guess. Rats run over your body at night. No shops so it's either canned food or fruit and vegetables like living off the land. Nearest hospital is an hour boat ride and then another 10hour boat ride. There's a small clinic 45minutes boat away but that's just mainly for common third world diseases.

Iv received death threats and had people try intimidate me over land issues.

There's silver, aluminium, iron uumm I have a chart here somewhere of what else is in the dirt we wash but those are the mains.

I prospected a closet I never sorted after my father passed and found a little box with 43.7 grams of .585, .720 gold, and some silver. Also a very strange 3 gram metal bar with an identification number that isn't silver or gold because it's (weakly) attracted to magnets and has a strange color.

>>1903353
You gotta steak a claim and getting into it is expensive and risking. Panning rarely beats minimum wage.

I'm a miner (rock quarry) what do u wanna know?

>>1903360
We used to watch and laugh. That show is fairly accurate. Obviously fake tv drama is there but shit like people fighting and weeklong break down sessions are common when u have shit equipment and no means. Up that far having to fly parts in has got to suck dick.

Cobling spare metal and bailing wire on leaky shit only works to a point before u fight repairs more than work.

I have worked with shit. And i have worked with new. I would bet money the new is cheaper because of wayyyy less downtime. I know for a fact it is easier and less stressful on your employees. Wich makes the job a better job and takes less pay to keep quality help.

I dont mind throwing a starter or alternator on or doing oil changes here and there. But if i wanted to be a fucking diesle mechanic i would quit right now and go get greasy. I dont care for the extra pay, it isnt worth it. I hate working on leaky junk shit.

>>1903373
I saw that dude. Its sad he cant use equipment. He may be able to get away with a small sluice and a few budies to shovel. Hed make a lot more but then again there goes your cheap overhead.

>>1903413
Yap. To bad dealing with uncle same and those RETARD KEKS over at MSHA makes it near impossible for the little man to break in. Short of running a night time bootleg quarry for money to go legit im lost. There is nothing here but rock and oil. And i cant mine 2,200 feet down....

>>1903448
Yeah. And we were always tokd bury the fossils amd stfu or we get shut down. Breaking rocks anyway. Found a few timy specks of gold im kansas bit im sure its fools gold. I guess we had big coal mines but the fools gokd in it pollutes water somewhow so we quit ;(

>>1903591
So africa with that dirt that starts with a b digging aluminum? Ive watches them process it. Cant remember enough to google it right.

how much would an investment in africa cost. would the equipment cost the same there (million dollars or something)

>>1904081
I think it's a cheap or as expensive as you want it to be. Depends on the country, I am in Canada and starting off is cheap but anything with mechanized gear and you need permits which they hardly give out anymore unless you are very remote cause muh environment so relegated to hobby status really. I do it more to get outside than get rich. Modern equipment, detectors, forestry roads for good access, reworking old sites are pluses but easy gold gone, enviro regs and state bureaucracy are the minuses. If you are going Alaska way your season is short and bug infested but I am thinking pristine locations are where you could get rich if you go big. Fuck third world ops, not worth your life.

One thing I've always wondered about re: prospecting.

As you know you can buy a $50 metal detector, sweep it over the terrain and get a rough idea of how much metal is on the ground, whether in solid or dispersed form.

And if you look at that TV show about meteors, they improvise huge detectors to make their work easier.

3) gold prospecting equipment can run into the millions.

Q: So why aren't prospectors creating fuckhuge detectors or some technology based on the idea to find good claims (ancient riverbeds full of gold etc).

>>1905465
I'm not sure you realize just how rare gold is. You can't just run a metal detector over a riverbed and find $10 million.

>>1905471
The idea is not about finding a nugget 5 feet under. But about ruling out or including claim sites based on powerful detectors making a statistical model on the amount of metal* in the ground. *Normal geological knowledge already used in the industry would raise the probability of the metal being gold.

>>1905465
>>1905471
>>1905479
To clarify: what I'm saying is that since you can take any cheap metal detector without discriminator bullshit and estimate roughly how much metal is in the ground, you could make (or use, if it exists) a much more powerful detector that does the same pretty deep into the ground and calculate a probability for each potential claim site. You could at the very least rule out digging a place without metals whatsoever.

Maybe they already do this, but it's not the impression I have after some light reading and watching of the gold prospecting shows.

>>1904639
What kind of rocks do you mine?

What tools do you use in your quarry?

>>1905492
Airplane surveys looking for electromagnetic anomalies uncovered this mine:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidd_Mine#History

which led to a landmark SEC case on insider trading.

File: Untitled.png (1MB, 1002x794px) Image search: [Google]

1MB, 1002x794px

Just wanted to say that it is possible to find gold with absolute minimal tools. This was found in a dry arroyo, with only a shovel, pickaxe, crowbar, bucket of water, and a gold pan. Certainly not profitable since this was probably from a dozen or so days looking, but I was finding gold every single time I went looking. Also the exercise is extremely good, lots of fun, peaceful, and exciting to see that flash in the pan.

>>1905492
I have done some metal detecting as well. The bottom line is that you will be searching in areas that have been heavily prospected in the past, there will be insane amounts of metal debris in the soil, and the placer deposits tend to be in such predictable locations that I think this would be a waste of time. In my personal experience, you would be better off digging test holes, using a bucket of water, and panning the soil to get an estimate of gold content. I think this would only work if you were way off the beaten path, maybe in Alaska wilderness for instance. Also I found areas with extremely high content of black sand (metallic) but no gold at all, and most detectors don't pick up signal from sand and dust anyway.

Were do you see gold in case of a market crash? Over 2k?

>>1906961
Depends on the crash. If the bond market is in danger again with credit rating downgrades then over 2k is possible.