what is the story behind gold

[cycloneman]

I have been watching these gold tv shows. Bearing sea gold and the other one.

Here is what I want to know. How do they know where to find gold and why is it gold is found is such small amounts. Lots of digging to get what amounts to gold dust. Why is gold found like this in small amounts?

[geds]

Down here the gold was actually bound in quartzite veins. The gold itself was in such small amounts it could not be seen with the naked eye. The quartzite was mined and crushed. Then the gold was chemically extracted.

It is an element and is so valuable it makes it cost effective to move tons of material to get ounces of gold. There are very few gold seams.

[Rhuga]

Being a weekend miner for a lot of years and having studied the subject to death I find that yours is a common question.

Parable: Gold is associated with quartz, but quartz is not associated with gold. Gold is everywhere in placer form. But maybe not in an amount that is profitable to mine. Gold mining is not easy. When you spend 8 hours on the work end of a pick and shovel in hard pan. This usually separates the pilgrim from the true miner. Because, to find the gold requires alot of sampling and this requires digging. A lot of gold is found in desert regions that makes it tougher due to the lack of water and heat.

If you do make a small find you will have more digging and pick work. Unless, you have lots of money and can excavate your deposit and pay folks to do it for you. 1 to 3 oz of gold to the ton of ore is a pretty good find that is if your "diggins" are not on someone else's claim. Most gold is found in an area where gold was found once before and "there is always 1 more place that someone has not looked."

Gold mining is in 3 forms:
1. The finding of a ore bearing deposit and being able to file a claim on same.
2. Then getting the ore out in various ways and down to a manageable amount of ore.
2. Processing your ore and getting the gold out. One screw up in either of these steps will result in nada gold. I used to process my gold in my garage and I screwed up plenty until I found out how to "tickle" the ore and retrieve the gold. I have one of the richest dirt drive ways to my garage from shabby processing for a lot of reasons from when I first started. There is the "load" or gold vein and the "Placer" is the gold that has weathered from the load and moved over many thousands or millions of years by many ways, but usually by water.

"Nugget Shooting" with a metal detector is the easiest. But here again, bad use of the detector or having a detector that is not discriminating enough you will end up with Nada gold again. Also, No experiences concerning other types of ores or jewels could be bad news, cause you could be walking over a big strike and not know it.

There is a lot of places I would like to mine, but i got too old to do it anymore. One thing is for certain. Once you seriously go prospecting you will never look at a mountain or creek the same way again. Some of my best finds were in "red" or iron bearing clay. This stuff was like trying to dig in cement. You can't mine wet clay until it has dried. Thus, the hard pan. Gold ore is very hard to separate from wet clay. I found a pocket (Glory Hole) of about 7'x6'x4' and in it I found 54 nuggets the size of your little finger nail to your thumb. As gold travels from the load it usually hits something that stops it from going further and due to its weight going deeper as it settles. Creeks or rivers, their banks, and dry creek beds are always worth a good look. But, gold is where you find it. An area can look good and have all the signs but not have a particle of gold. I have made good finds in areas that didn't look promising at all.

This is just a very general answer to your question. So, should you want to try it the best of luck to you. Your memories will be priceless. Check out "The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre" with Humphrey Bogart. I always get the itch after watching it. "The Mother Load" with Charlton Heston is another goodie. At the current price of gold at about $1600.00 a troy ounce is not too shabby compared to when the US went off the gold standard in the early 1970's and gold was at about $19.00 and ounce. So before the 1970's the find had to be pretty rich to mine it. Today, there are many good areas that were walked over by the old guys to look into at the current price and still make a good profit.

[mjp28]

Another reason gold is HOT, look at the charts below, I remember $35/oz. in my lifetime! Most of the easy to get surface gold has been mined out. A thick vein of gold is the story of the Gold Rush Days....but if you find one now you'd be super rich!

The price of gold remained remarkably stable for long periods of time. For example, Sir Isaac Newton, as master of the U.K. Mint, set the gold price at L3.17s. 10d. per troy ounce in 1717, and it remained effectively the same for two hundred years until 1914. The only exception was during the Napoleonic wars from 1797 to 1821.

The official U.S. Government gold price has changed only four times from 1792 to the present. Starting at $19.75 per troy ounce, raised to $20.67 in 1834, and $35 in 1934. In 1972, the price was raised to $38 and then to $42.22 in 1973. A two-tiered pricing system was created in 1968, and the market price for gold has been free to fluctuate since then as the table below shows.

http://www.nma.org/pdf/gold/his_gold_prices.pdf
Year/Average Price

1998 294.24
1999 278.98
2000 279.11
2001 271.04
2002 309.73
2003 363.38
2004 409.72
2005 444.74
2006 603.46
2007 695.39
2008 871.96
2009 972.35
2010 1,224.53
2011 1,571.52

[mjp28]

This also is why almost nobody can buy gold jewelry anymore.

[Zhurh]

There's gold in all the streams around where I live, not many people run dredges. Easier ways to make money. All kinds of expenses & logistics & planning & hauling everything 50 miles back in at minus 50 when we have winter trails. Govt doesn't want Americans hunting gold, make it tougher every year. Successful types have a knack at finding it and disappear in May when they head back in and don't come out until October at freeze up. A lifestyle most people with families don't enjoy, fighting the bear & bugs too.

Maybe one guy in 20 that invests all kinds of money into equipment, atvs, backhoes, boats to get up small rivers actually makes money at it, most go broke. We have one local guy who does good, makes couple hundred thou I hear at it, but a real loner at heart. This guy actually spent the summer up near Nome with 50-70 foot boat, he has cabin in our town, but didn't come back last fall. I haven't heard how he did. One friend mined with him 20 years back for a couple weeks. They got 40 some ounces out a small section of stream that apparently hadn't ever been excavated down to hard pan. My friend said this guy can smell where nobody's already dredged a 100 years back.

Locals buy claims and lease them to lower 48ers who come to Alaska to get rich finding gold, the owners are only people who clean up.

I live 110 miles downriver from Dawson, I've seen so many people start at it and quit alot broker that I have no interest in getting the disease. Good hobby for a couple weeks every summer though if you can keep it at that????? No joke. Who knows, maybe someday it will get so bad that everybody around here will start huntin gold again.

[cycloneman]

i was kinda courious as to why it is in certain areas. But as i understand it now gold is everywhere and the best way to find it is at the bottom of where water has eroded the earth for a very long time.

OK

kinda neat that the creator put gold on the earth in such a way so we could use it for a thing of value.

[Silencer]

Originally Posted by cycloneman

i was kinda courious as to why it is in certain areas. But as i understand it now gold is everywhere and the best way to find it is at the bottom of where water has eroded the earth for a very long time.

OK

kinda neat that the creator put gold on the earth in such a way so we could use it for a thing of value.

A gold asteroid hit the Earth and it spread all over the world. This asteroid is one of the eight that hit the Earth and ended all life.

[raven818]

It's a very shaky investment. If you've had gold for a while, good for you. If you're looking to buy, don't, unless your liquid enough to put it away. The better our economy gets, the lower gold drops.

NEW YORK/LONDON, Feb 6 (Reuters) -

Gold prices fell on
Monday, after the dollar rose on a continued lack of progress in
the Greek bailout and a better U.S. economic outlook added to
bullion's profit-taking seen during the previous session's sharp drop.

Gold tracked losses in U.S. equities as the failure of Greek
coalition parties to approve a new bailout package rekindled
worries about a chaotic default in the euro zone country,
and that lifted the dollar index. [ ID:nB5E8CE021]

Gold dropped 2 percent on Friday after encouraging U.S.
payrolls data smashed hopes of extra stimulus from the Federal
Reserve, which had been priced into bullion's 11 percent rally
in January.

"The dollar's up because of worries over Greece and optimism
surrounding the U.S. economy after the jobs report. In the long
run, there are still a lot of downside risks to the dollar,"
said Jason Schenker, president of Prestige Economics LLC.
"I don't think it (jobs) changes the uptrend for gold," he
said.

Spot gold was down 0.3 percent at $1,720.86 an
ounce by 2:36 p.m. EST (1936 GMT), off a low of $1,711.29
hit earlier in the session.
U.S. gold futures for April delivery settled
down $15.40 an ounce at $1,724.90. Trading volume was about 25
percent below its 30-day average but largely in line with its
recent pace.

Mark Arbeter, chief technical strategist at S&P Capital
IQ, said that the Fed's near-zero interest-rate outlook and a
breakdown of the dollar index "put an end to the correction in
gold."

On charts, he said that gold could face a major hurdle
at around $1,800 an ounce or the top of its large base that
started in September 2011.

[cycloneman]

Guys i am not interested in prospecting for gold. Nor an i going to invest in gold. I was honestly courious to know more about it. Thanks for the info.

[millwright]

First/foremost research how gold deposits are formed ! Then look at how it becomes accessible. In some ways gold is a common element existing everywhere. (Sea water contains a fair amount of it, for instance.) But finding gold in accessible forms and economically -viable quantities is a horse of a different color !

I'm confident there's a lot of gold remaining to be discovered/mined in N.A. thanks to our geology. But don't be mislead by popular reality shows on gold mining ! Mostly they're seeking/exploiting placer deposits resulting from geological events millions of years past ! IOW, they're mostly like a beagle on the trail of a very wiley rabbit ! Every placer miner eventually learns to "work up" the watershed he's searching to find the source of the gold he's finding. In a rational world the further "up" you go the richer/larger the placer gold you find........Alas that's not always the case ! And in desert areas the search becomes even more difficult !

But, hey, if you've got the bucks its always possible to mine old "gob piles" profitably, too !

IOW, these "Reality TV "shows are shot/cut for suspense/results not neccessarily congruent with the realy world. "Jest sayin' " >MW

[geds]

Originally Posted by millwright

First/foremost research how gold deposits are formed ! Then look at how it becomes accessible. In some ways gold is a common element existing everywhere. (Sea water contains a fair amount of it, for instance.) But finding gold in accessible forms and economically -viable quantities is a horse of a different color !

I'm confident there's a lot of gold remaining to be discovered/mined in N.A. thanks to our geology. But don't be mislead by popular reality shows on gold mining ! Mostly they're seeking/exploiting placer deposits resulting from geological events millions of years past ! IOW, they're mostly like a beagle on the trail of a very wiley rabbit ! Every placer miner eventually learns to "work up" the watershed he's searching to find the source of the gold he's finding. In a rational world the further "up" you go the richer/larger the placer gold you find........Alas that's not always the case ! And in desert areas the search becomes even more difficult !

But, hey, if you've got the bucks its always possible to mine old "gob piles" profitably, too !

IOW, these "Reality TV "shows are shot/cut for suspense/results not neccessarily congruent with the realy world. "Jest sayin' " >MW

Wait....are you implying that Reality TV is not really reality? - Oh, say it ain't so Joe!

[mjp28]

Originally Posted by Silencer

A gold asteroid hit the Earth and it spread all over the world. This asteroid is one of the eight that hit the Earth and ended all life.

Just curious where you got that data, any links or whatever?

As far as gold and gold stocks I've played around with the stocks before (I'm out now). And the gold for companies to mine is getting harder and harder to find and more expensive to operate.

Only the high prices are keeping it interesting to play with.

[Charles Christensen]

It might be cheaper to go SCUBA diving looking for sunken Spanish galleons. Better weather too.

[Grizz]

Love that movie "Treasure of sierra madre" got to dig that one up and watch again tonight!

[deadin]

The wife and I did about 5 or 6 years of gold prospecting after we retired.
Dredging and hi-banking in N. CA, dry washing and metal detecting in AZ, panning and sluicing in any number of places in the SE. My advice on prospecting goes as follows: If you want gold, buy it. If you want to make money, sell prospecting equipment. If you just want to get out, work hard, spend lots on gear and meet some "interesting" people, go prospecting.

(an by the way, If you call somebody a prospector, you don't have to call them a liar.)

[Silencer]

Originally Posted by mjp28

Just curious where you got that data, any links or whatever?

I watched a gold prospecting show and they had a Q&A session. One of the questions was 'where did all this gold come from' and that was the answer given.

[Zhurh]

Deadin, Well spoken for sure.

[millwright]

Originally Posted by deadin

The wife and I did about 5 or 6 years of gold prospecting after we retired.
Dredging and hi-banking in N. CA, dry washing and metal detecting in AZ, panning and sluicing in any number of places in the SE. My advice on prospecting goes as follows: If you want gold, buy it. If you want to make money, sell prospecting equipment. If you just want to get out, work hard, spend lots on gear and meet some "interesting" people, go prospecting.

(an by the way, If you call somebody a prospector, you don't have to call them a liar.)

Pretty much parallels my experiences with the "rock rabbits" I've know and loved over the years ! >MW

[mjp28]

Originally Posted by Charles Christensen

It might be cheaper to go SCUBA diving looking for sunken Spanish galleons. Better weather too.

Now that might be interesting, the big outfits spend millions even sell shares and have the big rigs like you see on TV. Spend weeks, months, years looking and occasionally finding a fortune.

As far as the profit.....who knows it every bar and million dollar gold chain gets reported.

I always dreamed going off the Keys, doing a little SCUBA, finding a few bars....then buy a few Bars and retire there.

[cpttango30]

Meteorite hunting sounds more fun and sounds like you might have more luck at it.

[Zhurh]

The govt has been really cracking down last couple years on selling/reporting gold; also on claims & various permitting hoops you have to jump through. They are making it impossible for the small guy in response to higher prices & more interest in prospecting. People around here, only remember this much Govt pressure designed to stop the prospecting back during WWII. On one stream 40 miles back in from my house, there were over 200 miners working claims at the beginning of WWII. Govt quickly shut them down and never allowed them to come back after the war. Govt doesn't want people hunting gold, no way no how; at least here in Alaska.

One could always have a can of Gold hidden away though. Then all the friends, neighbors, and relatives could ransack your cabin looking for the stash when ya pass on. No joke, it has happened here many times. Deceased never knew he had so many friends or people that he had loaned tools & things out to, ha ha.

[mjp28]

Zhurh,

Location: Upper Yukon, Alaska, yeah you're right up there in the old gold hunter's territory both in fact and folk lore.

I also enjoy the various shows about Alaska like Flying Wild Alaska, Alaska: The Last Frontier, Deadliest Catch, Ice Road Truckers (mainly year 1, I unloaded 18 wheelers for over a year while I worked in the mill, some crazy dudes).

I'm sure some is right on, some is made for TV but it is different than most stuff on TV.

[Zhurh]

MJP, Ya know, 100 yards from my back door there's a creek with gold in her. It was worked 100 years back when our town had it's 2 year rush; over 10,000 miners in Eagle back then (it was the capital), now not 150 White People call Eagle home. I put a trail back in along this creek 5 miles back to where it climbs the mountain, I'm sure theres still gold back there; but it would have to get pretty tough before I'd start in at it. I know a bunch of Indians that live up Dawson going up the Dome; old claims right in their back yards, ha ha.

I like the Flying show, I even worked for ERA in Anch 15 years back before completing my teaching degree; Era was a real good place to work.

Last Frontier is kinda weak, but what ya get when a bunch of greenies decide to live off the land. We have greenies right here in Eagle, bunch of Germans that became citizens. Some are OK, others goofy as sin. One of the Germans was as right wing as can be, ha ha. Good guy; hated living in Cologne. Said you couldn't open your mouth without being taxed, ha ha. But those people down Homer, it's the tropics down there. Watch the show one time, you quickly understand they ain't wilderness types. I'd sure hate to do a hard landing in the middle of nowheres with them; I'd have to eat them I guess, ha. Believe me there's hunters in Pa & Oh that are better equipped mentally to survive Alaska more than those guys in Homer, actually quite funny.

State of Alaska started giving tax breaks to people making movies up here, some got a few million per movie, no joke. Why all the Alaska reality shows. State had to turn down a few porno directors though, nutty. People watch them, I even watch some of them too, but lose interest pretty quick.

Once I saw survivor man set a fish net. Salmon were jumping all over the place, bumping the net and old survivor guy couldn't catch a fish. Ended up stealing one off an Eagle so survivor didn't go hungry. He couldn't figure why he didn't catch fish? Then he pulled net in, I about fell out, the mesh size was like for minnows. The salmon have to get their gill plates in nest mesh, holes need to be like 5-6-7 inches, not 1/4 inch. Ole survivor didn't even have it together, ha ha. I bet the viewership thought he was something else cause he took a fish off the old bird. Sorry to go on about made for TV humor.