Couple's afternoon at the beach yields almost 5 grams of gold

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/08/08/couples-afternoon-at-the-bea.html

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~$39/g

nae bother

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His repetitive, soothing tone was putting me to sleep. I need to play this at bedtime.

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I totally get it. I’ve only ever panned for gold - no fancy sluices or anything like that, but it’s worthwhile when you see some color appear in your pan. I don’t know if I’d have the physical energy to process that much material these days though.

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I too scrambled to look up the value, but must admit 5 hours work = $194.60 isn’t bad, per se, but it’s not that great either. Then again, y’know, gold baby!

That is not an “afternoon at the beach”.

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I have the world’s largest collection of seashells gold. I keep it on all the beaches of the world… perhaps you’ve seen it.
– Steven Wright

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5 hours or work plus a whole lot of equipment, transportation, etc… That $200 goes into the red real quick. I hope this is mostly a hobby.

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It’s more gold than I made in 5 hours today.

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When I was 12 or so, I spent a summer “off the grid” with my big sister and her (thankfully now ex-) husband, dredging for gold on a claim in the Sierra Nevada foothills. It was a real hand-to-mouth existence, and the work was both very hard and sometimes quite dangerous. I was only there for a (quite mild) summer, but they were at it for about five years. Truly it was the sort of thing to look back on and laugh, but at the time…

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earlier this year, I was dispersing my camping above hiway 50 in the Sierra and came across (what I assumed) was a bootleg mining op; a rusty generator, bunches of steel reinforced hose, human built rock walls, fire pits and trash and shotgun shells, all along a beautiful little creek. Fuck gold-mining.

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I used to jog along the South Platte River in Denver. Around 2011-2012, there was a fad for a bunch of ‘Old Guy Gold Panners’ always trying to strike it rich in the river - pumps, sluices, etc. They’d proudly show off their little test-tubes with a smudge of microscopic flakes, and I’d nod and smile indulgently.

…about once a year, I find a chunk of gold in a completely wrong and serendipitous context. A gold earring runover in a parking lot, a wedding band in a gutter, a cheap gold necklace broken at a walk signal. I’ve found more by just wandering around at random than those poor guys ever found in that knee-deep open sewer. Do my shoes count as an investment in equipment?

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Heh, I know exactly what you’re talking about! I used to go hike in an area with gold, and got a little portable sluice and pan. Always filled in my holes, and left no trace. Barely left with any gold also. It was a fun and relaxing way to spend a day here and there.

Then I looked at a bunch of scrap electronics in my garage and thought… Those old CPUs and fingerboards are plated in gold, and I’m pretty good at chemistry…

From panning, I have maybe 1/4oz of gold total.
From electronics recovery (materials obtained for free from local computer shop, then taken to recycling), well, let’s just say I sold a small cast bar a while back and financed a nice vacation for the wife and I.

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Combine your hobbies for added fun.

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Oh, that is ridiculous. I’ll be snickering all day.

so that channel sells that gear, then ?

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