(Yesterday, 09:55 AM)FCD Wrote: . . . Whenever people talk about finding gold anymore, it all boils down to how many tons of rock you have to mine for every ounce of gold. The days of finding veins of gold are long past. Now it comes down to that rock vs. gold ratio, and the lower the better. I'm no expert, but do have some colleagues who prospect for gold in their spare time, and they tell me about the realities of the (to them) 'hobby'. Doesn't really matter if they're panning for it, or dredging for it, or digging for it, the equation is always the same.
I have had that thought from the beginning of my gold prospecting adventure, that the big strikes are all played out, at least in the lower 48 states. I figure the best I can do while hobby-prospecting might be digging around mine tailing piles or in streams where the placer gold can still accumulate near the old mines. I might be able to find a placer deposit that was never played, but I doubt I would ever find the load (or played-out mine) even if I tried.
The results I'm getting now playing around my little creek are around 300-360 tiny flakes per cubic yard of sand at the two-foot level. If the glacial outwash deposited it evenly, going down 150 feet to the bedrock means as many as 18,000 flakes per three-foot by three-foot column, maybe more. If true, I will have walked over the top of one million gold flakes by walking between 56 and 66 paces on my property.
According to one prospecting website, 12,000 fine gold particles weigh 1 troy ounce, so that would make each pace equal to at least one troy once. Worth thinking about now at the current market value of $54,460.00 USD (a ridiculous amount that Bing's AI assistance gave me, let's try $3,339.00 for a troy ounce).
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A trail goes two ways and looks different in each direction - There is no such thing as a timid woodland creature - Whatever does not kill you leaves you a survivor - Jesus is NOT a bad word - MSB