HookedonGold Gazette 2/27/09

Won't Be Picking up Anything Like That with the New Federal Regulations on What you Can Pick Up on Federal Lands....

· Gold Spot Closing Price for Friday: $939.60…that’s below the close two weeks ago.
· Spot price last Gazette: $993.20
________________

Calendar of Events
FEBRUARY
· 2nd Groundhog Day
· 5th – 13th TUCSON Show (boy do we wish we could be there!)
· 11th GPOC Regular Meeting 7:00 p.m.
· 12th Lincoln’s B.D.
· 14th VALENTINES DAY Remember your honey today!
· 16th PRESIDENTS Day
· 22nd Washington’s B.D.
· 25th Ash Wednesday
· 27th – March 1st Jeffco Jewelry, Gem and Mineral Show at the Jeffco Fairgrounds

MARCH
8th Daylight Savings Time begins
11th GPOC Regular Meeting 7:00p.m.
17th St. Patrick’s Day
20th Spring Equinox
_______________________________________
NEWS

Well, the Feds have finally passed a law forbidding anyone from picking up rocks on Federal Land. (Probably includes yellow ones, too.) Don’t know, but that probably puts a crimp on any type of exploration on Federal Land. http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=89733 gives the story.

Gold was diving in heavy intraday trading to finish this week at $939.60. It had held in the $945 range for most of the day before dropping in the last minutes of trading.

The Jeffco Jewelry, Gem and Mineral show started today and will run through Sunday at the Jefferson County Fairgrounds. This show isn’t very big, but the vendors that attend are awesome, with a great selection of items including grab bags, and demos by the gemological society here in the Denver area. Best of all, it’s FREE and open to the public. We attend every year, and have a lot of fun along with finding some nice items that we can’t live without. LOL! The Jewelry and Gem show will be next weekend at the Merchandise Mart in the back, and I will get to visit the Emeralds again for three days in T.L.E International’s booth.

Are you getting anxious to get out and do some gold prospecting? We are, but we are also stuck in “work” mode until the end of April when Larry will retire unless the bottom falls out of our lives before then. Ya NEVER know what may be lurking around the corner. February has been mild by comparison to past years, and it makes Spring fever come a bit quickly.

In case you missed it last week, I had a twitter link to a story on how many people in India are selling their gold right now instead of buying it. The price is so high that many are selling their heirlooms to get cash. Now, it isn’t the only reason the price of gold has fallen in the past few days, but it does contribute as India buys more gold jewelry than any other country for its’ marriage season. This means that there will be more gold jewelry available in the market place that does not have to be bought outside that market, thus reducing the amount of gold jewelry they will need to buy on the open market. However, this also means that there will be more gold available to other markets if the gold bull market heats up later this year. So far, a stronger dollar is helping to keep the price of gold down, but that can only last for just so long before demand for the yellow metal exceeds supply.

Another report on gold output states that China and the U.S. have outperformed South Africa in gold output. South Africa says this is due to the ongoing problems it has been having with electrical supplies among others. In other news, gold coins world wide are becoming very hard to find. As demand is rising, coin makers will not keep up and the value will rise, some many times the spot price of gold. If gold is closing this week above its 20 day moving average, it's a good sign it will continue to rise for the near future. This all means that the placer gold you found last summer is worth more today than it was then. This year’s take will be worth more as well.

The continuing saga of roadless areas being closed produced this report I saw this week on Colorado’s roadless plan. This effects prospectors directly as the closing of dirt roads continues and limits access to the public of public lands. These areas are not “roadless”, they have many dirt roads that are not marked in them and are still considered “roadless”. You can read more about this in this article HERE. What I’d like clarified is exactly what “roadless” means. My opinion is that it is a way to get around the wilderness laws and to create “wilderness” without an act of Congress. Protected status is also used this way. This means that the public is severely limited in its’ access to public lands. We seem to be continually squeezed into smaller and smaller spots that we can access, and then everyone complains that there is so much use that those places are closed off, too. With roadless areas becoming more prevalent and the Feds now saying you can’t even pick up rocks on Federal Land, what is a body supposed to do? Stay in their house and play Wii? Gotta be a better solution. Oh, yeah. Join a gym and watch the out of doors go by on the screen of your treadmill. HA!

I followed a link off of twitter today that took me to a site with USGS maps of all the earthquakes recorded for this past week. Kinda interesting, and when I woke up to how long I had been studying it, I clicked out of it before saving the link so you could see it. Since I’m late with this newsletter, I’ll go look for it a little later and blog it to you in a day or so. (In case you didn’t see the twitter, some tree trimmers blew up a transformer in my neighborhood and the electricity was off for 2 hours of prime writing time.)

Last, I can’t go away without lamenting the closure of the Rocky Mountain News. I’ve loved and read the Rocky for over 50 years. It’s passing after almost 150 years in publication is a sad day for everyone. The Denver Post has generously decided to take over all the subscribers to the Rocky, but the slant to the whole paper is way too liberal for me. We won’t be taking a print paper in our household for the first time EVER. I spent part of the day adding news agencies to my twitter followings to get updates on what is going on in the world. Sad day for print, but an even sadder day for balanced reporting.

You will be happy to note as the days turn into spring, that my winter ranging into other territory besides gold prospecting will soon be over. I do try to bring it back to prospecting for gold, and hopefully, am successful in that attempt. So much is going on right now that does affect you and prospecting, that it is hard not to tell you about what I find out that can determine the success of your ambitions for finding gold. Some of it pertains to Colorado, some to all of the U.S. Soon, we will be out finding gold and reporting on what we are doing. My access to internet will be much better this next summer, and I am looking forward to that. Follow me on twitter or my tweets on the left hand side of this page. I retweet anything that I read that pertains to you and Twitter makes it easy to keep you updated with small bites of information. Hope you are enjoying them!

Ok, I’m outta here. All of you have a great weekend and find some gold!

Panning Kits Here
Monthly Specials HERE
Basic Prospecting Equipment

DIY Bucket Classifier
http://www.hookedongold.com/gold_panning_tips.html

Until next week…….

Good Prospecting to You,
Shirley (MQS)
Google has begun running third party ads and is requiring adsense sites to include information about this change on their websites. You can read about this on our Privacy Policy page.

World Open Panning website has this year’s world wide panning competitions listed and they add more all the time. A great site to visit: www.worldopenpanning.homestead.com . If the links do not work, copy and paste them into your browser.

If you find a broken link, please let us know
THE ARKANSAS RIVER is now closed TO MOTORIZED EQUIPMENT until April 1st.
_______________________________________
www.hookedongold.com
www.hookedongold2.com Metal Detectors at Auction
info@hookedongold.com contact us
PLEASE BE ADVISED: Ads that you might find on this blog or on a website using ads, may use cookies or other tracking means to track your movements on the web. Please read our Privacy Policy to see how this affects you and what you might want to do to prevent cookies being used to track you.

Gold Prospecting and Lent

Summer Fun!

Happy Fat Tuesday to you! Ash Wednesday is tomorow and the beginning of Lent, so I have a question for you. What are you giving up for lent?

Now, since it is supposed to be something you like and it should be a sacrifice for you, I decided to think what I would be willing to give up of my gold prospecting until Easter. Easter is April 12th this year, so that means motorized dredging on the Arkansas would be allowed by then, and we do love to get out early! So, I have decided to give up dredging for gold for lent and forgo any serious fun in the water on the Arkansas early this year.

How about you? Leave a comment at the end of this post to let us all know, or you can contact me with your answer at info@hookedongold.com.

Spot price of gold is sliding right now and is under $972. Profit taking is probably the reason, but so is manipulation. I think those that can manipulate the price are doing so to a certain extent to try and stabilize stocks. If gold was to run away now, it could fuel a flight into the metal that could get more to exit stocks as the run began. Not to worry; it will rise later this year, but who knows how far? Link for you about the finanial situation and how banks did what they did. http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-03/wp_quant?currentPage=4

Have a GREAT one out there. It's Sunny in Denver and we are supposed to reach 70 degrees. Snow pack for Colorado so far is averaged at 112%, which means lots of water for this summer if we keep to these levels. March forecast is for snow in the mountains and drier for the Front Range.

HookedonGold Gazette 2/20/09

OOHH! Is THAT my part of the stimulus package?

· Gold Spot Closing Price for Friday: $993.20
· Spot price last Gazette: $941.60
________________

Calendar of Events
FEBRUARY
· 2nd Groundhog Day
· 5th – 13th TUCSON Show (boy do we wish we could be there!)
· 11th GPOC Regular Meeting 7:00 p.m.
· 12th Lincoln’s B.D.
· 14th VALENTINES DAY Remember your honey today!
· 16th PRESIDENTS Day
· 22nd Washington’s B.D.
· 25th Ash Wednesday
· 27th – March 1st Jeffco Jewelry, Gem and Mineral Show at the Jeffco Fairgrounds

MARCH
8th Daylight Savings Time begins
11th GPOC Regular Meeting 7:00p.m.
17th St. Patrick’s Day
20th Spring Equinox
_______________________________________
NEWS

The requests for information on this year’s gold prospecting season in Colorado have started to come in with people wanting to know if they can access places soon. Sorry, people, but U.S. Forest gates are not opened until Memorial Day. However, you are allowed to hike into these areas if you want to. Be advised, though, that the mountains have between 120% and 175% of average snowpack right now, and March and April are our snowiest months. April 1st will open the Arkansas River drainage to motorized equipment; just be advised that the Cache Creek road will not be open that early, and the amount of snow that could be in the areas above Salida.

Busy week on twitter. If you aren’t following me on twitter, you are missing information on a lot of different things! Gold is the important one for me, but I retweet some info on a variety of subjects. The facebook TOS information was viral on twitter, and I follow a couple of really good gold sites I found there.

I got cards today about the Annual Jeffco Jewelry, Gem and Mineral Show at the Jefferson County Fairgrounds February 27th through March 1st. We always find interesting things there, and some GOLD, too. Mentioning gold reminds me that the spot price has been mostly up this week. I hear it has been a very busy week on trading it, too. A lot of flight is going into gold right now; coins and jewelry at the top of the list. Gold bars aren’t really available to investors, so they buy up what is available, and, as I reported last week, there isn’t that much of it around, either. If this continues, gold prices will go up very quickly. Right now, we are watching the price to breach $1008, which will propel it to around the $1038 range. Silver took a huge jump this past week, and platinum continues to trade around $100 above gold.

I found an interesting article on gold and platinum concerning the conversion of hydrogen and oxygen into H2O2. You can read about it HERE. Interesting read on another reason why the modern world needs gold.

I came across a great blog on treasure hunting I think you will like. The Okietresurehunter has some interesting links and things to say about gold and some of the lost places it has been found and not rediscovered. http://okietreasurehunter.blogspot.com/2009/02/utah-red-gold.html I really enjoyed this blog.

The bailout program has been all over the web this past week, but I particularly didn’t like what GM is planning to do with their share of the money. I thought this was about saving and creating jobs, but apparently GM thinks they should take the money and run to Brazil where they are building a plant. All thos UAW jobs are literally “going south”. No wonder the UAW is strumping in the west so hard to convert our workers to unions. Anyway, you can read it for yourself, and BTW, this plant has been under construction for a while. http://www.laht.com/article.asp?CategoryId=12396&ArticleId=320909 Your bailout money at work. ;-)

That’s it for today; short and sweet. Hope the winter is treating you well!
Panning Kits Here
Monthly Specials HERE
Basic Prospecting Equipment

DIY Bucket Classifier
http://www.hookedongold.com/gold_panning_tips.html

Until next week…….

Good Prospecting to You,
Shirley (MQS)
Google has begun running third party ads and is requiring adsense sites to include information about this change on their websites. You can read about this on our Privacy Policy page.

World Open Panning website has this year’s world wide panning competitions listed and they add more all the time. A great site to visit: www.worldopenpanning.homestead.com . If the links do not work, copy and paste them into your browser.

If you find a broken link, please let us know
THE ARKANSAS RIVER is now closed TO MOTORIZED EQUIPMENT until April 1st.
_______________________________________
www.hookedongold.com
www.hookedongold2.com Metal Detectors at Auction
info@hookedongold.com contact us
PLEASE BE ADVISED: Ads that you might find on this blog or on a website using ads, may use cookies or other tracking means to track your movements on the web. Please read our Privacy Policy to see how this affects you and what you might want to do to prevent cookies being used to track you.

Future Gold Prices and Twittering

Blogging is changing. There are so many new plug ins you can use to update a blog, it isn't really necessary to actually log into a blog to post to it.

Today, I am logging in to leave a link to a page about what future gold prices might be doing that I twittered about earlier. Twitter has allowed me to bring you more timely news about gold as I find it. In 140 charachers, I can twitter away all day to you about what I am reading and my comments post directly to this blog and facebook. When you come to this page, make sure you look at the left hand column to see what I have been twittering about. Most of it is about gold, but you will find some other items I have to post, too. I LOVE twitter! It has given me an opportunity to bring news to you as I find it. I KNOW I'll be using it a lot more this summer, too.

Here's an interesting link to an article about the price of gold. If you aren't watching the spot price of gold today, it is sitting at $981.50 now. Twitter gives me an opportunity to tell you about that as it happens, too. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/eff64394-fdd7-11dd-932e-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1 Have a great day, everyone!

HookedonGold Gazette 2/13/09

Here's another gorgeous piece of gold from the Denver Gem and Mineral Show this past September

· Gold Spot Closing Price for Friday: $941.60
· Spot price last Gazette: $911.40
________________

Calendar of Events
FEBRUARY
· 2nd Groundhog Day
· 5th – 13th TUCSON Show (boy do we wish we could be there!)
· 11th GPOC Regular Meeting 7:00 p.m.
· 12th Lincoln’s B.D.
· 14th VALENTINES DAY Remember your honey today!
· 16th PRESIDENTS Day
· 22nd Washington’s B.D.
· 25th Ash Wednesday

MARCH
8th Daylight Savings Time begins
11th GPOC Regular Meeting 7:00p.m.
17th St. Patrick’s Day
20th Spring Equinox
_______________________________________
NEWS

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY to all of you. Make it a golden one.

The spot price of gold sure has had its’ ups and downs this week, but it is steadily trending up each week, and looks like it will continue to do so for the near future. A pull back would be expected as the stimulus package gets approval next week, but all the charts are looking up for at least a quarter. If the markets like what they see next week, I would expect gold to pull back, but if they don’t like what Congress does, I look for gold to continue its’ upward march for a while. This summer could be interesting all the way around.

For those of you who are coin collectors, the new Lincoln Silver Dollar is for sale on the US Mint site now. They have also begun to release this year’s special penny’s, too. You can find more info on the coins at U.S. Mint.gov. (Boy, I hope I got that embedded link right!) If that link doesn’t work just try www.usmint.gov and find the page. The silver dollars are priced at $37.95 each.

Ok, I told you I had a thought or two on mining and green energy, so you have fair warning about what I’m about to write. I was reading about the wind turbine plants that are being built here in Colorado, and though I am pro business and love to see high paying jobs come to my state, it made me think about the process of green energy.

The end result of the turbines is supposedly green, but what about the process of building them? They are not made out of plastic, and if they were that would be a whole ‘nother question, but base metals, and that means those metals have to be mined somewhere. Many times, gold mining includes the mining of base metals, and often it is what sustains a mine if a vein pinches out.

Now, if we close all those gold mines because some think gold is not essential, where do we go for the base metals to build the wind turbines and solar panels that take up so much land surface, and need batteries to store up their energy? If we need so many of these turbines and solar panels in this country, why are we making other countries mine what we need in more toxic conditions? (Of course, if we didn’t, those countries populations would not have as many jobs, either) If we “need” so much here, how green is it to mine our metals somewhere else and import them? I’ve said it before, and I will say it again; if you use metals that are not mined in this country where you can control the environmental conditions within reason, you have no right to go around saying that mining in other countries should be stopped because it is toxic to the environment.

Walk, don’t ride a bike, drive a car, or take a plane anywhere you are going. Petroleum based products are mined just as are metals. It takes some type of energy to “make” those turbines before they can produce energy themselves, and the return is not as great as what it took to produce the product. It is the law of diminishing returns. The same law says that you cannot make enough energy from the sun as what it takes to produce the item that is collecting it. The same is true with ethanol. You cannot get the same amount of fuel out of corn that must be grown and converted.

This is why fossil fuels are so efficient for us right now. Even though we cannot get the same amount of energy out of it that was put into it, it was created billions of years ago from energy spent even more billions of years ago. With green energy, we are trying to use what we have available right now to meet the needs we have RIGHT NOW. The law of diminishing returns says that isn’t possible under the current circumstances. There is no known perpetual motion machine. The answer? I have no idea, but I am certain we are throwing an awful lot of money at a solution that cannot work in the long run. My hope is that through this trial and error, we actually find a solution that can work.

Right now, I do not see us getting away from fossil fuels for quite some time, and green efforts will be expensive and not be able to return what anyone expects. The numbers simply do not add up. My basis for this opinion? My husband has worked in the energy industry for over 30 years. While I am not in that capacity, we do discuss the topic with many people in the field, and so I have a vested interest in finding another solution that is viable and cost effective to the customer.

Remember, YOU are the one who will pay for all of this. Should your government ever decide to nationalize the energy section, you will pay for it, too, and at a MUCH higher price. Fossil fuels and global warming has been pretty much debunked in scientific circles so the new catch phrase has been changed to “Climate Change”. If a singe volcanic eruption can put out more Co2 than all the industrial pollutants put out in every country in the world for one year, how can we blame fossil fuel consumption for climate change or global warming. Climate change has been plotted for centuries. Droughts come and droughts go. But, then I hear they blame colder winters on it, too.

So, now you’re asking what this has to do with prospecting for gold? All of these attitudes keep others who think their “green” concerns are more important than yours, and they have been and are right now effecting how, where and when you can look for gold. Some of these things are just silly and are made to keep you from pursuing prospecting gold or gemstones or anything else, for that matter, but road closures and “studies” keep you out of areas that have been historically open to the public. Public land isn’t so public any more, and more and more special interest groups are gaining “private” access to public lands. When the government closes a public lands area, they aren’t preserving it for you. They are keeping you out. Now, everyone knows I’m blonde, so I’m probably wrong about all of this. However…….

I read an interesting item today about the amount of gold that has been produced, but rarely do I see anything about the current annual production of gold. I saw it today and thought I’d pass it along to you FYI.
Total produced to date approximately 140,000 tons
Worth 4.5 trillion dollars at $1,000 per ounce
75% is in gold coins or jewelry
2,600 new tons produced every year, or we are adding about 2% per year
Worth 83 billion dollars
Doesn’t look like much gold is out there, to me. Our own spending in this country way outstrips how much we find. Now you know why we use paper. LOL!

I suppose that’s enough for today. I’ll have to blog later about the other news, as I’ve probably taken up more of your time than you wanted me to, now. LOL! I twitter daily, so follow me there. It also posts here in the left hand column and on facebook. Prospecting equipment links below and some DIY sites, too.

Panning Kits Here
Monthly Specials HERE
Basic Prospecting Equipment

Here are a few links to DIY projects:
Ratled's Highbanker
http://49ermike.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=181&topic_id=58181&mesg_id=58181&page=
Highbanker
http://www.49ermike.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=181&topic_id=65680&mesg_id=65680&page=
Slick Sluice Info.
http://golddredger.com/cgi-bin/dcforum/dcboard.cgi?az=read_count&om=106&forum=DCForumID9&viewmode=threaded
DIY Bucket Classifier
http://www.hookedongold.com/gold_panning_tips.html

Until next week…….

Good Prospecting to You,
Shirley (MQS)
Google has begun running third party ads and is requiring adsense sites to include information about this change on their websites. You can read about this on our Privacy Policy page.

World Open Panning website has this year’s world wide panning competitions listed and they add more all the time. A great site to visit: www.worldopenpanning.homestead.com . If the links do not work, copy and paste them into your browser.

If you find a broken link, please let us know
THE ARKANSAS RIVER is now closed TO MOTORIZED EQUIPMENT until April 1st.
_______________________________________
www.hookedongold.com
www.hookedongold2.com Metal Detectors at Auction
info@hookedongold.com contact us
PLEASE BE ADVISED: Ads that you might find on this blog or on a website using ads, may use cookies or other tracking means to track your movements on the web. Please read our Privacy Policy to see how this affects you and what you might want to do to prevent cookies being used to track you.

Meetings, Metals, and Musings

The Gold Prospectors of Colorado meeting last night in Colorado Springs was well attended and our speaker, Larry Weilnau, spoke on metal detecting for gold in Colorado. Finding gold in Colorado with a metal detector can be tricky, since many of our deposits were in tellurides, silvanites, calaverite, wires, crystals, and small leaf, and there are metal detectors that do a better job of finding this type of gold than others.

A lively discussion followed the talk, with many people coming forward to see the specimens he brought and to see how the detectors would read them. If you are wondering where he detects for gold, he said it was somewhere west of Colorado Springs, east of Grand Junction, south of Blackhawk, and north of Durango. That about covers it. LOL!

You have to have your head in the sand if you aren't hearing anything about the new stimulus package. What would you do if you found out there was a chance that they would be coming back before the end of the year for another 3 trillion dollars? Hang on to your hat, because there is a possibility that might happen. Just remember, the more money Washington prints now, the higher inflation will be when the economy turns around. Funny thing is, the economy always turns around, even after the G.D. Slowly, but it did turn. AND even our President said this past week that this is no depression type scenario.

Anyone who reads my blog for any time, knows that I blog about prospecting for gold in the summer when we are out and about, and I blog about mining concerns in the winter when I have time to access more information. I have a couple of things to delve into tomorrow in the newsletter that came across my mind this morning that have to do with mining and green energy.

Gold slammed through the $950 ceiling this morning to $951 before turning back down, but it is on the rise again here at mid morning. If it continues in this fashion today we could be looking at the spot price reaching the $1,000 mark soon. With the stock market hating the stimulus package's lack of regulation, unemployment figures up, and more businesses closing, metals are due to rise this spring as predicted. One good bit of news today, though. The trade deficit is down again.

Have you been out prospecting yet this year? We have not, but with weekends warming up, we will be venturing out into the near mountains with friends, soon, to look for gold. At the very least, it gets us out of the house and into the sunshine. That's it for me. As always...

Good Prospecting to You,
Shirley Weilnau

HookedonGold Gazette 02/06/09

This is just that big son of a gun from the Denver Gem and Mineral show last September, and I just like it.

· Gold Spot Closing Price for Friday: $911.40
· Spot price last Gazette: $927.10
________________

Calendar of Events
FEBRUARY
· 2nd Groundhog Day
· 5th – 13th TUCSON Show (boy do we wish we could be there!)
· 11th GPOC Regular Meeting 7:00 p.m.
· 12th Lincoln’s B.D.
· 14th VALENTINES DAY Remember your honey today!
· 16th PRESIDENTS Day
· 22nd Washington’s B.D.
· 25th Ash Wednesday

MARCH
8th Daylight Savings Time begins
11th GPOC Regular Meeting 7:00p.m.
17th St. Patrick’s Day
20th Spring Equinox
_______________________________________
NEWS

I’ve had a few minutes this past week to actually read some of the back issues of some of magazines we get. One that caught my eye was a report about the Washington State small scale mining regulations that have been fought about for years, now. I won’t go back into the background on this issue, as I have been reporting on it for a long time, but dredgers in Washington State have been hopeful that new regulations would be simplified and that any regulations imposed would be backed by sound science. Their hopes were in vain as a new 92 page regulation booklet will have more restrictions than before, including a ban on dredging in June and July because there “might” be fish eggs still in the gravels after spawning season ends. (Oh, and by the way, they are required to carry this regulation booklet on their person at all times while they are prospecting.)

This goes hand in hand with what I am reading and hearing about governmental opinions on the impacts of small miners and whether their activities have to be tolerated by officials. Your activities are quite likely to come under ever more restrictions, and keeping up with what is going on about regulations is going to be in your own best interest. Those of us who live in states that bear gold will need the cooperation of those who visit, or we could very well lose our rights to prospect for gold, metals or gemstones in the near future.

Another story I have written about here is the ongoing saga of the Odyssey Marine, a treasure seeking vessel that has, again, found another sunken ship with gold treasure, this time off the coast of England. As you remember, the last one they found was off the coast of Spain and they are still in court over who has rights to the gold found onboard.

Now, it seems, they have found HMS Victory, sunk in 1744 with all 1150 hands aboard and over 4 tons of Portuguese gold in its hold. Naturally, Britain claims the ship, Portugal the gold, and the Odyssey is saying “finders keepers”. Should be another fun time in court for them. I wonder how long it will be before any of this gets settled.

Yesterday, Goldman Sachs raised its’ forecast on the price of gold for the next three months. It is expecting the metal to reach $1,000 due to larger than expected demand, $300 higher than its’ previous prediction of $700. Just goes to show you, even the best are sometimes fooled about what is going on. LOL!

Well, my time is up and so I will leave you with an interesting story I found on my tweetdeck this morning. It concerns absolutely everything in your life because it is written about the stimulus package before congress right now. The author made some comments I thought you might like to read about. You can find it at http://www.informationarbitrage.com/2009/02/a-new-bailout-plan-hardly.html if you like, and if not I’ll just bid you Good Prospecting.

Panning Kits Here
Monthly Specials HERE
Basic Prospecting Equipment

Here are a few links to DIY projects:
Home Made Suction Nozzle
http://www.geocities.com/indianagold/home_made_dredge.htm

Battery Powered Mini Highbanker
http://www.geocities.com/indianagold/mini/battery_powered_mini.htm

DIY Equipment Sluice, Hand & Mini Hand Dredge, Classiffer
http://semprfish.com/

DIY Bucket Classifier
http://www.hookedongold.com/gold_panning_tips.html

Until next week…….

Good Prospecting to You,
Shirley (MQS)
Google has begun running third party ads and is requiring adsense sites to include information about this change on their websites. You can read about this on our Privacy Policy page.

World Open Panning website has this year’s world wide panning competitions listed and they add more all the time. A great site to visit: www.worldopenpanning.homestead.com . If the links do not work, copy and paste them into your browser.

If you find a broken link, please let us know
THE ARKANSAS RIVER is now closed TO MOTORIZED EQUIPMENT until April 1st.
_______________________________________
www.hookedongold.com
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Hooked on Gold page Updates

Dashing off a quick note today. The regular newsletter will be published tomorrow, but I wanted to let you know that the pages under "Articles of Interest" were all reworked, organized, and republished this week with one new page added to the group, called Why Learn To Use a Gold Pan?. More updates as the weeks go by, but I only seem to be able to tackle 4 or 5 pages at a time. LOL!

NEWS: Shipwreck may produce 4 tons of gold coins and bars. Read about it here.

Anyone along the Front Range of Colorado who isn't out in this gorgeous weather is missing a day to be remembered. Gold fever has us wishing we were in Arizona prospecting for gold, but on days like today, it's easier to let the day pass pleasantly and think of prospecting we did in the past and will do in the future. New adventures will await us this summer during our regular prospecting season, I am sure! In the mean time, how about a good book to read on prospecting until the Arkansas River opens up to motorized equipment April 1st.

Are you looking for prospecting equipment for this next season. You can find prospecting equipment clearance items at reasonable prices, or metal detectors for sale at the links.

See ya tomorrow,
Shirley

Gold and Poverty in Third World Nations

Well, I'm taking some time out of site updates and rewriting copy to get a blog posting off before I forget! Twitter has me doing things very fast and short, so maybe I'll just be to the point!

National Geographic published a piece about gold and gold prospecting in their January issue. In case you didn't see it, it's the one with the lady's face on the front that is covered in gold leaf. Needless to say, the author attempted to paint a dismal picture of gold and its' extraction, and to be sure, there isn't any among use who would encourage Africa's continued use of mercury by their small miners, but the story about Newmont was certainly not all told.

However, there was one point that was made concerning the mining of gold by the small miners in all third world countries. Without gold prospecting and recovery, many of these people would have no other way to support themselves, and even if a child bruises their hands while digging, they are willing to do it so that they can go to school and better themsleves. Without the world needing and wanting gold, these people would either starve or have to go to some overpoplulated urban area and abandon their ways of life outside the cities. Certainly a new gold strike will bring in too many people and make conditions worse for everyone, but one man's vice is another man's bread. If India did not cling to their way of life and demand the amount of gold jewelry that they do, many others would have no life at all. How would you support the thousands who support themselves now if gold was not important in the world. Would it be better that we have even more people doing without?

I read another good analogy last week by a journalist who had some time on their hands while reporting on the conditions in a third world country and what the sweat shops mean to them. By standards in the U.S., the conditions were apalling, however in this country and many like it, the chance to have one of these so called sweat shop jobs, even by the very young, is a way out of a type of poverty we in the U.S can only imagine. (And quite frankly, I think we cannot imagine it)Think of having to dig through piles of garbage to find enough food, only to be killed by a trash truck when you got too close to its' wheels. I think I would rather work 18 hours a day than do that, and most of them would, too. The gold miners of the third world certainly would rather eke out their own exsistance in the mines and placers of the world, and keep some semblance of freedom for themselves. Placing our standards on a country that has no fast food restaurants and expecting those countries to pay our minimum wages is ridiculous. Those jobs afford whole generations of a family to live much better than they would without it. I don't think there are many people in the U.S. that support three or more generations with one job. If we did not need and want more than we should, others would have no way to make a living at all.