Sunday Gold Musings

Good morning! Two things came up today I wanted to let you know about. First, is an interesting tid bit from the newspaper. It seems the police and a St. George, Utah bank are looking for a woman who brought 14 gold St. Gaudins coins into the bank to exchange for cash. They are estimated to be worth about $18,000 to $20,000 depending on year and condition. The woman received $280 for them as banks only deal in face value money. Needless to say, they are worth many times the cost of the groceries she had waiting for her in Wal-Mart, where they refused the coins in payment for the items.

The other is that Mt. Redoubt in Alaska erupted 2 more times on Saturday, sending ash 50,000 feet into the atmosphere again. I am wondering if volcanic eruptions are ever figured into the climate change figures that are supposed to be only for "man made" greenhouse gasses?

Off to visit with family today. We still have 7 inches of snow, so no metal detecting this weekend. :-(

Good Prospecting to You,
Shirley

HookedonGold Gazette 3/27/09

That's Colorado Winter Gold! 15 inches of it, too

· Gold Spot Closing Price for Friday: $923.10
· Spot price last Gazette: $952.60
________________

Calendar of Events

MARCH
8th Daylight Savings Time begins in Colorado, Spring Forward!
11th GPOC Regular Meeting 7:00p.m.
17th St. Patrick’s Day
20th Spring Equinox

APRIL
· 1st April Fools Day, Motorized Equipment Opening Day on Arkansas River
· 10th Good Friday
· 12th Easter
MAY
· 5th Cinco de Mayo
· 8, 9, & 10th Let’s Go Gold Panning Days at Point Bar Recreational Area
· 23rd -25th Memorial Day Weekend Observed
· 30th Memorial Day
_______________________________________
NEWS

NEW! Prospecting Community Network! Check it out.

Snow yesterday and today has kept me busy with the snow shovel and taking pictures. ;-) We did get out and do some metal detecting last Sunday and came home with about $2.00 worth of coins that I posted and blogged about on the new community site while I was on there doing administrative updates. You can visit to see what we were up to and to see the picture. I do hope you are following me on twitter. My screen name is Goldpanner2.

APRIL 1st! Yes, it’s April Fools day, but it is also the opening day for this seasons' motorized prospecting equipment use on the Arkansas River. That means on Wednesday you can take you highbanker or dredge out and play in the water. You WILL have to have your 2 year permit in place for that, and you can find the forms on the http://www.blm.gov/ site on their page about the Arkansas River bond, and scroll down past the picture of Woody to where you find the sentence in green about the form. Click on that and you will open a PDF file that you can save or print off to fill in and send off.

I have decided to take the panning tips form down and replace it with 5 pages including the 4 panning tips. Since the bucket classifier is something that needs some knowledge of what you are doing, I have put an e-mail link into the DIY Bucket Classifier to request the information, but it may pop under the page and you will need to drop the page down to fill it out and send it. Subject line is already filled in and all I need is a first name and the message will send me your e-mail address to send the info to. It has stopped the spammers dead in their tracks since I took it down yesterday. LOL!

So much gets reported on twitter, I’m not sure where I am this week. Alaska’s Mt. Redoubt has been erupting since Sunday, and yesterday sent ash 12 miles into the atmosphere. I’d like to see how that stacks up against the power plants that are supposed to be causing the “climate change” in the arctic. Oh, wait! I DO! Over one years’ of man’s pollutants cannot compare with one volcanic eruption of pollutants thrown into the UPPER atmosphere. I also saw a reminder about the volcano in South America that blew its’ top in the late 80’s. I remember how shortly after that one, scientists were worried about the ozone hole that then magically closed up in, what, ’92? But, man was supposedly be to blame for that one too.

We deal with wilderness, protected status, and roadless issues, but did you hear about the energy company that put up wind turbines to make power with, only to find out they could not cross an area of land in protected status to deliver the power to the grid? True story. DID see this one coming, though. Wind turbines and solar power panels have to be out in the middle of nowhere, but getting the power to the grid is a huge problem with rights of way over land.

OOPPS! Am I “off topic”? I warned you about winter and having to deal with not being out prospecting for gold. LOL! Eric, I AM jealous of your gold prospecting trek to Utah this last week during Spring Break. Hope you post pictures for all of us on the ning community site this next week. I did not have time to check my alerts for news with past week as the new ning site has had me pretty busy with set up. I’ll give you a blog or two this next week with what I find. In the mean time…..

Panning Kits Here
Monthly Prospecting Equipment Specials HERE
Basic Prospecting Equipment

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: http://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. That’s this Wed, folks
_______________________________________
http://www.hookedongold.com/
http://www.hookedongoldprospecting.ning.com/
http://www.hookedongold2.com/ Metal Detectors at Auction
hookedongold@gmail.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.

New Prospecting Social Network Announcment

http://www.hookedongoldprospecting.ning.com is being launched this week. Come on over and see what we are doing. Non members are welcome to view pages, but you will have to be a member to post. Membership is free, and we plan to have a lively community to get informaton to yu.

HookedonGold Gazette 3/20.09

Deafult icon on the new community site

· Gold Spot Closing Price for Friday: $952.60
· Spot price last Gazette: $929.40
________________

Calendar of Events

MARCH
8th Daylight Savings Time begins in Colorado, Spring Forward!
11th GPOC Regular Meeting 7:00p.m.
17th St. Patrick’s Day
20th Spring Equinox

APRIL
· 1st April Fools Day, Motorized Equipment Opening Day on Arkansas River
· 10th Good Friday
· 12th Easter
MAY
· 5th Cinco de Mayo
· 8, 9, & 10th Let’s Go Gold Panning Days at Point Bar Recreational Area
· 23rd -25th Memorial Day Weekend Observed
· 30th Memorial Day
_______________________________________
NEWS

Under the gun today! The new social site for prospectors can be found at http://www.hookedongoldprospecting.ning.com You can see the pages, but you will have to become a member of this social site to ask questions or participate in discussions. Sign up is easy with first name, email and maybe a question or two. You will have to be approved for sign up so that we can weed out spammers like WoW gold. You will then be able to use the same name and email address to access the over 800,000 other social sites on ning. AWESOME resource, and I will probably link other prospecting ning sites to me as I go along. Hope you like the experience, and that we can get some useful information out to you. Good questions I get by email will be shared with the community, too. Give me your thoughts about this project and what you would like to see. I would REALLY like to know what you think of the template. Does it fit OK or should I use one with less? Can you read the type alright? How do you like the font of the letters? This totally changeable, and if there is any problem with what I have chosen, I can change it. The purpose is for it to be to YOUR liking since YOU read it. I can publish with anything. If you visit another social site and would like to see one of their apps, let me know and I’ll take a look at it. I like a clean site with lots of info, but there are many apps that might be appropriate.

So, I had no other blog postings again this week. I’ve been working on getting the ning site up and that has pretty much tied up all my extra time. I DO hope this new venture will be good for you, however, and it has been interesting setting it up.

All are awaiting the opening of the Arkansas River to motorized prospecting in 12 days. The weather has been wonderful on Point Bar, but everything up above Buena Vista still has some snow. B.V. might be OK some days after the 1st of April, but it can still be pretty chilly.

Here are some links I am repeating that I twittered about this past week include: “The Case for Inflation” by Howard Ruff on the dollar, stock market, gold and silver. If you didn’t read it yesterday, you might like to now. Very interesting what he has to say.
Another one was on India and how they are affecting gold prices by using scrap gold to fill their gold jewelry demand without importing gold. Gold coins are heating up and the U.S. mint has suspended the minting of gold and silver coins again due to the price of the metals. I’m thinkin’ that means those Buffalos and St. Gaudins are going to be worth a lot more….make SURE you get them slabbed by PCGS or Numismatics. Cost is around $40.00 per coin, but it can boost their value by a couple hundred or more. There are several lesser grading houses around that charge you less, but the standards are PCGS and Numismatic. They have been around a long time and grade better than the others, in my opinion. I’ve been burned by some of the others, ad coin dealers use PCGS and Numismatic grades on all coins. So if your coin says MS70 from another house, if it isn’t so with these two giants, your coin will NOT be worth MS70 prices. You get what you pay for in coin grading.


I am off to finish the set up at Ning. See you in the forum.


PLEASE BE ADVISED THE FORMS PAGE IS STILL NOT WORKING!!!!! It is posted on the page prominently in two places that it is not working, but every day I have someone try to send it to me and all I get is the email with no information attached to it. Please send me an email to either info@hookedongold.com or hookeongold@gmail.com and ask for the specific information you are wanting. I can send it to you that way, but not with the form. If I get this social site working, I’ll take the form page down as I can post the information on the social site.


Panning Kits Here
Monthly Specials HERE
Basic Prospecting Equipment

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
hookedongold@gmail.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.

HookedonGold Gazette 3/13/09

I just like this one...It's IMPRESSIVE!
Didn't think I would get this out in time, but once I started, it flowed.....kinda like water over a fall! LOL!

· Gold Spot Closing Price for Friday: $929.40
· Spot price last Gazette: $938.40
________________

Calendar of Events

MARCH
8th Daylight Savings Time begins in Colorado, Spring Forward!
11th GPOC Regular Meeting 7:00p.m.
17th St. Patrick’s Day
20th Spring Equinox

APRIL
· 1st April Fools Day, Motorized Equipment Opening Day on Arkansas River
· 10th Good Friday
· 12th Easter
_______________________________________
NEWS

WOW! Today it has been a challenge to get off of twitter and facebook and get to the newsletter! Facebook has some new features and a new look, so I spent some time on it to get used to the new feel. And then there is twitter, with all the news flying around with the people I follow. If you aren’t on twitter, you are missing a great resource for information….but be warned; it can be addictive to read everything! LOL!

One of the new communication items I keep finding on the web can be found at ning.com. It is a website that allows you to set up a forum type social network for your niche. GPOC president, Eric Vesterby, suggested a website for me to look at, and I noticed it was set up with ning. I have seen several others in other niches set up with the same website, and so Eric and I thought it might be a good idea to set one up for Hooked on Gold. I’ll be working on that this next week. It has a very interesting array of options that I think you will like. Social networks are very hot for users right now, and I could get you information quicker AND answer questions quicker. You could also ask questions of others and get answers. There is also a chat room and various discussion boards, so I think this is going to be a good fit for us.

PLEASE BE ADVISED THE FORMS PAGE IS STILL NOT WORKING!!!!! It is posted on the page prominently in two places that it is not working, but every day I have someone try to send it to me and all I get is the email with no information attached to it. Please send me an email to either info@hookedongold.com or hookeongold@gmail.com and ask for the specific information you are wanting. I can send it to you that way, but not with the form. If I get this social site working, I’ll take the form page down as I can post the information on the social site.

FYI, I did buy a new emerald ring last weekend, but not to wear now. My friend Pedro Arevalo who owns and operates T.L.E. International was taking old inventory back to Colombia to rework, and one of the rings has a very sweet marquise cut emerald of fantastic quality with VS1 baguettes in it. I have really like the stones in the ring, but I have one that is styled similarly with a mandarine garnet. I asked how much he wanted for the stones and he gave me a very good price, so I bought the stones to rework into a wedding set later on.

Are you ready for motorized equipment prospecting season to begin on the Arkansas April 1st? Everyone I talk with is itching to begin. Point Bar has been busy already with all the warm weather we had a couple of weeks ago, and getting into the water early is on everyone’s mind. We can’t until after Easter, as that was what I gave up for Lent. Believe me, giving up early prospecting is a big sacrifice for me! We are making headway with retirement the end of April, too, and setting up things for the summer. So far, we will be forced to take a week off before then or lose the time and money for it, and we will need to readjust a loan we made that the rules changed on. No BIG shoes have dropped so far, although we continue to watch for one that will stop us for another year. So far, we do not foresee anything large enough for us to pull back, yet. It’s gonna be a GREAT summer!

I also heard from Eric that the claims that were placed below GPOC’s Prospector #3 last summer, North of Buena Vista, have been denied and the area is once again open to the public. The BLM was there last Fall to see the claimants break camp and leave. This is GREAT news for everyone!

I had one link this past week that might be interesting for you to check out. It’s entitled “Gold going down in favor of equities, and silver up?” http://www.safehaven.com/article-12794.htm I still see some who predict the gold ETF’s could figure prominently in the course of where gold heads. Inflation will also be a determining factor in the next few years, but the ETF’s hold a tremendous amount of vaulted gold and when those folks decide to start selling, it could put gold in a tailspin. Silver is in a similar position, but they don’t own the same percentage of known bullion that the gold ETF’s do. Probably won’t happen until we hyper inflate, though, so watch for them to start pulling out of their gold positions when they need dollars to pay the rent with. In the meantime, gold coins are beginning to rise nicely and are commanding about 20% to 30% or more over spot for AU 55 and better.

HR699 is still on a desk somewhere. GPOC has a information on what you can do to get a letter to your congressperson before it gets passed. Do not bother signing and sending on any type of petition that gets passed by e-mail. It is a waist of your time, as it just gets passed around. There is no way for anyone to retrieve all those signature and send it anywhere, much less expect that anyone would even look at or consider such a petition that was received by a representative, as all of the names could be trumped up. Come on people…..use your heads. Where does it say in these emails how it will EVER get delivered, to whom, and WHEN? If you want to say anything to your representatives, you have to do it YOURSELF! You can find more information on this at http://www.gpoc.com .

Lots more going on, but I’ll have to blog it later this week. Happy Birthday today to my youngest grandson who is turning 2 years old!!! Have a happy Friday the 13th, everyone. I’m outta here.

Panning Kits Here
Monthly prospecting equipment Specials HERE
Basic Prospecting Equipment

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
hookedongold@gmail.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.

HookedonGold Gazzette 3/07/09

OOOOH Emeralds in 18K Gold

· Gold Spot Closing Price for Friday: $938.40
· Spot price last Gazette: $939.60
________________

Calendar of Events
MARCH
8th Daylight Savings Time begins in Colorado, Spring Forward!
11th GPOC Regular Meeting 7:00p.m.
17th St. Patrick’s Day
20th Spring Equinox

APRIL
· 1st April Fools Day, Motorized Equipment Opening Day on Arkansas River
· 10th Good Friday
· 12th Easter
_______________________________________
NEWS

Short Newsletter today as I am in the booth selling Emeralds for the weekend. I have a couple of links for you. The first one is about the proposed changes to the mining law that will affect you. http://www.icmj.com/article.php?id=56&keywords=Rahall_Proposes_Bill_to_End_All_Mining_in_the_U.S. HR 699 Mining law proposal
As proposed now, anything over panning or hand sluicing would no longer be considered “casual”, and will be subjected to additional regulations, bonding, and plans of operation whether on your own claim, someone else’s, or open areas. Remember, this is not passed yet, but proposed and still in committee. If you have an opinion about it, you should contact your representatives in the congress and let them know what you would like tem to do.

Here is a link to a page that gives a good explanation of the difference between owning physical gold and one of the ETF’s or gold owned on paper. http://www.sprott.com/pdf/marketsataglance/MAAG.pdf

PLEASE DO NOT TRY TO GET INFORMATION OFF OF THE PANNING TIPS AND BUCKET CLASSIFIER PAGE. The page is still not working and I will have to find the path I have not included in it before it will. I did not build the last one, so I have to do some trial and error to get it to work. Requests are coming in daily, but the e-mail address you send me and the information you want is not coming in with the email. I have a broken link somewhere I have to find. Thanks for your patience.

Well, that’s it for me. I have a reader who sent me some information on Jefferson County open space rules on prospecting, so I will be getting that up on the proper page this next week. Much easier to do than the form. LOL! Have a great weekend and a great week!

Panning Kits Here
Monthly Specials HERE
Basic Prospecting Equipment

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: http://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.
_______________________________________
http://www.hookedongold.com/
http://www.hookedongold2.com/ Metal Detectors at Auction
hookedongold@gmail.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.

info@hookedongold.com Down Way Too Long..PLEASE Try Again!

I know I have had way too much going on in my life when my e-mail goes down, and I don't even realise it.....for months. I got to thinking this past week that it seemed like a long time since I had gotten any e-mail. Now, mail IS slow during the winter, but...not THIS slow.

I decided early this morning to check out my cPanel and see what was going on, since I woke up very early and could not sleep. (High pressure systems do that to me. Make me bright eyed and bushy tailed! :=) All I could find was the possibility that the mailbox was overloaded, but there were not THAT many e-mails in the delivered box. I emptied it and reconfigured the mail and it is working again.

I cannot tell you how sorry I am if you have asked for information and not gotten it! Try again. In the mean time, I will be setting up a different account in gmail to handle this, as this is the second time in less than a year I have had trouble with email with the server. I use gmail for other things, and it works ALL THE TIME! For the next week or so, I will continue with the present account, but I will be changing the email address real soon. The first place you will find it is on the information submission page. After that, each website page that has it on it will have to be changed and republished, along with the email and tags at the bottom of all pages on the blog. Bear with me, and please ask for information again. I'm not ignoring you...I'm not getting the requests. Answering your questions and sending you information is one of the things I enjoy the most, so please send in those "cards and letters".

This winter has been awfully stressful. We have had a close family member pass away under stressful conditions, a son who went to the Philippines and was sent back home and fired over a blog posting, the joy and loss of a grandchild as our daughter-in-law miscarried her second child. Along with all of that we had the holidays to get through, too. It was a strange end to '08 for us and '09 has not been very much better so far. Happily, prospecting season is almost here and things for the family in general are looking up!

Good Prospecting to You
Shirley