Hooked on Gold Gazette 2/27/2010

Point Bar State Recreational Area

• Gold Spot Closing Price for Friday: $1118.70

• Spot price last Gazette : $1118.90
________________
Gold ‘N’ Store
Calendar of Events
FEBRUARY
• Tucson Show in Tucson, Arizona
• 2nd Groundhog Day
• 4th Heritage Lecture at the Western Mining Museum SOLD OUT
• 7th Super Bowl Sunday
• 12th Lincoln’s Birthday
• 10th GPOC General Meeting 7:00 p.m. Colo. Sprgs.
• Denver Museum with GPOC
• 14th Valentine’s Day
• 15th Presidents Day
• 22nd Washington’s Birthday
• 26th – 28th Gem and Mineral Guild Spring Show – Jefferson County Fairgrounds

MARCH
• 1st Motorized equipment season begins on the Arkansas River
• 14th Daylight Savings time begins
• 17th St. Patrick’s Day remember to wear your green
• 20th Spring Equinox
• 28th Palm Sunday
• 30th Passover
_______________________________________
NEWS
It was tough to find any news on gold or gold prospecting this past week. The Olympics dominated everything, as it should, so everything that had a link to gold was about gold medals.

Gold made a bit of a comeback in the markets late this week so those of us who will be prospecting for gold soon are happy the price is only down 20 cents over last week. Of course, it does help to make the backbreaking work a little easier to take when you know your gold will bring a nicer price when you sell it……if you sell it.

Some more information has come our way concerning the Point Bar claims that were claimed last year by someone from Texas. As you will recall, he listed one on E-Bay right away and sold it. He then found at least two others to buy into a third of the claims that were left, and then sold the last third on E-Bay this last week. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure I’d like to own a third of three mining claims with two other people I may or may not know. These types of partnership never turn out well, but hopefully those involved here will get along. We all know that won’t happen, though. Remember also that these claims are not patented and so the claim owners will only be allowed to camp there 2 weeks out of six. Oh, and it looks like our friend from Texas made about 8-10 thousand dollars on the claims that he will probably never visit again and has made a mess of Colorado claims that have been available to the public for a long time now. ‘Moneygrubber’ is all I can say.

OK enough of my soapbox as this whole deal makes me sick and I try not to be to critical of prospectors, but I’m pretty sure this person is no prospector and was only interested in the money that could be made by selling these claims, which they did in less than a year. However, I also have new news about the water. Read on.

It seems the person who originally did the platting of the new claims was not entirely accurate and there is substantially more water available to the open area. I am just now reading this new information and the map provided isn’t real clear, so I will need a little more time to decipher where the open area begins and ends. The claim owners may not be aware of this yet, and so their markers will most probably have to be moved.

Spring is almost upon us and the opening of the Arkansas River to motorized equipment is on MONDAY! While we continue to be plagued with colder than usual weather, warmer weather will prevail at some point. That means we will all be able to do more prospecting for gold soon. Even metal detecting for coins has been impossible with the ground staying stubbornly frozen. Summer plans continue to be made, though, and our new areas for exploration are numerous. Setting up camp for this summer will also be interesting. I’m not sure I will have any kind of internet connection, so we may be hit and miss with blogging as connections permit. We are truly looking forward to working with Chad Watkins this summer and helping him get TinPan Prospecting up and running strong. Visit us this summer for some interesting gold prospecting when you get tired of fighting the public areas.

Trying to find other news from around the web was pretty difficult this past week. I visited a lot of blogs that had two short paragraphs with little content or they didn’t really have anything to do with the subject of gold, but Florida golden sunsets, etc. I did find a couple of interesting videos to share. The first one is an interesting one about one way to find underground streams and using culverts as a sluice box at
http://www.wonderhowto.com/how-to-pan-gold-ancient-riverbeds-high-benches-302352 , and another from Australia testing out a new small highbanker. Looks like it works pretty good, too. http://downlinesecret.net/33949/highbanker-banjo-first-test-alluvial-gold-prospecting-in-australia

Off to Jefferson County Fairgrounds and some rock hunting under roof. Have a great week out there, and if you are on the Arkansas let us know how you are doing. Oh, and before I forget, Blogger’s new platform has changed again and is even more difficult to work around and so I will be moving this blog to a wordpress blog and using another of my hookedongold domains to run it with. I’ve been waffling about this for almost 2 years now and this final change has pushed me there. I’ll have a new template and format so the look will be a bit different, but more in my control, and we know everything is all about control, right? LOL! The old one is looking a bit messy and I can use some better aps in the wordpress version. It probably will take me a few weeks to get everything set up, so you won’t be surprised next week, but it will happen as soon as I can get everything uploaded to the server and arranged in the new template. I’ve used wordpress for a couple of other blogs I’ve run and like it much better. Hopefully you will, too. That’s it for me. How about you? :>D

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 MARCH 1st.
_______________________________________
http://www.hookedongold.com/
http://www.hookedongoldprospecting.ning.com/ A prospecting forum and social posting community
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.

Hooked on Gold Gazette 12/19/09

· Gold Spot Closing Price for Friday: $1115.10
· Spot price last Gazette : $1150.10
________________

Calendar of Events
DECEMBER
· 9th GPOC Christmas Party
· 21st Winter Solstice
· 24th Christmas Eve
· 25th Christmas Day
· 31st New Year’s Eve
JANUARY
· 1st New Year’s Day
· 13th GPOC Members Meeting 7:00 p.m.
_______________________________________
NEWS

Golden sunshine greets me today and it is very welcome! As those who follow know, windows7 conversion has been keeping us busy, along with all the regular holiday things. With Christmas only a week away, we are scrambling to get everything ready. We are also still awaiting the birth of our first granddaughter. Mom is very far along with the beginnings of labor and she may have her bundle of joy before Christmas. With this birth looming, our Christmas get together is up in the air as to when it will happen. No matter when that is, it will be joyous!

Gold prospecting for us has been limited to the stores, but we do have a metal detecting opportunity in the next few days. We are also predicted to have a white Christmas this year, although not much of the white stuff is supposed to be on the ground. The ski areas have gotten hammered again and they are happy with their good fortune.

Predictions for where gold will be in the next few months have been mostly down. The most relevant predictions are putting at around $950, although I have seen predictions in the mid 800’s. This will be a buying opportunity for those who buy gold as it will begin another uptrend soon.

If you haven’t checked out the store, you might want to. I have at least one 14K gold nugget pendant whose price is just above spot. More gold nuggets and gold jewelry was posted, too.

Speaking of the store, I was able to find the error that gave the error messages and have corrected it, so the checkout cart is working again for all products. Now, the trick will be to transfer the program to the new computer without having to rebuild the whole thing again. Already tried the transfer suggestions that came with the software, but that didn’t work. In the mean time, the old computer will do the work just fine. I have some interesting options for the gazette’s format that I didn’t have with XP that I’ll try out in the next week or so. Watch for some changes as I play with the new formatting tools.

No time this week to look for much information for you. Also, be aware that there will be no regular gazette next week since it will be Christmas! :>D I’ll get a blog up so you get next week’s gold close and let you know how the metal detecting went. Have a great Holiday Season and a Merry Christmas!

Gold ‘N’ Store
(Links to our affiliates. Good deals, and GREAT folks)
You can find Panning Kits
Monthly Prospecting Equipment Specials
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 MARCH 1st.
_______________________________________
http://www.hookedongold.com/
http://www.hookedongoldprospecting.ning.com/
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 9/19/08

Two of the Fabulous Gold Nuggets shown at the Denver Gem, Mineral and Fossil Show. WOW!

· Gold Spot Closing Price for Friday: $871.80
· Spot price last Gazette: $829.90
________________

Calendar of Events

SEPTEMBER
· 1st - LABOR DAY
· 10th – GPOC General Meeting
· 12th – 14th Denver Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show Panning Demo with GPOC
· 30th – Last Day for Motorized Equipment on the Arkansas River in Colorado

OCTOBER
· 1st – Arkansas River is now closed to motorized equipment until March 1st
· 8th – GPOC General Meeting
· 31st - Halloween
_______________________________________
NEWS

Boy has a lot happened since my last Gazette! Gold spot price has been near $750 and back above $900. The DOW has been on a rollercoaster as well, and we now have nearly a trillion dollars loaned out to the financials who apparently can’t add and subtract even as well as you and I. In case you aren’t aware of what the 50 billion coming out of the Exchange Stabilization Fund is, it comes out of the U.S. gold reserves. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all wipe away our bad decision debts as easily as some of them have? Oh well, at least we all make enough to be able to bail out the institutions who lend US money.? AND pay their debt back along with our own.

Did you get a chance to see the fabulous gold specimens that were shown at the Denver Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show last weekend? That big nugget shown in the picture at the top was at Colorado Nuggets and is around 116 ounces and came out of Colombia. Pretty impressive! The other picture is a piece of gold showed by Collectors Edge that looks like a pinecone. GREAT show and we were all VERY busy showing the public how to pan for gold with GPOC. Oh, by the way. GPOC’s website is now back up and running, and you can view it al www.gpoc.com That also means that our pages will come down soon that held the GPOC pages.

I wanted to take some time today to thank all of you who read my blog and visit my site regularly. I met a lot of you in the field this year, and was surprised by how many people out there already knew about the site. Last year about one in 10 people had heard about it, but this year it was closer to one in three! You are all a great bunch of people and I an honored to have you want to keep up with what is going on with Hooked on Gold. Hopefully we bring you some interesting news most weeks and keep you up to date with some of what goes on in the mining world. Thanks again, and may you find that big gold nugget somewhere in the world you explore. I always hear “Are ya rich yet?” and I have to say “yes, yes, we are”.

Kitco has had a run on silver coins this last week and has upped its’ bid or buyback amount on Silver Maples and Eagles. Gold and silver will continue to be a safe haven for some of your assets. Besides, they are just so darn purty to look at! I saw an article today about a coin store near me. They are having trouble keeping older rare gold or silver coins in stock and were urging anyone with gold coins to come in and sell them. Can’t imagine why you might do that right now, but if you’ve a mind to, you might want to go and see what your local coin dealer is offering to buy coins for. This store said they were paying a premium. Now, I’m not sure what that means, but I’m also pretty sure they have to make a profit, so maybe they aren’t giving what they are worth. What do you think? I haven’t checked out e-Bay recently, but you used to be able to sell them there at a pretty good price.

The Comex raised the margin price for gold today by a whopping 47%! They cited accelerating gold prices as the reason. Gold also rose AND fell the largest percentages in its’ history….all within a couple of days! The Bull is in the house, but I’m afraid I still think the Bear will stare him down. It ain’t over yet. Well that’s about all I got today. See you next week, and watch the blog for some more stories about our Sept. adventures.

Good Prospecting to You,
Shirley
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 opened TO MOTORIZED EQUIPMENT until October 1st.
_______________________________________
Good Prospecting to You,
Shirley Weilnau
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.

Cache Creek Gold in September

A Cache Creek Picker! Should have took the picture from the other side, 'cause that side was all yellow. Looks like some iron rock still attached, but still a nice gold nugget!

I see that gold is up a bit right now to $801, but still down from its' highs in July.

If any of you have thought that the fall might be a little less busy at Cache Creek, you would only be slightly correct. The parking lot has been full with gold seekers every day this week, although we have heard that there were fewer people there Labor Day weekend. Since the weekends have been so busy, a lot of folks have decided to come in to find their gold during the week instead. Us, too. Hmmm. We might need to change that.


I thought you might like to see this beauty that was found on Wednesday…….in our hole, but not by us. We invited a couple of new people to dig in our hole who had been sluicing for a day or two and hadn’t found much, so we told them to take some material from where we had been digging. We hate it when people don’t find gold! Not to worry. While the biggest piece of gold wasn’t in our ‘banker, we did come away with some real nice yellow colored metal.


The weather, by the way, has been some of the nicest we have had all summer, and the aspens and willows are being their annual seasonal change from green to golden yellow. It’s a little cool in the mornings, but sunny most of the time and pleasant. The only time it isn’t so nice is when old sol goes under and cloud and you are wet. If the wind is blowing some at the time, it can be down right bone chilling! However, pulling up a nice string in your pan helps to warm your heart and everyone around comes to see what you have found. I have to say, that there is STILL some very nice gold coming out of the area.


A cold front slid into Colorado last night, and so we are taking a day for rest and book shopping. Lucky you. You get a blog put up to read. Aren’t you special!? YES, you are to me. If you weren’t, I wouldn’t bother to think about taking these pictures to post and to talk to you today. Have a great one….I know I will.


Good Prospecting to You,
Shirley MQS
http://www.hookedongold.com/

P.S. The e-mail IS working again. I have had many requests coming in and even some dreaded “Spam”, too. Thanks for your requests and thanks for your questions, too.

Gold above $900

Your Specimen Gold Is UP!

Good monday morning to all of you. Gold is rising again today after touching $914 and then sliding back and climbing back up to $908 at 9:00 this morning. Of course it can correct itself back $50 to $100, but right now it is at around $30 a gram.

I have been told that specimen gold does not fluctuate very much based on the day to day spot prices, but when the price increases by around 50% in a year, well, your specimen gold just went up 50% as well. So, those people who bought their specimens at the Tucson show last year that no one even saw but the bidders, made on heck of a deal. It is hard to find 50% gains even in the stock market.

I have been discussing the information I found on the geothermal theories on gold nuggets with a geologist friend of mine, and he found the information very interesting. More on that this Friday as I continue this discussion in the newlsetter, so check back for another round in this discussion. If you have any thoughts, let me know. We may all start looking for nuggets in another area we hadn't thought about before.

Hooked on Gold Gazette Dec. 28, 2007.

HOOKED ON GOLD GAZETTE

· Gold Spot Closing Price for Friday: $838.80
· Spot price Dec. 21: $811.70
_____________________________________________________
Calendar of Events
December
12th GPOC Christmas Party 7:00 p.m. Bring unwrapped gifts for children for the Marines toy drive
19th GPR Members Christmas Party
24th CHRISTMAS EVE
25th CHRISTMAS DAY
31st New Year's Eve
JANUARY 2008
1st New Years Day
9th GPOC Meeting 7:00 p.m. Colo. Springs
_______________________________________________________
NEWS
Christmas is over and we are all back on track with our lives. The gold market is up, our buckets of black sand have been gone through, and we are looking to get equipment repairs under way. Our Christmas was white with 8 inches of snow falling at the house and a very frosty day enjoyed by all, with too much of everything. No better way to spend he day but with loved ones and friends. Hope all of you had as great a day as we did!

I am a bit late today as we had another 8 inches of snow yesterday which delayed our after Christmas shopping a day. We had to have a gold ring set with a garnet and sized for our daughter-in-law, along with spending that Christmas money that always burns a hole in your pocket. The grandsons had money to spend, too, so we hit the game stores and the mall. The snow is melting very fast here today, and Arvada hit around 41 degrees on our thermometer. We’ll wait for the news to see what the “official” temps were.

To continue last weeks review of the article in the December issue of ICMJ, it also mentioned the “seam” mining in California which produced a great deal of gold with hydraulic mining. These “seam diggings” were largely schist. They don’t always produce large numbers of nuggets, but they weather easily, and are not always easily identified on the surface.
Another interesting discussion is the order of geothermal mineralization events. The first is often quartz and lesser minerals, with later deposits being richer is minerals and less quartz. The last deposits contain the most concentration of heavier minerals, including gold, which would produce the nuggets. Of course, this explanation is a generalization, as there are always exceptions to the rules.

In world news, you would have to have had your head in the sand not to have heard of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakastan. This event is significant in the stabilization of the world and immediately pushed gold prices much higher, and sent the stock market lower. This is closer to the historic way that gold and the stock market have acted, going in opposite directions, rather than together as they have acted in the past few years. ______________________________________
If you find a broken link, please let us know
THE ARKANSAS RIVER is now closed TO MOTORIZED EQUIPMENT FOR THE WINTER UNTIL APRIL 1, 2008.
_________________________________________
Until Next week.
Good Prospecting to You,
Larry and Shirley Weilnau
http://www.hookedongold.com/
http://www.thevideosense.com/user/MQS/ Prospecting Videos
http://www.hookedongold2.com/ Looking for metal detectors on e-Bay? Click here
info@hookedongold.com contact us

Prospecting Labor Day Weekend

Prospecting the Arkansas River with friends


This past week went by triple fast! I was able to make connections with a wholesaler we saw in Tuscon that has a line of super gold nugget and gold in quartz jewelry. www.orocal.com (They are wholesalers only, but you can look at the catalog and e-mail me so I can gt a price for you) They also carry those figures and diaramas of miners and goldpanners. I picked up a VERY nice sampling of what they offer and we will be including it in the new catalog that we are working on now. Gold nuggets will also be offered as well as the corrugated mini sluice for black sand separation and Madam Queen Shirley's Magic Black Sand panning concentrates.

Labor Day weekend is upon us, and the summer has flown by at super sonic speed! We cannot believe our last week at camp will be here in 4 days and we have several prospecting buddies who we will be running around with picking up gold here, there, everywhere! NEW NEWS! Leadville has just recently put city wide WiFi in, so we have a second option for blogging and answering e-mail. Hopefully all of you are enjoying the DIY and panning tips form. We have a lot of scammers who are using it to find out if the e-mail address is valid and then sending us a TON of spam e-mail. HATE it. Really wish these people would get a real life. I hope I will not need to put the blocking html codes in, but it may come to that. WAY too many undeliverable requests are coming in.

The weather is shaping up nicely for this weekend, and hopefully all of next week as well. We will be looking at an old claim site as well as revisiting Cache Creek, Prospector #3, and some of our old haunts. Then will come the sad job of closing up camp for the winter and leaving the Arkansas valley soon until the next season begins again. We will have a few more days there at the end of September, but camp will not have running water available, and the sunroom will probably be packed away. But for now, the sun is warm and the gold awaits our finding it and taking it home with us. To golden adventures: CHEERS!

Breckenridge gold

June 26, 2007.

We spent a very warm day yesterday with friends in the Breckenridge area and came home with some VERY nice gold nuggets. Everyone there was successful in picking up the "pickers", with the largest one being around a quarter of an inch long, thick and chunky. Not bad for using the bucket classifier and pans. Friday evening will find us on our way to B.V. and a week off. The demo on the weekend was enjoyable and we all found a few treasures at the show to bring home with us. Have you been watching gold drop like a stone this morning? Right now it is sitting at around $640.00.

Gold Question for April 18, 2007.

WOW! Gold has been jumping around this past week going up over $692 and then falling back to around $682. Right now, gold is back on the uptick, so watch for it to go to $700(?) soon.
The gold question for this week was not a question, but a link to some interesting information that is effecting prospecting and small mining now. We first found our about this issue last year when a friend who owns a claim found he had to comply with water quality issues when discharging dredge water into the river. http://hookedongold.com/catalog244888.html will take you to the gold and panning sand page where you will find this lovely pendant and it's description.

Hooked On Gold's QUESTION OF THE WEEK: April 18, 2007.

Something different this week. Follow this link for some information on what is going on with water quality issues and small mining. We are dealing with this in Colorado as well, so be prepared for your local water boards to get involved with small mining.

www.waterboards.ca.gov/cwa401/docs/wrapp/publicnotice040907.pdf



ANSWER: No answer this week, just information you should see

If this link is not live, copy and paste it into your browser to view.

Gold Question of the week Where is it?

Howdy all. As you have noticed this week's Question on gold is not on the Hooked on Gold site. The reason is that my server, clickincome.com/clicksitebuilder is down and has been since yesterday morning! No way of telling when we will be back online, so be patient until they get it fixed. This is just the latest in a number of frustrations with this company, and we will be looking at taking the major site to another server. Can't call. No one answers the phone and online or email tech support, usually right there, must be inundated with mail as there was no response from them either. So, you will need to wait for your chance at winning the gold for now. Also, the blog! Good thing for Blogspot or I would have no way to communicate with you. Unfortunately, their builder is very easy to use and I will hate to leave it. Who knows. Maybe the "fixes" will make it worthwhile to stay with them. Don't know. I need more pages and the upgrade just costs too much. The mentoring program was good, but not long enough and I can find lots of the same information on the web for a fraction of the cost. Unfortunately, when I began as a complete novice,I didn't know any better. I will be putting together a program that a newbie can use at their own pace instead of a 12 week slam telephone course and then access to a mentor by e-mail for a year. There were a thousand questions that have come up since my year is up that I can't get an answer to. Yes, I am ranting, and fuming, and down right mad! If there was any way to ask for refund from these people I would. However, they are very careful to not guarantee ANYTHING and, believe me, the cost is way too much for what you get. Also, don't fall for the "You gotta have a merchant account to take credit cards with". Believe me, PayPal works fine until you get to the point where you are BIG, and then you will have a $5,000.00 month limit. In the meantime, it will cost you about $50.00 a month PLUS the 3% on the credit card amounts. Their affliate programs are coming off my site and offering my "Free gifts" with them are ending, too. Enough on that for now.

Gold is up again at $663.30 as I write. We will be headed this weekend for a tour of the gold, gemstone, mining museum at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden. Looking forward to another tour, as it has been a few years since we were last there. We will be meeting with some of the members of the Denver GPR club at 9:30 a.m. in the north parking lot. Everyone is showing us their metal detecting finds for the past month, and we have been having grandchildren and throwing out household stuff and trying to get things back under control before the season starts....again! Looking over my gold nugget inventory, some of my prices are looking cheap agin, so you might want to grab some of it before I am forced to raise them due to the continued rise in the replacement price of gold.

Gold at the Tucson Show

From top, Nevada gold specimen,California gold specimen, Tiger Eye from Australia.

For those of you who don't know about the Tucson Gem, Mineral and Fossil show held each February in Tucson, Arizona, you are missing one of the real treats of the winter. The shows span about 4 weeks, with many overlapping each other. We had heard about this show for many years, but were unable to attend due to work conflicts. This was the first year we were able to go, and it was all we had heard and 10 times more.

Both wholesale and retail venues abound, and it was hard to find what we wanted to see in the 4 days we were there. We settled on making sure we saw the vendors we know personally, buying gold, and catching a small part of a couple of the wholesale gem shows. We saw a lot and missed a lot more. The shows are so big you could pick one to attend and not see all of IT in 4 days.

The gold we saw and bought was abundant, but not as much as there had been a few years ago when gold was the show theme. However, we did see and photograph fabulous gold specimens from the U.S. and around the world, and bought gold nuggets at reasonable prices. Remember, I didn't say "sand" prices, but reasonable "gold" prices. Special specimens were shown from California (with a couple of large specimens being bought by collectors before they were even seen), Nevada, Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Australia, and Arizona. Do you notice a pattern with gold places beginning with the letter A? LOL!

Shuttling from place to place is recommended, as the shows blanket the city. Parking, trying to drive everywhere, and finding your venue is a dunting task that the shuttle drivers can relieve you of. Traffic can be a problem and will be worse next year as Tucson plans to be working of the downtown bidges and freeway interchanges. We had no problem finding restaurants with little waiting for seating. We had anticipated a problem with this due to the number of people in town for the events, but this proved not to be the case.

If you have a passion for gold, gems, minerals and fossils this show is a must at sometime in your future. If you have been there, you know it is a treat to be there. The weather in the middle of winter is an added plus as it was 83 degrees while we were there. A great trip, and a great time.