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 2/13/09

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.

Have a Golden Christmas Holiday Season

Gold in White Quartz, Black Quartz, or Nuggets in 14K Gold or Sterling Silver


Oh My Goodness! I had NO idea it had been so long since I had posted a Blog! November has flown by, and we have done many things since I past talked with you. Of course I helped at the Gem Show earlier this month in Denver, but we have also gone looking for gold at Cache Creek just before it snowed last week. We found a nice bit of gold up there and went home happy to have had a few days in November to find gold.

In case you've had your head in the clouds all month, you should have seen the spot gold price go from around $750 to $842 to $782 back to $823 and down to $809 right now. The dollar continues to slide and gold goes up.

Hope all of you had a GREAT Thanksgiving holiday, and also, a good start to the Christmas shopping season. I continue to have problems getting pictures to show in my new catalog, which is discouraging, but I will continue to find the answers to this problem. I have even had an expert look at it, and he didn't understand it either. I have two more to consult with, as well as try to find the answer myself. It has taken up ALL of my time trying to find a path to get everything to upload correctly. I have some terrific items to show, but can't seem to get everything going in the same direction. When I come up against these obstacles, I always figure there is some good reason why I cannot get it together right now. The answer to that question raises its' head at some time in the future, and I am usually glad I did not find the answer when I was looking so hard for it. Have a GOLDEN Christmas Holiday Season, and Merry Christmas to everyone. Buy gold for Christmas; coins, raw, jewelry, whatever. It is only going up in value and it WON'T be cheaper any time soon.