Prospectors - for HeySal

Oh goody - another video series that will bring people who know nothing about the field out to destroy things and kill themselves.

That damn show Cash and Treasures has idiots out all over the place tearing things up and getting themselves hurt and killed. They are getting a lot of public land closed down. Real hounds don't appreciate these shows at all. At least the few feet of the one I watched, the guy is talking about how dangerous it is.
But that's drama, too. He was on the SE side of Antero? Um ..........the aquamarine is on the SW side. There's a few pieces on the SE side but not that much. I climbed that once. Antero is 14,000 some odd hundred feet. Not a place to try to get people to want to explore. LOL. Especially that side of it. Let the "tourists" try to tangle with the road (LOL - they leave their rigs on the road because they can't go forward and are scared crapless to back up - the road is extremely narrow and there is NOTHING on the side but air. Causes all sorts of problems. I'd never DRIVE up that road. )

Anyhow - this guy made an adventure film more than a rockhound film on that one. Pretty dramatic about it, too.

Sorry -- real rockhounds don't like these things. I'm wondering which of my favorite areas is going to end up getting trashed to hell and back because some retard watched a film. If people knew how much more there is to making money out of stuff they find, they wouldn't bother, too. You aren't going to make a living at it unless you have a very sweet claim, or do a lot of trade and shows - and/or unless you are pretty good at lapidary.

When people go plundering the wilderness because of these shows, they really trash it out bad. We're having property shut down at amazing rates out here because these fools are destroying the wild areas. They throw trash, start fires, dig holes and don't fill them back in, drive over plant life, kill wildlife. It's really bad. If most of us had our way, we'd just shoot them - they are parasites.

On the other hand, if they watched real close, they'd see the tricks on these shows. For example, on one the girl got a handful of emerald out of one of the fee digs featured on the show -- she got ALL trash. They took all her trash and cut her a stone from one of the decent stones the mine gets. That's the trick - some of those places that mine themselves take all the good stones out before they let the public in to play with the tailings. Once in a long while someone will get something gem quality - and sometimes the mines will let someone dig the better and fresh areas for a very large price. The general tourist rocker, though, pays the fee and comes up with a few stones, but not too much of any value.

When the show just points people to fee digs it's not too bad - when it sends them out into the wilds, it's a disaster waiting to happen. As far as my part of the world -- we keep our locations pretty quiet among ourselves, and at times there's enough scary crap around like rattlesnakes that most people are scared to go in anyway. SW ID and SE OR has rattlesnakes, ticks, cougars, coyotes, bobcats, and a lot of very difficult roads for those without proper vehicles. The main tourist areas are almost hunted out, but the ones that are not spoken of in books or to the general public ares still producing awesome stones.

Actually - it was beginner's luck that got me started. I was climbing around the back of Pike's Peak with my dog, just scoping out some awesome views and getting some sun and recreation when I saw something sparkle. It was a cluster of quartz crystals and I went spastic. That was almost 30 years ago and I'm still learning new stuff all the time. Took years to train my eyes for it. I can spot an agate better than anyone else out there, though. There's a running joke amongst my site members about giving me a cigarette when we're in the field. I took a bunch of them to my favorite location for agates last summer and while they were beating their brows looking, I sat on the beach and would point them out - "hey, there's one by you over there, pick it up".

I don't have the same dedication or enthusiasm online. I do my writing, and just a tad of marketing, then I have to call in a partner or outsource because I can't imagine learning all this crap. It would drive me insane. At least I can't mess up the real world when I mess up online, though.

Yep - you can make the mother of a strike still out there. I know of an opal mine that charges $1,500 a DAY to prospect it. That's what they don't pull out of it and sell themselves.

If you are passionate about something and stick with it, eventually you will find a way to make some cash at it.