Questions

ej, homefire and I are NOT going to tell you that you can't make a living working a claim.  There are actually a handful of active members here that are either doing it or have done it in the past,  but they are the definite exception.   I doubt if any of them did it with a claim the acquired sight unseen.   And I know that everyone of them would tell you that to make it work you have to have a richer than normal claim (or claims) and you have to put long hours of physically demanding work over extended periods of time, plowing most of your returns into equipment so that you can move more dirt more efficiently for longer periods of time.    And even then most of them will tell you they probably could have made more money doing something else. 

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Your going to have to Locate your own claim or at least check out what is being offered.

No One in there right mind is going to sell you a claim that can produce that well for $20,000.

Be Warned, You can not live on site (Claim) for more then 14 days if located within a National Forest

(Yet another Rule to Play with)..

Who would be working the claim?

You indicated before that you could not travel?



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Ok.....assuming it were me in your shoes, before I went much further along this path, I join GPAA or one of the smaller clubs that give their members access to claims that are proven gold producers.   Then I'd take a week or two vacation and go work the claim the way I'd work my own claim if I had one.   That has two advantages that come to mind right off the bat-----1) you get a very real idea of what it is going to take to make a living working a claim, and 2) you might be able to do some prospecting on unclaimed land in the area and find yourself a good producing claim if you still feel like making a go of it.  And then there's the knowledge base that you can conceivably tap into.

The immediate thing you need to do is figure out where the best place to look for gold is----the simple/short answer to that is you look where gold has been found before......and the more gold that has been found in the area, the better your prospects are.   If you can tolerate the cold and are really serious, Alaska would be a good place.   If 6+ months of winter doesn't float your boat, I'd suggest California, Colorado, parts of Idaho, etc.   And unless you're willing to sink a lot of money into, your going to be looking for areas rich in placer gold as opposed to lode gold (too expensive).   There are some places in both New Mexico and Arizona that would fill the bill, but most of them either aren't really rich enough to support you or have unreliable water sources or are already actively claimed.


I wrote this before your reply to homefire came in.   To a certain extent, what I wrote still applies, except you'll have to settle for being a recreational panner until another shot comes aroung (which might or might not happen)

BA

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