Headed to Nome

[GoldenArrow]

Well howdy folks,

I have found this forum very helpful. I am a teacher and looking to try my hand in Nome this summer. Offshore dredging. I plan to be in the 570 acre recreational areas the first year until I have the lay of the land and can make a deal with a claim owner. I don't need to make money the first year, but I can't afford to lose much either.

Does people have opinion on these listings I see on ebay and craigslist for offshore gold dredges and claims?

Any other Nome advice would be most welcome.

Doug.

 

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[kazcoro]

There was one a couple years ago, it didn't work very well. There are a lot of issues that hinder a clam-type operation. I think it has potential, but there are many design parameters that have to be done right from the design phase. I have given such an idea considerable thought over the past couple years, and I think I could build a working one with someone with the right amount of capital to put into it. My PM box is open.

Any of us who read your last linked post know how you want the investment. 300 k, maybe we will see 1/4 back after 4 years. Not interested. Seriously though, how about a bucketed drag line? If the arm was strong enough, it would keep you anchored in a good area...

 

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[leenie]

ak diver do any of the divers use metal detectors to find good areas to recover? thanks for the info from some one who is there. dave

 

[AK_Au_Diver]

Any of us who read your last linked post know how you want the investment.

Yes, I was being quite cynical in that 2009 post. I was making fun of all the new people that came up and spent $100k to $400k for diver-operated dredges, making less than 10 ounces in return.

In recent years, there have been a couple multi-million dollar operations (well, that's how much they spent, not how much they are worth) that have not fared too well. One in particular must be some sort of securities scam, they have raised and spent over $3M and have mined less than 200 ounces in two years.

It has since become clear to me that the only way to make decent, year-round, money is to either own a bunch of leases and get good people to work on them with their own equipment; or to run a good large-scale diver-less operation like the CR, AuG, JC, or the CdP that I'm on. Maybe I should update my guide with some current info.

My ethics would not allow me to actually run one of those scams on anyone. Anything I build would have to have a reasonable, experience-based expectation to gross in the first year at least what it cost to build and run.

ak diver do any of the divers use metal detectors to find good areas to recover?

To my knowledge, no one uses metal detectors. As I understand how detectors work, they detect based on the cross-sectional area, normal to the beam vector, of continuous materials. Since the Nome gold is so fine, the signal to noise would be very poor, except for the rare nugget. Expert dowsers have way more success than an expert detectorist would.

For me the best way to find gold is the old "test, look, and move" routine.

 

[AK_Au_Diver]

Any of us who read your last linked post know how you want the investment. 300 k, maybe we will see 1/4 back after 4 years.

Another comment on my cynical but accurate arithmetic: Those statements I made in that 2009 post were directed at people who were already going to spend $100k on an operation (which is about the minimum to get an 8" ocean dredge operation going for out of towners). Several newbie people/groups have spent at least that every year I've been there, almost all with the results I stated, or worse.

 

[Fletch88]

Sounds like something I'll just watch from my comfy living room recliner! Lol. Can't stand cold water or being broke!

 

[kazcoro]

Another comment on my cynical but accurate arithmetic: Those statements I made in that 2009 post were directed at people who were already going to spend $100k on an operation (which is about the minimum to get an 8" ocean dredge operation going for out of towners). Several newbie people/groups have spent at least that every year I've been there, almost all with the results I stated, or worse.

Oh, I believe you. Wholeheartedly. Seems the only people in gold mining that actually make money are the guys that supply the equipment.