I paid 200 last year do you know what this year will cost lol.
Digging over burden and maintaining trail. Covers more than $100 bucks per claim. A lot of guys don't realize the ability to patent can come back. Annual labor goes towards the patenting process requirements. Paying the maintence fee does not. if they re- fund the patenting process anyone who has been paying maintence fees is at day one in the patent process. anyone who has been performing their annual maintence can be almost complet in their labor obligation. I currently have 63 acres . cost me $140 bucks between the county and BLM this year. If i paid maintence fees it would have been $800 bucks. seems like pretty easy math to me. the labor is the easy part. Basically two days on the claims total to cover whats required.
It really depends on what you are paid per hour, me 75$ per hour, labor maintaining a claim is a waste time better spent mining. Plus paying the maintenance fees guaranties with the BLM the claim are mine and recoded such so some idiot can't over file on my claim if they do their due diligence. But there are those who don't, and I have seen it to many times during that time of The BLM verifying a M.F.W. which doesn't happen till next year open up our claims to over filling. Also I will add my philosophy on mining is that pays for itself, if you can't find it with a gold pan don't by that 6inch dredge.
Your mining counts as maintenance …it’s called bulk sampling.
