It depends not only on location but on the knowledge of how to find and recover, Yes my equipment paid for itself but my knowledge of the land paid for the rest. I really don't know how many times over it has been that my equipment paid for itself. The gold that I've found with my 6" homebuilt dredge alone would pay for 30 more just like it. And this is normal here in California or it was until the dredge ban. So does that count for the rest of my equipment? My 4" Proline paid for itself in 2 trips and that was in 2004. Everything since then has been pure profit. In 2009 I found the 1800's hydraulic sluice box that had been buried under 40 feet of tailings after the flood that destroyed so many hydraulic miners last year. The riffles were still in place and we recovered a lot of gold that summer, as usual. Then the dredge ban went into effect and I switched over to using a trommel, it paid for itself in a day... Today, I'm 56, been retired since 2011, not drawing any retirement yet because I can't get 100% until I'm 59.5. I'm 100% retired on funds from my past mining adventures and this includes houses, cars, food, everything. Location was a major factor in putting my family where it is today, but my knowledge and determination to win or succeed is what made everything work. Was it luck? No, it was perseverance. My Great grandfather's mining paid for his life and combined with my grandfather, they paid for much of my father life and my beginnings. My dad hated mining because he grew up working hard in the family mines when he wasn't running the old Hardware Store and he always said no to me when I wanted to open up different family patented mines. He said that he would never do that me, and that's how much he hated mining. But I had the family gift and I watched him sell both of our patented family mines while I begged him not too. So I went over his head and talked to his best friend, who made him listen. In the end because of our friend talking to him, my dad listened to his mining plan, (or my mining plan actually, though he didn't know at first that it was from me), and he ended up being able to retire at 65 with having no retirement from any job he had ever worked. So mining has made our lives enjoyable even though for many years, times were hard. You're guaranteed broken fingers, bleeding blisters, and tired old bones, and plenty of hard times, but money can still be made from gold mining even here in California. The places that I mined the most are the same places that my Great Grand fathers both mined and made good livings for their families. If you haven't checked out the albums on my profile page, there's a lot of mining history in the different photo albums that I have on our great site here
