Panning for gold: You could profit or just have fun
With the wild ride on the world’s markets enough to give even the most seasoned investors the jitters, everyone is talking about gold .
You could shell out $1,700-plus for an ounce of the precious metal, or diversify your portfolio with gold ETFs. But how about finding it the old-fashioned way and panning your way to a get-rich-quick fortune just like the pioneers in the Old West? It can happen: A guy named Jim Sanders found a 9-pound nugget last year which would be worth about $230,000 at today’s prices.
From California to Alaska to the Yukon, gold prospecting vacations have long been a source of entertainment, but now have the allure of big-time profit (which is never directly promised). But don’t book your ticket to the Yukon just yet — unless you promise to not quit your day job. And, keep in mind that the fun is what most folks who take these trips talk about, not banking the motherlode.
“It’s not as much about the gold as it is getting out there and having a good time with friends and families, but yes you can find gold,” said Brad Jones of the Gold Prospectors Association of America. “Yes, serious prospectors do make a living, but they are few and far between and they know what they are doing.”
The association cautions anyone with gold dreams to proceed cautiously, while acknowledging there is gold in them there hills.
To start a cost-benefit analysis of whether you can make money on a gold-panning vacation, remember it costs money to get there, costs money to stay there and costs money to get access to the area approved for mining or panning and for the equipment you’ll need. So you could easily start more than $3,000 in the hole (about an ounce and a half of gold you can cash out).
Mark Castagnoli, president of Placer Gold Design in Vancouver, British Columbia, has plenty of experience in the gold business including in Western Canada’s placer mines. He believes in gold adventures for what they bring to the economy and the potential that you can actually find something more than a bit of gold dust.
“Most likely you will be taken to a historic location that is still yielding gold,” he explained. “There is no question that the world is entering the greatest gold rush of all time and every historic location is being reexamined.”
Do a little research before going onto one of these journeys. Some programs have a great reputation from folks who found a little gold and were given a history lesson and some laughs along the way.
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