Clay Diggins

The article is misleading Mitchel. In France the minerals belong to the land owner to a depth of 100 feet. The landowner owns the minerals but the French state is the only entity that can explore, mine and market those minerals. You can't dig for your minerals on your own land in France. Whether this deposit actually has gold or how much gold is in the deposit will never be known under current French mining law and practice. IF the deposit is ever explored (unlikely) the farmer will lose access to his farm surface for the good of the French Republic. Sounds like a lose/lose situation for the farmer.

Will you pay postage and insurance?

You are correct. The physical margin has grown. Over the past 5 years dealers were paying spot for gold and silver. Now they are buying at less than spot for gold (not silver) It's not the fluctuations or risk that cause margin changes. It's happens because dealers are buying more gold than they are selling now. When the markets turned and gold went up many investors were caught short on margin and had to cover by selling gold. When that happens dealers have to charge more margin on buys to make a profit. This margin change is common to all real goods. Commodities can't be repriced by printing more like stocks or dollars. Real goods are priced by demand and supply.

I lived that run up in gold and silver. The price of silver was brought down by closing the silver market and gold was brought down by raising the prime interest rate to 19% - causing many millions of people to lose their homes due to mortgage rates rising into the 29 - 32% range. When everyone is broke there is no bid on gold. The markets don't work in a vacuum.

I am curious how a few nuggets found in a stream could lead anyone to know there were another 150 tons of gold in the deposit without any testing? Placer deposits are notoriously difficult to quantify with any accuracy. We finished up permitting a very large placer project in 2023 but it took more than 30 years of very expensive testing before I got involved to establish the size of the deposit with any certainty. Sounds like a good story but pretty much fiction. I'm glad the farmer found some gold underneath his land but the rest of the story smells like pure journalistic fantasy.

Interesting that their minimum bid is equal to the current spot price.

Foolish collectors or internet legends? Most of the natural gold mined contains some percentage of silver - making most natural gold electrum. I don't know the actual percentages but I'd be willing to bet more gold mines have electrum content than not. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0892687501001030 I would really like to know who these collectors are? I've got a few bridges I'm looking to sell.

There was a process very recently (November 4, 2024) instituted by the federal government that put huge objects in the way of exploration and mining. Basically every government, tribe and agency had a right and duty to "participate" in something as simple as a notice of intent - which previously was approved within 15 days.. This was all done to improve the "efficiency and effectiveness" of processing of mining plans, notices and amendments by including everyone in "Pre Planning" for the miner. That's all gone now. https://www.blm.gov/policy/im-2025-009 There are a lot of miners, big and small, breathing much easier now. Hopefully this will open up the markets for new mining ventures. We are in a great market for mining metals.

We updated the Land Matters mining claim maps today. All those 58,000 closed claims have now been removed from the claim maps. It's still out there... pick a nice day and go get some.

Thanks for the link I've seen the dredge moratorium and there is nothing about highbanking or water use in there. If you are on federal lands the riparian water right survived the later creation of the water boards "appropriative water rights" (permits). I've owned and irrigated 20+ acres of farm property in California under the grandfathered riparian rights that were preserved in 1913 and 1928. I didn't need a permit or permission to use the water straight from the river. I did fill out an informational form when my water use exceeded 500,000 gallons but that is a courtesy to the district not a requirement. There is a requirement that all water use must be beneficial under the law but irrigation and mining are already classed as beneficial use in the California Constitution.

Yeah it looks like California got hit pretty hard. I think small miners with a few claims are particularly hard hit by the higher fees. I was unaware that highbanking in California, or any other state, requires a permit. When did this happen? Mining is classified as a beneficial water use in California so in most places you can take limited amounts of needed mining water from a stream without a permit.

I'm seeing a lot of prospecting club claims being closed. I don't know if membership is dropping or the higher fees are affecting budgets ... or both. It appears one of the nicest prospecting clubs, Havasu Gold Seekers, payment check bounced. Usually when this happens clubs relocate their claims quickly. Just make sure there aren't new or relocated claims before you try to claim those areas. I'm not seeing a lot of BLM closure mistakes. That's an unusually high number of closed claims so if you own a mining claim it would be as good idea to check your claim status at the BLM or later today after we update the claims map on Land Matters.

In the last two weeks the BLM closed 58,211 mining claims. Nevada alone had more than 35,000 claims closed in one day. This is opening a lot of land to new claims. More than 1.2 million acres! Here's a simple map showing where the newly closed claims are in each state. Land Matters Claims Advantage members received a special map based on the claim status on January 5, 2025. That map showed all the mining claims that had not paid their annual maintenance fees by September 1, 2024. That map effectively mapped all of the claims subject to closure. We received a lot of comment from our members about that map. Several members discovered that their claims, although being paid up and current, had not had their claim status updated. Here's just one example of the responses we received on that map. "The "unpaid claims" layer saved me a potentially huge headache. To my surprise, 3 out of 4 of my claims were in jeopardy this year due to a clerical error at the BLM. I had filed the paperwork for all 4 claims in person in July, but the MLRS only reported one of either the small miner cert or evidence of work, not both, for each claim. I was a little nervous! I contacted BLM via email and as of today, MLRS system now shows all claims in good standings with next fees due 2025." We just sent out the January 19 Claims Advantage Report that shows all these 58,000 plus newly closed claims on a custom interactive map. Each newly closed claim is listed in the report with details and links to the BLM register page for that claim as well as a direct link that opens up the Claims Advantage Member map to where the claim is located. Smart prospectors might like to know where these closed claims were located. You can have those closed claims reports and maps as well as two more reports per month for the next year for a measly $100 a year - that's only $8.34 a month or about $4.17 a report. Way less money than a new coil or drywasher and neither the coil or drywasher will point you to potential open areas to prospect or claim. Or you can wait until the free public Land Matters Claims Maps are updated later this week and then try to guess what's missing. Those maps are free for all users and very popular. Map use there nearly doubles every year. The only problem with free is Land Matters relies entirely on user donations and volunteer workers. Yep we all work for free and if users don't donate we can't pay the bills and Land Matters goes away. It's that simple and it's worked very well for more than 10 years. With your help we can go another 10 years. Here's a real life example of why you should support Land Matters. Behind the scenes the BLM has been going to great lengths to hide parts of mining claims public information for the last four years. Twice claim owner names have been removed by the BLM from public access, the first time for four months beginning in January 2021 and again from November 2022 until December 30, 2025. Out of the last four years the BLM has hidden this public information for a total of nearly two and a half years. Land Matters has provided claim owner names through their maps and reports for this entire period. The latest efforts by BLM to remove this public information is ongoing now. The Mining Claim serial register page reports are now limited to one claim owner name no matter how many owners there are on the claim. This is true even if you sign in with a registered account. Land Matters is now the ONLY source that displays ALL claim owner names. Land Matters - Public information always open to the public for free.

It's very unclear just where the withdrawal is Jim. With no legal land description and a fantasy map we can't really tell. All in all it appears it might be South, Southeast and East of the National Park and Wilderness. The Dale district is defined however you want - there are no legal boundaries but generally it's considered to be mostly north of the Park. That's your area of the country so I'm sure you know better than I the extent of the district. I suspect we will see an amended Federal Register Notice in a few months - or years - to describe those boundaries. We know the new monument is broken into 5 parts and those parts total more than 624,000 acres.