Flash in the Pan Blog

The Daily News of Van Nuys, California is celebrating their 100th anniversary by reprinting excerpts of some of their more interesting and colorful articles that graced their pages over the years. Today, they focused on the period of 1937-1938 when America was smack dab in the middle of the Great Depression, Germany was but a year from invading Poland in the September Campaign and the classic Gone with the Wind was still only being enjoyed in book form. An interesting aside is that just one year prior, Jesse Owens kicked the Nazi notion of Aryan supremacy square in the keister in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The late thirties were an amazing time in our countries history, the period when the iron spines of the greatest generation began to be forged.

Watching episode 5 of Discovery Channel’s hit Gold Rush Alaska, “The Pain Barrier” had the phrase “poor ol’ James Harness” running through my head over and over and over. While I am obviously sympathetic to James’ body breaking down working 24/7 for weeks out in the boonies (and going through prescription morphine withdrawl at the same time), I am much more sympathetic that he seems to be the only one there with his head screwed on straight and the skills and dedication to make a real go of professional mining. More than anything, I feel bad that ol’ James has been stuck in the middle of a poorly planned endeavor with a bunch of knucklheads that lack the ability to capitalize on their dream.

I’m a finance nerd and looking back, I believe that passion for numbers, markets and research fueled my pure lust for gold prospecting. Precious metals have always been a store of value – a historical hedge against inflation and for a number of years I had invested in precious metals as a portion of my overall portfolio. I can almost remember the day when it dawned on me that while I could certainly continue to purchase my precious metals, how much cooler would it be to get out there into the wilds of Washington State and find some of my own? Oh, yeah – you can see where my mind was going. While I realize I will most likely never strike it rich, behind the scenes I keep a close eye on the markets and the internet has been a great educator in both passions.

With hopes of gold’s continued rally beyond the sweet 26% appreciation 2010 brought, many investors were startled to the see the new year of trading open with the price of our favorite precious metal falling 3.1%. What the hell happened? Well, as Alix Steel described in the TheStreet article, “Gold Prices: Correction or Time to Buy?” gold’s rally stumbled due to a string of events, chiefly: the morning opened with aggressive short-term profit sharing, which triggering forced sell stops which then in turn scared away bargain hunting gold bugs not wanting to enter a falling market.

I had an interesting morning reading through one of my favorite gold-related blogs, not necessarily a gold prospecting read, but more centered on owning gold as a hedge. With gold breaking above $1400/oz this morning, dhkenrick of OwningGold.com espoused a common quandary of many gold owners when prices soar to new levels – will gold prices continue to climb, or is this the top?

Once the gang had left my house after recording episode 4 of the Prospectors Plus Ore Dump podcast, my good buddy and prospecting partner ol’ Uno and I sat back nursing a cup of coffee as he reported on a recent trip to Olney Creek he had taken with one of his friends from work. As Uno recounted the common traps he observed his friend fall into (in fact, we all fall into when first starting out prospecting for gold), it dawned on both of us that of all the misconceptions we had embraced when first learning and is seldom enumerated in prospecting literature, was the chasm of thinking between ‘prospecting’ and ‘mining’. By our estimation, our failure in realizing the difference between the two concepts and a clear lack of application of said thinking to our own outings had led to needless frustration, wasted time and energy and in the end, less gold for our efforts in our earliest endeavors.

I watched several hours of coverage last night of the rescue of the 33 Chilean miners trapped more than a half mile below the earth for the past 69 days and sat in amazement at the ingenuity and engineering that made the rescue possible. Every hour, the 21-inch wide rescue capsule would make the 2,041 foot, 25 minute trip down to the trapped miners, unloading volunteer medical staff and loading up the next miner to be freed. What an absolutely amazing feat.

Science is an amazing discipline. Science puts numbers and theorems to measurable formulas that are proven and repeatable. Science can be pure as the driven snow. Sometimes science can also find itself behind the curve attempting to label and classify practices and outcomes that the average Joe would just say “duh” too. Fox News had a pretty hilarious listing of science innovations that left people shaking their heads entitled, “No Duh! The Most Obvious Scientific Discoveries of 2009” that will give you a sense of what I am talking about. These brilliant discoveries included:

• High heels lead to foot pain
• Men much more interested than women in casual sex
• Children are affected when a parent suffers from depression
• Coed dorms fuel sex and drinking
• Sweets taste better when you are high

>Updated 3/4/2011

I made a serious mistake when originally posting this article that has unintentionally offended several members of the Yakima Prospectors Association. By choosing to write this article in such a glib manner, calling out specific members cited in the source Seattle Times article to emphasize my points and in general, poking fun at everyone and everything I upset people that I respect.