Where doers a guy start, divorced man, 59yr of age, house sold, doesn’t have the money to buy another one outright, looks round wondering what to do with himself, solution is get more money. Guy decides maybe its time to look at putting the money he does have in to finding some gold bearing land, buying or leasing a nice new trommel screen and equipment to suit the land, maybe find another guy or two like him to invest and work at it. Surely there’s a few people out there. Or go it alone and bring in someone experienced on a good deal, maybe there’s also a company out there that helps guide miners,…finding the land would be step one I guess. Its a dream but a line of thought that hasn’t left for a couple of years now so feel free to in-put, any info / conversation / discussion, negative and positive, its all valueable.
Hey Mike, you are at cross roads in your life, a good chance to follow your dreams. Most experienced one or two man bands struggle to make a living from gold, the setup costs are crazy in terms of the return. It is extremely hard work with plenty of unforeseen setbacks. Gold mining is over regulated & compliance cost just keep increasing & the rules change. I know none of this stops us thinking about finding that gold. Working towards getting your own roof over your head may sound a little boring right now but come retirement age you will be pleased you did. Camping out at the Public Fossicking sites can help fill that gap, you will meet others talking about the same stuff.
Gold minings a gamble weather its dredging or digger and screen set up, id imagine consent and plant costs would gobble up hundreds of thousands of dollars , at the end of the day id start small like dredging and chase your dreams , and remember you cant take anything with you when you die , fill your head with memories and live life , no one knows whats around the corner
Hard going ATM, being winter. Dredging meaNs buying a claim, or prospecting for a while to find a viable claim. I was out fishing on the kayak today and it’s a bit cool, but I’m not in the water for the day . Otherwise it would be tough as I’m getting a bit older. At least it’s not snowing like Queenstown in December.
What you on about Willis? When did it snow in Queenstown in December? It can’t even snow in QT during winter. Been mild as the last half dozen winters.
JW 
It was either 2019 or 2020 after the 3018 heatwave. It would snow on the top across the the lake then thaw during the day and 12 mile creek level would rise.
That’s on the tops though, not in Queenstown.
JW
Hi Mike, I was at he same age and not sure about the $$ you have but I bought an M50 shaker plant off a crowd in the states, Gold Watch Project. Google them. I just checked Im pretty sure I paid 50k US for mine I see they are 61k now. At 50k mine landed at $75nz. They will put through a little less than a 4 foot trommel but catch all the nuggets up to an inch. I ran mine with a 20 tonne digger but a 10-14 tonne would be better. I worked by myself on 4 -6 grain ground. I have been in the game since the 1970s and got too old to dredge, you have to be fit and hungry, sitting in a warm digger has a lot of appeal. Hope this helps, happy to talk gold to anyone. Cheers Mark
You could always have a bet both ways.
Here’s my 2cents to turn into 200k. I am not a financial advisor, please don’t rely on this opinion, do seek your own professional advice.
Buy a bit of appreciating land with a reliable financial partner and hold it until it goes up in value for you both. Study or ‘farm’ a likely area to be sure it will appreciate for you. Look for something to buy, below CV if you can, as that’s instant equity. Put that in your ‘memory bank’ for now.
Improve the property, clear the weeds, trim the trees, remove the rubbish, mow the section, build or paint the fence and at a stretch explain to the neighbour how to create wealth by improving the look of the street. ( Makes the property attractive for time of sale).
Consider putting in a sewerage system or conection if it doesn’t have one.
And minor accommodation or power connection for a caravan whatever meanwhile.
Go follow your fun life chasing gold, wait for the equity to rise on the section.
Put the funds I to an appreciating asset.
thanks for the reply, Im reading what I can and hearing of 1 gram an hour dredging streams and rivers. The upside is the lower financial entry point but I don’t see that as an option for me. For ease of mathematics I’m concentrating on a bucket size of 3.0 to 3.5m which equates to a ton, and counting up how many buckets to 31 grams. That’s the business I would be in to. Big initial cost and high running costs compared to river work but its about volume on gold bearing land. 31 buckets to the ounce would be very nice, considering my fav tromel puts 100 to 150 an hour thru…So where do i find accessible land with 1 gram per ton or better??
Get in crypto now these coins will help icp, solana, near, render, flux, fabwelt, pyth,
What are the reasons or use cases for the coins you mentioned? There’s been an explosion in the number of cryptocurrencies, with new additions all the time so I’m interested to know why you like these ones 
Man i already have a full-time job lol lcp is decentralized, computing power, cloud storage, and many other things Google YouTube for more info, flux is much the same but lower market cap they both touch the Ai narrative aswell which will and has been big, render the name says it all a decentralized network of GPU, solana is a layer 1 blockchain should be next to get a ETF approval which will make it go off i brought at $27 a token so love it, pyth is a oracle on the solana blockchain, fabwelt is a risk but i got a good bag because its a low cap web3 gaming eco system i send photos from my tropical island if this gose off 
. Google and YouTube will tell u more than i know but if anyone has more knowledge im willing to learn so get in touch
Why didn’t you tell us this sooner? Solana is at $233 now so we could have saved 10X roughly
Lol because i know nothing and thought i would loose it all in saying that i got out what i put into sol at $390 and what i got left will not touch until at least 1000 US but with ETF sol could go to 3000 US there has been a big drop in price all those coins i talked of will go up 
Test, test, and test some more to delineate the reserve before buying a large excavator and screen. History books are loaded with examples of people not doing this, mining starts, only for the gold to stop abruptly, cash reserves are bled dry trying to get back onto gold, operation goes bust
A lot of areas have been tested in the past so a free way to get started would be trawl through the nzpam database to find areas with good volume that were tested in the past with ok results but not rich enough to mine at the time
Absolutely, my whole thing is guaranteed ground, tested, tracked with a deliberate plan. Without that a guy has nothing but hope and is doomed to failure. whats the point spending a couple hundred of thousand dollars if there’s only 50 k gold in the ground. Thanks for the info about scanning the NZpam data base, I’ve been trying to make my way round all of that info.
Gday. yeah I have heard people tell me the same , go fossicking …get a river claim, go dredging but i have to say I never hear of anyone making constant and decent money scratching the river banks and stream beds. Im not at all into that.
And heres a few questions. MinesalesNZ have that licence to mine for sale on TM, and though im not moving on it it would be good to know how that all works. Can someone explain how the system goes. It says licence for sale, once youve paid the bonds your free to mine. can you explain what these bonds are covering, and any info actually. Its all very well thinking about mining from what you have seen and read but there are legalities etc…again any all onfo gladly receives. Mike
Yeah we or i could do that karen i could also say take the advice that has been given to u on here and fxxk off with all your repetitive questions good luck at the cross roads of your life u find yourself in👍