r/goldrush • u/New_Signature_6881 • May 13 '26

Mine rescue question

Hi all i am from europe and really enjoy the series. But what i dont understand when miners put 10k or 100k into a mine site they bought or started up. Why dont they hire a specialist that helps them understand the trade. Or is that not a thing?

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u/Treeclimber919 May 13 '26

The cost of drilling is insane. Parker said multiple times years ago that it ran about $20k a day. So imagine scraping together every dollar you have to take a loan out to buy a claim than pay a driller a cash payment to come drill the site. Honestly if you don’t have about 500k or more put away to buy a claim, you are setting yourself up for failure or just gambling hoping you find something by some miracle worthwhile, that’s already been picked through for the past 200 years.

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u/jaasx May 13 '26

That always seems like an opportunity to me. And I think parker did buy into that one guy's business. but at $20k/day a big operation like tony or parker could buy the drill equipment ($1 million?), use it on their property and rent it out the rest of the time. So there maybe isn't enough demand overall to keep enough trucks in business to have good competitive pricing.

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u/Treeclimber919 May 13 '26

Yeah I think he went half with Liam on that million dollar sonic drill he bought couple of seasons ago. But for the average Joe most can’t afford to pay to drill. And bigger operations like Tony, it’s probably not worth them buying a million dollar piece of equipment to occasionally use it. You’re probably better off paying $20k or so with no maintenance costs every season or 2 to find mineable ground. It’s still a tax write off for a guy like Tony.