The Beginning

GoldFeverProspecting.com began from the humblest of beginnings.  A guy with a hobby and a desire to find some decent gold prospecting equipment. 

The beginning:  I’ve always had a terrible habit of turning all my fun hobbies into a job or some type of business venture.  Recreational poker grew into a semi pro endeavor.  Moving to Tahoe and innocently working as a ski bum one year out of college quickly turned into trying to design t-shirts for the local tourist market.  Growing up “literally” in the Pebble Beach golf pro shop (my Aunt ran it for years) fostered a lifelong passion for Golf AND retail and almost turned into an attempt at the pro tour. A bad case of psoriasis on my hands devastatingly took care of that dream -  but there is always the senior tour!  LOL    I’ll try to recount some interesting tales of life on the links in another blog some time.

Moving from the San Francisco bay area to the gold country allowed (forced) me to  become a gold prospecting entrepreneur.  As a California born and raised kid I’ve had a lifelong interest in gold prospecting.  History lessons on the gold rush are mandatory in schools in Ca.  Trips as a little kid to the most awesome Frontier Village Amusement Park (sadly long since closed in 1980)

to try my hand at panning for gold and later journeys with my grandfather to the Sacramento area to give gold panning and sluicing a real shot instilled the gold fever in me from a young age.  I still remember the Lost Dutchman mine ride.   Frontier Village info:  www.Frontiervillage.net

Later in life, I found myself partnering with family in a small local home and garden décor retail shop.  When the internet matured and I discovered a national customer base was far better than a local one, the small local business morphed into several ecommerce ventures which continue today.  With my relocation to gold country (I followed a girl, now my wife)  it was natural to try my hand at prospecting for real.  I found myself living on 6 acres of prime river front on the Fresno River and couldn’t for the life of me find any gear to use to get the gold.  As any prospector knows there is only so much you can do with a pan and sluice box.  I loved every minute of working the ground for my first few flakes (well I Ioved it for a little while).  My back and my impatient nature quickly grew to hate panning my concentrates out by hand but I had no idea if there was any equipment out there to help.  I searched and searched locally but couldn’t find more than a gold pan for sale in a grocery store and this was in the middle of gold country!  There was a small prospecting / rock shop about two hours drive away and a gold panning tourist trap in town but they rarely had anything of use to a real prospector in stock.  I knew prospecting was a big hobby and growing quickly and I began to wonder what everyone else in the country was doing for equipment.  What I quickly found was that there was a dearth of competent sellers of gold prospecting equipment. There were numerous mom and pop outfits hawking a few items – often homemade rickety junk and a very few organized retailers attempting some sort of focused approach to offering  a range of prospecting gear.  Me selling prospecting gear on the internet quickly followed.  I dabbled on eBay but quickly found I was giving a large part of my profit away to them and I hated their customer NO service attitude toward their sellers.  So in I jump with my own website and after a couple of years trying to locate enough professionally made products and promote it properly, my newest hobby/job had turned into a full time business - GoldFeverProspecting.com.  Now jump ahead 6 years and we have quickly grown to become the largest independent dealer of recreational gold prospecting equipment in the country.

In this blog I HOPE to regularly offer up some insight into daily business operations (i.e. venting), prospecting equipment reviews (gear we love and hate)  and commentary on gold prospecting related issues (things that make us hopeful or maybe pissed off).  I might even chip in some gold market commentary too since I was actively involved in day trading for years as well.  I say “I HOPE” because free time is super short, business is booming with the high price of gold, and I’m a new father too!