Gemstones, specimens, specials & stories from Americas' opal mining district located in Humboldt Co, Nevada
Summer has closed the mines with the opening of schools again. Hunting season has kept people in the campground. The highway keeps trash on the margins.
The longer I stay out here, the more I understand why others only visit. Too quiet for them.
That and other things.
So there goes the phone. One of the reasons I dont stay home that much. Leave a message as i dont use caller id.
All claims can be had for a legitimate offer. All of them are not coming cheap as i have the bulk of what is for sale here under location or certification. The last millsite to be allowed a well and so on. Health prevents me from fighting the good fight forever. Individual sales start at half of what other want and advertise. Prices start at 500 to 100,000 for the best proven deposit with the millsite thrown in on the deal.
I felt it as an unnatural shaking. Just a little one. It’s about what I imagine we’d be getting if the new geothermal Powerhouse was completed. probably just lots more like the fracking zones in the rest of drilled America are getting now. Ive been in many quakes and survived them all fine. Even got interviewed in Klamath Falls by CNN after the series of major quakes there.
Note the data from Stanford on the phenomenon cause in S Korea. https://news.stanford.edu/2019/05/23/lessons-south-korea-solving-geothermals-earthquake-problem/
What is concerning is I live on the most active major fault running thru Nevada to Oregon.
We’ll see what the future brings. The last significant swarms around here were at Bitner Butte and that’s about as far past the Peacock Opal Mine toward Cedarville as I am toward Denio from the fee digs.
No landslides are expected to have happened and nobody is mining underground at present.
We are under a current solar storm watch from the Sun, that causes these things to greatly increase with the electrical bombardment of our Earth. See Suspicious Observers at https://www.youtube.com/@Suspicious0bservers/videos or SpaceWeatherNews.com I will have to go to the aurora cams to see what color these were this week.
Eyes Open No fear & wire down those valuables on your shelves and make sure the hot water heater is strapped appropriately.
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/cfusion/qfault/show_report_AB_archive.cfm?fault_id=856§ion_id=c
As a precaution, if you think you might want to watch again or read, download my content off here, Youtube, Rumble should be safe but I hardly put anything there yet. Then if something happens to me, like my Facebook existence was removed, or the internet access goes away more likely. https://www.youtube.com/@whatatimewaster and more recent uploads https://www.youtube.com/@ResortDog and Rumble should be there too https://rumble.com/account/content?type=all
One good solar flare & it’s the dark ages again. That or a cold induced earthquake from the power plant they are putting in next door; on the deep long fault through Nevada & Oregon past the Steens Mtn. Dutchsinse on Youtube goes into how all the drilling & fracking is connected to more earthquakes, besides just monitoring the planet and advising us. https://www.youtube.com/@dutchsinse
Painting on UV wood flakes. She also did some nice ones on leaf print plates. The ugly sides now look better and what they were collected for originally before the Value Added, was still visible.
That and I think Im not being “socially accepted” in certain circles due to political attack. https://www.youtube.com/@Suspicious0bservers
Whatatimewaster & ResortDog may not be around much longer if the fact checkers don’t like what I say and I might add, I’m not leaving any treasure maps or diaries behind me for what is where and how deep. If its not bought, my knowledge stays in the ground too. I still plan on keeping the appointments that have been arranged.
I sent Scott Ryals some of the new stuff I hit to try out and he sent be back some cabs! Some rich reds to go under the wheel. This material is a little tricky, but it cuts all ways. The Cuprite nugget it was by was laced with chrysocolla. This area vein material historically had been called chrysocolla on quartz at the High Desert Crafts in Lakeveiw, Or. Mark has some of the gem silica in there cut. HWY 140 across from the Fairgrounds.
Hiya! The forum is down until we have it updated. Sorry for the inconvenience. Swordfish Mining is still in business with mining claims 1/2 hours drive from my house. Call me, the local who knows.
Call me crazy as I didn’t get around to updating the version in time. No worries from Pink & Me as we know there is an expert willing to see whats going on.
Until then check out some of the new lapidary and opal cutting creators on youtube.
Oh that published. The three chunks by the door were wood and the mine is next.
The wood is a glassy, flake over chip, solid opalization. The surface weathered out pieces of wood, rounds are extremely rare, usually have desert varnish on them or naturally polished. In long wave they approach agate and fluoresce orange or yellow with the rarer agates or opal veins green. Precious color from here is usually visible, in the opal coverings and cavities. Common opal is more widespread as always. I have rounds. Even a natural vase like round, waterproof and a hollow piece from next to it, next piece came out in slabs which is typical.
$ 1 a pound for smaller opalized wood chunks to tumble. $2 a pound for agate wood. $5 a pound for choice large “artful” pieceas of agate wood or opalized wood rounds. Agate rounds are by the piece. Your shipping costs will vary. Wet Opal mine run $20 a pound as available. Dried Opal potch $10 a pound. Pure white small twig opal choice casts, usually green uv, some blue at $50 a pound. Agates that were veins in opalized logs are $100 a pound. Some have jewellery grade botridal surfaces or water lines
And don’t forget the Wilder Green Amazonite/malachite in quartz/Kspar. $5 a pound Wilder Blue gem silica & Wilder Red Wine Quartz/Feldspar. Chrysocolla bearing, or more fittingly Amazonite to Gem silica (Feldspar crosscut with Quartz pegmatite with poly-metallic mineralization of copper, Iron, Aluminum plus in various grades. 18 lbs per 65$ introductory mine run boxes listed on ESTY. The next photo are slabs for consignment of the better copper and quartz mixes.
This is what slabs look like. It has been called checkerboard chrysocolla before. I sell claims so if you need a mine, call me. The Wedding Ring copper mine is $10,000, unpatented. That price on the slab is what they wanted for retail at a consignment store in Elko, NV.
Its a sharp change when the tree turns color. 90s to 70s & we have orange leaves in the campground . I think its the first 40 degree nights that get it.
Just a note to remind everyone in range, there is a PARTY at the Peacock Opal mine today. BBQ & Live Music. I’ll be at the Kokopelli helping winterize besides the Opal eyes! See ya there, or not. You could buy one of my prospects if you can take advantage of it’s ability.
I sell Opal claims to dig your own opals on and millsites that you can camp on out of the camp ground. The people who sell fee digging won’t tell you there are options to paying every day unless you ask about me, Swordfish Mining as they are in the business of hosting day diggers.
I dont escort you onto to private property trying to get you here by saying it is public or take half your opal if you got lucky and it costs nothing a day when you own. Call for details.
I’ve had to keep up with site revisions and creations and deletions of entire webpages with a history I have to go to Archive to look at now. I have issues with statements of non fact stated as such or worse facts left out when it comes to “telling all”.
I live here & not just here to make a buck from somewhere else most of the year. Swordfish Mining’s information & more year round, besides the whole resident in a tiny town thing, fills my life. I don’t need any more karma points for giving free online advice to beginners in forums, even tho’ I do daily and I will always be a moderator at OpalholicsAnonymous as long as they will let me.
Do you know I have a gem silica & chrysocolla mine here for sale you could run a fee dig from? The Kspar and other varieties are listed on Esty for less than anybody else, even with the same stuff as they want 200 -400 bucks for a slab of the gem silica mixed in smokey quartz at the gift shop.
This is a private endevour, not corporate, or run from some mailbox or free website. It annoys me to no end when people online lie that they established a claim here when they have never come to erect a location monument as state law requires. Come meet me or at least call if you are even thinking of getting a place to dig of your own out on BLM land where the real laws apply.
Ive sold in gem & mineral shows for 20 plus years, granted a lot less after losing Leah. There is still flats of materials Im listing as I find time from MINING OPALS!
Since 1993, when I moved here after just coming to fee dig earlier, I have walked this entire place and know the ground. Every claim had corners tagged or put in by me for I found there were a lot of lazy people who never even looked or walked their own maps, then gave up. Ive seen almost every worthy prospect not locked up by a fee dig when the owners died or went away along with all the places I found on my own. Always with permission and I am very close to the owners at Opal Negra, Opal Queen and the Rainbow Ridge.
Do YOU want your own place you can use tools in the refuge and not pay? Yes, the refuge outlawed even hand tools such a a rake shovel hammer on both the Oregon and Nevada Wildlife refuges.
Call me because there is nobody else who is as familiar witht the ENTIRE district. yes somebody is good at copying books. Or call Scott Ryals of the Opal Negra if you don’t trust me, or Rainbow Ridge for a charector reference.
Time to dig, days are getting short.
The McKinney Fire is backing into my old service center in Yreka, where I was dispatching at Copco 2 Switching center. Now the Potter fire hit above where I first came to work in Oregon from Kings River to Lemolo PH and to the east at Windigo up against wilderness to Mt Thielson (The lightning Rod of the Cascades).
You seriously need a weather eye living with limited access.
Potter Fire https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/8291/
Windigo fire https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/8292/
These fires with any wind are going to run thru mostly clear cuts with blocks of second and 3rd growth with some mature stands across very broken volcanic landscape. The land of lodge poles that will run for miles and with beetle kill areas. I’m going to treasure my pictures from cruising around on my dirt bike.
In the spirit of nostalgia, you can have a quiet good time out there. New operators as a KOA and it IS the worlds only dinosaur shaped reservoir, that they know of. PS. There are huge German Brown, Rainbow, Hybrids & Mackinaw for the fisher folk from there to the ocean that the salmon come up to, Soda Springs R.
Remember all the big game & wildlife loves it when it grows back with border areas and grasslands shrub for awhile. My fiance was the assistant biologist for USFS at Toketee. Courting her I’d take her bundles of Tansy Ragwort (invasive species) for their dumpster from along the canal as i was sowing raspberries and wildlife sightings, like when the Turkeys made it up from Glide or an elk drown.
https://koa.com/campgrounds/lemolo-lake/