Claim Sale Options

[EMac]

This is kinda tempting just because; I'm highly ignorant of what it would take to reopen a gold lode mine though: GRE Claim Sale

[EMac]

Up front, this is all academic; I have no intent to purchase this claim or any others in the next year. I would certainly vet any claims I intend to buy with trusted folks here!

That stated, let's dive in a bit more, and I'll play a bit of devil's advocate.

Aside from the high prices, what are the red flags visible in the ad? I look at the ads in ICMJ, and $200k can be pretty cheap, so the prices can't be the only indicator. At $1k, that's covered by less than an ounce of gold; it would be sad if there weren't that available, but it is certainly plausible as well. That's ignoring what it would take to re-open the mine as well. That's why I say it's tempting just because...it's a really small capital investment. The due diligence I do for a $1k investment looks a hell of a lot different than one for $10k. Might just mean it's easier to sucker me out of a grand though....

I did see Clay Diggins post up some salient points in another forum about the purpose of them staking claims (selling claims, not mining), but that has me wondering as well. I can name 2 organizations immediately like this that have no real interest in mining the minerals, but just want to sell the claims. If this is as forbidden as it's being portrayed as, why isn't anyone pushing the issue with authorities?

To me the biggest dislike is that they appear to oversell the values present, and then state elsewhere the caveats that they don't do any sampling or assaying. This seems to be backed up by a couple anecdotal stories, but as someone who analyzes data for trends, I would want a valid sampling of their customer population before making any conclusions based off a handful of data points. An A+ BBB rating provides a little of that. Frankly, I can't find anything worthwhile saying something's amiss with these folks. No follow up to the story or evidence of legal action is very telling.

Surely there are scam artists out there, but also surely not every seller of claims is a n'er do well. I have yet to see someone post up that any organization selling claims is above board. That alone strikes me as odd; I can't help but notice the stark contrast between how illegal this is purported to be against how many years the organizations have been doing this activity.

While I'm all for staking my own claim(s), I'm certainly not opposed to buying if the situation is right. Buying a producing, patented claim one day that I also live on sounds sublime! Isn't the bottom line caveat emptor?