Season 5 premiere of Gold Rush : 1) Dave Turin and the Dodge brothers are gonna kick major ass! Instantly became my favorite team. 2) Parker trying too hard. Wanting to double his record from last year seems more like ego than reasonable progress. 3). Almost felt sorry for Todd when none of his old crew wanted to work with him again. But he has no one to blame but himself. 4). Tony Beets! This guy is nuts. Worth watching the show just for him alone.
I used to think that fat guy with the 3 pretty daughters was a lazy big lump. He never does any of the manual hard work. However my estimate of him has gone up a lot on the mental side. 1.He has a whole library of old time gold mining maps which he uses. 2. He tests out the ground with a small rocker before spending out the big money. 3. The daughters will attract in some young enthusiasts about now when they are needed. He has brains. The brawn is employable any time. Most of the rest are particularly clueless but may get lucky. And talking of Russia - worth considering.
I get a kick out of the ones who are overjoyed at finding diamonds while looking for gold. They think those tiny diamonds are worth big money. They aren't.
That was the Hoffman team in season 4. Todd somehow became convinced that there was better opportunity to find gold in some South American jungle than in Alaska. The thing is, the land they leased was cleaned out by illegal miners but for some reason good ol' Todd never conveyed this info to the land owner, therefore giving the impression that his crew were incompetent miners and cementing the conclusion that he is an incompetent leader. Add to that the gold stolen by papa Jack Hoffman (The Hoffmans are the only team where the camera crew isn't allowed to view the gold count) and their entire season was a bust: a few ounces of gold and some diamond chips.
Good segment on the Yukon gold rush http://www.cbsnews.com/news/gold-rush-turning-mushroom-hunting-into-gold-in-the-yukon/
How did Tony Beets know Parker wasn't using hydraulic riffles? A) Telepathy. B) Deep insight into the brains of teenagers in a hurry to do something. C) Beets has a spy in Parker's crew.
Diamonds are worthless if you don't belong to the diamond monopoly. Good luck trying to resell that diamond ring. Hoffman was too stupid to realize that.