Updated Details About Our GTAO VLOGS Store Plans & Items

Why We Have A GTAOVLOGS.com Online Store and More Details

20 January 2020.  Hello and thanks for your visit friends!  In this second blog post of 2020 we will be diving deeper into why we have an online store, possible ideas and plans for more products, details about the items we currently have for sale, and the account of negative situation with recent pay dirt buyer.  From the start of creating videos for GTAO VLOGS about our gold prospecting and potential mining, outdoors adventures, metal detecting, and other topics, we needed a way to involve viewers if they want.  Naturally, the more gold, silver, platinum, old coins, mineral specimens, meteorites, unique old bottles, relics, jewelry, and various finds we recover the more we have to offer our viewers in the form of items for sale and or items to giveaway to supportive viewers.  For example, if we had a functional small scale machine mining placer gold operation, we would be able to run much more material, without killing ourselves, and recover much more placer gold to sell in pay dirts, to use in giveaways, and to be made in miner’s buttons, tokens, or jewelry and these types of unique items.  Well, we are not there yet.  Eventually and as soon as possible, we want a desert location first and a mountain location second where we have a permitted and seasonal small machine placer mining operations probably portable and break down type units that we can trailer to the site and away when we leave.  We want to work one step at a time into larger operations, expand the distances and places we travel to for our videos, and also improve, build, and buy new and different tools and gear.  As well, we want to learn how to and improve the quality of our family friendly content and be more efficient with the amount of time production and editing the videos takes.

Why We have a Store?

While you’re welcome to read the extended version which follows, to be brief we created our online GTAO VLOGS store and our shops on Ebay and Etsy to sell our unique items and some of our best finds from the adventures, travels, prospecting and give interested viewers ways to “Prospect Along With Us” yet in the comfort of their homes wherever they live and raise funds to cover some expenses and to continue and to grow GTAO VLOGS.

Seven or eight years years ago when I started gold prospecting, we didn’t go out very often per year but maybe two or three trips and usually two or three days each and great amounts of gold we did not recover.  We made the trips around the facility work as and when we could.  Now, these days I have been to many more areas and gained quite a bit more experience and perspective yet great amounts of gold we still do not recover.  Such is the way prospecting is unless and until you find that Lost Ledge of Gold or that, overlooked by the old timers, Placer Bench with good values even for the hand tool small scale operator.  Every trip, every new tool or repair, every can of food, …you get the idea everything costs money.  Until we locate or can purchase the rights to ground and create the ability to scale up the operations, a little at first, from hand tools to small machine mining, it’s very difficult work, usually harsh climates, and it’s very hard to process enough volume of material to cover the various costs plus.  Most viewers appreciate these realities and understand why we have our store and other ways to fundraise.  We know that helping us financially is the last thing many of our viewers can afford and we appreciate that, that’s fine, and understandable.  We understand completely.  The unique thing about the supporter sites is that if a viewer doesn’t want to buy something from us in return for their contribution, there are $1 and $3 levels per month and the idea of “crowd funding” can be a powerful thing.  There are also many ways, for example, subscribing to our channels, watching our videos, adding comments in the comment sections, up-voting our videos, and sharing our content which are FREE of cost and extremely helpful to us.  Also, we have viewers in various parts of the country some far from any “gold fields”, many occupied with their jobs, lives, kids, family events, and many things and these viewers can buy some of authentic products, support our channel, and we ship the items to their front door.  They can pan for real American placer gold with our genuine products, from the places they see in our videos, like our 1/4 pound pay dirts and or our dry washing concentrates in the comfort of their home, backyard, or garage and their purchases help support our channel directly!  They can run these materials through their home recirculating setups, spiral wheels, Gold Cubes, or Blue Bowls and prospect along with us and recover some Shiny Gold!  Also, they might use our products to test DIY equipment or for panning demonstrations, club events, or other ideas.  For the above mentioned reasons, because we don’t have piles of our own capital, because almost everything is expensive these days, and because we have always operated within a very small “budget”, we seek financial support from viewers on Patreon and Subscribestar supporter sites, we seek partnerships with small and large sponsors for our channels (currently on Bitchute, Steemit, & YouTube platforms), and we sell items online and in our own online store.  If you can help financially please do and if you cannot that’s perfectly fine.  Thank you.  Also, it’s fun to share the adventures with our viewers, we want to improve the quality of our content and expand the places to travel to for the adventures, the camping, the metal detecting, and the mineral and meteorite hunting.  We do these things, all of them, to fundraise so we can grow and continue our channel and our videos, travels and adventures, and so we can continue the search for that unknown, lost, or forgotten Ledge of Gold in the distant desert floor covered by only a few inches of fine blow sand.  

Possible Ideas and Plans for More Products

As we proceed with GTAO VLOGS and encounter different treasure hunts, do different types of placer and even hard rock mineral mining, and make or use our own DIY gadgets, tools, and machines, some of these items may be desirable to our viewers and we want to put them on our store for sale, use them in giveaways, and or rewards to supportive viewers.  Also, we can see where some simple written “guides” in paper or digital form about various topics like geology, metallurgy, beach detecting, etc. might be interesting and helpful to some of our viewers.  Another area of products to develop and have in our store is “Merch” in the form of hats, shirts, stickers, sweatshirts, etc.  These items are designed by us, made and shipped by experts direct to our viewers and we don’t have to warehouse the items.  We welcome the ideas and suggestions from our viewers on these ideas!  What types of gadgets, tools, etc. would you like to see in our store that you can’t find in other places for reasonable prices?  What written “Guides” are you interested in?  Do you have cool or funny ideas for unique Merch designs that you would like to see in our shop?  We encourage all the involvement, suggestions, and questions from our viewers so please reach out to us by emailing Aaron at gtao@protonmail.com with your feedback?  Thank you!

A second general category we want to have in our store and aside from our own items is products from our channel’s sponsors.  These products would not be items that we hold in inventory but could be purchased through our shop and then shipped to the viewer by the manufacturers for at this time we don’t have the room or desire to hold unsold inventory or take responsibility for it.  So possibly the sponsor(s) would have a slight discount available to our viewers for products purchased through our online GTAO VLOGS store.  As well, “Gift Cards” to our sponsors online stores and their “Merch” may be great ideas for our sponsors to make available to our viewers.  We are seeking partnerships with product or service sponsors related to all types of gold prospecting and mining, metal detecting, hand tools, larger mining equipment and smaller earth moving machines, outdoors activity, recreational vehicles and campers, portable power tools and generators, camping, hunting, fishing, off-roading, and, in general, travel, travel gear and clothing.  If you are an interested sponsor we would love to work together and hear from you so please email Aaron at gtao@protonamail.com.   The help is greatly appreciated, thank you!

Specific Details About the Current GTAO VLOGS Store Items

What you find in our store at this time:

  1. Dry Washing Concentrates (No Added Gold). Please read all the details in our GTAOVLOGS STORE
  2. 1/4 Pound Pay Dirts (Gold Added). Please read all the details in our GTAOVLOGS STORE
  3. Bulk Amounts of Pay Dirt Material (No Added Gold). Please read all the details in our GTAOVLOGS STORE
  4. Custom Orders can also be arranged for your own items and or pay dirts.  Please read all the details in our GTAOVLOGS STORE

Please note:  We do not and will not offer returns or refunds for these products and require that you, the buyer, read all the information we have provided before make a purchase and that you ask any questions before you make a purchase.  Also, for any order, if you want a known amount of gold added to the product(s) or included separately in a plastic vial email us and we can make a custom listing for you no problem.  Thanks again very much to all our Viewers, Subscribers, Sponsors, and Supporters!  The support really helps us continue, and even, grow GTAO VLOGS.  THANK YOU!

We have had friends from YouTube and other viewers ask for or about our Bulk Quantity Pay Dirts (3.5, 7, 14, & 24 pound amounts) and we have had some available for sale just recently in our online store.  We are always COMPLETELY upfront about what to expect or not expect from our unwashed and unsalted items and in particular with the Raw Unconcentrated Pay Dirts but also the Dry Washing Concentrates, there is NO GUARANTEED GOLD in them.  It’s very important to mention the LARGE difference between an “unconcentrated raw (unsearched) pay dirt” and our “Dry Washing Concentrates”.  The Raw Bulk Pay Dirts are ONLY classified to less than 1/4 of an inch, they are from the placer locations you see in our videos, and they are in our BEST estimation from the BEST locations, digs, or layers where we have sampled and recovered gold.  Still, they are completely different than our Dry Washing “CONCENTRATES” as they are not concentrated and only classified (screened through a 1/4 screen to remove the waste rock).  On the other hand with the Dry Washing Concentrates, we might go through 75, 100, 150, 200 pounds of material to get ONE BAG of our Dry Washing Concentrates and still these are not guaranteed to have gold because we have NOT added gold to them.  What gold you recover is what was in that location and run though and caught in the dry washer.  This fact about our dry washing concentrates has another HUGE advantage and it’s that you, the viewers, are prospecting along with us and when and if you find really great gold in a certain bag you can send us photos and or ask for more from that particular area!  We label the bags with codes to keep track of where they come from exactly.  This helps out a lot because then we know where to go back to next based upon your results from processing the material and this wouldn’t work if we salted (added gold) these bags with gold.  So, I hope this fully explains the difference between our Bulk Raw Pay Dirts and our Dry Washing Concentrates but always please ask any and all questions by email to Aaron at gtao@protonmail.com you have PRIOR to your purchase.  At this time, ONLY our 1/4 pounder pay dirts have guaranteed added placer gold and these bags sell for $5 each and less if you buy larger quantities (1/4lb Pay Dirts).  They are a fun size and can be panned one bag at a time or divided up further as you want.  The 1/4 pounder bags fit nicely in a standard 10 inch gold pan and like I wrote they are a fun size, they are the real deal from different placer gold localities, and they are unsearched and unwashed …so they will get your panning water dirty.

Do We Get Complaints and or Praise About GTAO VLOGS Store Items?

It may or may not surprise you that we have had a customer order the Bulk, Raw, Unwashed (Unsearched), & UNSALTED (in other words …No Gold Added to the Dirt) Pay Dirts and …then complain that there wasn’t as much gold as he expected or maybe wanted.  This buyer is probably a good guy, seemed cool at first to us, and probably just didn’t fully read about the item before making his purchase.  He did recover gold from the pay dirt, which we were glad to hear about, and he explained that he had processed the material four separate times.  But about a month later he asked for a FULL refund and when we wrote back saying, “No” to his request he took the dispute to PayPal and made a “Claim” against us.  He wrote the product was “not as described” even though it was and is fully, fully described and accurate.  Then he went on to write that he will “let everyone he possibly can know that we rip people off and that we are dishonest cheats”.  Again he demanded a full refund of his $40.  That pay dirt came from a 5 hour drive away from my house in the last large dig that my dad and I made on our river claims.  Then I stored it and when he bought his 14 pounds, I added an extra pound to make it 15 pounds (as we always do) boxed it up carefully and shipped it as fast as I could once we got home …a few days after his order.  We were visiting family for thanksgiving when he placed his order.  Aside from EVERYTHING else, the shipping costs us for that order $13.  So that’s $40-$13=$27 …and that’s before PayPal fees.  So, now this guy not only demands a FULL REFUND, threatens to “tell the world that we are cheats”, makes a claim against us with PayPal, but also, he writes that we sell “back yard dirt”!   …Back yard dirt and we are dishonest cheaters?  Exactly the opposite is the truth.  After a few messages back and forth, the “claim” against us with PayPal, and several days, I gave the dude his full refund and the whole ordeal ended up costing us, aside from everything else, $13 in shipping.  Fantastic, isn’t it?  Yes, there are people out there like this and it is discouraging but just the way it is, right?

Probably without even fully comprehending the actual costs involved, not only do some buyers expect you to make very, very little “profit” or they will claim that you’re practically a criminal but some expect you to lose money when they don’t read about the item or ask a question before they make their purchase and some individuals want a seller to lose money on every transaction or they will say you’re ripping people off!  Most of these people are either very stupid, envious, fearful that we may achieve a level of success in our operations, or are so called “competitors” or they are the friends of these “competitors”.  We prefer cooperation and positivity and some people are dead set on competition and negativity.  It is what it is.  Yes, we sell things to raise money.  By the way, email any questions to gtao@protonmail.com before making a purchase, thank you.  This is not why we have an online store.  We have an online store to fundraise for the continuation of GTAO VLOGS.  We do not have an online store to cheat people and would rather they keep their money than be upset or dissatisfied with our products.

As well, some pay dirt buyers are told by the pay dirt corporations and their shill “pay dirt reviewers” who are sent “special bags” (for free) to be reviewed online, as if all that seller’s bags are “special bags” too, that they should expect “washed” (searched for gold) pay dirt which isn’t genuine pay dirt, to expect a Return on their Investment or an ROI, and that the pay dirt seller is basically a criminal if they seek to actually make a profit after getting the product, packaging, labeling, marketing, and paying internet selling fees and shipping, etc.  Even though all our Concentrates & Pay Dirts are UNWASHED (in other words …Unsearched for gold and contain ALL the minus 1/4 inch materials including organics & elements), we have had a few customers complain that our products, “make their panning water dirty”.  Well, what can you say about that response?  Imagine that unsearched and unwashed actual real pay dirt from actual placer gold locations, whether in the desert or the mountains, will be “dirty dirt” and make your panning water dirty?  Imagine that?  Many pay dirt buyers have only “experienced” products that are “washed for them” and this is now normal to them.  We know of at least one pay dirt seller who talks in ads like “washing” the dirt is a feature of the pay dirt and doesn’t explain to the novice panners that this mean the dirt was “SEARCHED” for gold during that “washing”.  All of our pay dirts and concentrates are unwashed (unsearched for gold) and real from the places the viewers see in our videos.

We can only recall one online “pay dirt reviewer” who actually EVERY video spoke about the various costs associated with actually prospecting for gold yourself.  The various costs a pay dirt buyer doesn’t have when they get their pay dirt …in their mailbox.  This pay dirt reviewer always stressed the difference between small scale, hand tool, actual gold prospectors and miners and the pay dirt corporations who maybe take a photo next to a river with a shovel in their hand and a sluice in the water but buy their LOW PURITY gold from commercial machine mining operations and then value that gold in their products as though it is 999.9% pure, 24 karat gold to get their phony ROI.

As well, some buyers have personal ulterior motives for purchasing our items and providing negative reviews and there are the “competitor” PayDirt corporations and, in some cases, their shills, paid directly or unpaid but paid with products, who are out to purchase our items and discredit them and us however they can including completely lying outright.  This is the reality of things and we are not surprised by the words and actions of some of these people.  Fortunately the vast majority of our customers are good people who appreciate all the details we are providing and our various products.

What we can do at GTAO VLOGS is present our items as thoroughly as possible which we do and have done from the beginning.  As is written in our online store our goal is 100% customer satisfaction while helping to raise much needed funds… yet the more reasonable question at times, unfortunately, is do we expect 100% of our customers are rational, reasonable, fair, and honest.  Are 100% of our customers understanding of the details, travel, costs, time spent on location, dealing with the weather and hazards, and the work involved in locating, collecting, selling, packaging, having a website, and shipping our products?  The answer is clearly, “No”.   Although it would be great, we will not be able to satisfy every buyer and we will not offer refunds or returns.  Thanks for your understanding and support.

Generally, we get great reviews and high praise from our regular customers and monthly supporters on Patreon.  They enjoy receiving in their mailboxes and working with our genuine and unique American Pay Dirts and Dry Washing Concentrates and the buyers are glad to be helping GTAO VLOGS at the same time.  Our most popular items are the 1/4lb pay dirts and our Dry Washing Concentrates and for us the Dry Washing Concentrates processed by our viewers are most helpful because the viewers are essentially prospecting along with us and can alert us to good places to go back to as soon as possible.  The Bulk Raw Pay Dirts are genuine from the places we state they are from and they can be fun panning material, material to run through your setups at home for testing, or maybe to use for making your own pay dirts.  If you are interested in our popular 1/4 Pounder Pay Dirt bags and or our Genuine Dry Washing Concentrates shipped MONTHLY TO YOUR MAILBOX, join us on Patreon and choose the items you want as rewards or arrange for a custom monthly order?  You may also want to join us as a monthly supporter on Subscribestar which also helps us to make, plan, & film more trips and adventures and we have a monthly goal of support there which will help us make 1-2 trips per month.  We greatly appreciate the support, thank you!  As well you can support us for free by viewing our videos (YouTube) (Steemit) (Bitchute) adding your questions, comments, or feedback in the comments section, adding an upvote (Like), Subscribing to our channels, and by Sharing our videos to social media or other video platforms.  Thanks very much everyone!  Stay well, happy hunting, and until next time!  Aaron GTAOVLOGS

Please add your feedback, suggestions, and comments or questions below?

 

2 thoughts on “Updated Details About Our GTAO VLOGS Store Plans & Items”

  1. Feel free to let me know and if it’s a Known YouTuber, I will delete and block them forever and probably keep a real sharp eye on them. The gold community there is tight and not much slips by us. Cheers AARON
    HD shovel Ed

    1. Hi Ed and thanks for reading and adding your thoughts my friend. I really think if the buyer was honest he would just say, “yeah, I didn’t read the description” and plus many pay dirt buyers have conceptions about what pay dirt is or isn’t or the returns they should get and most seem to calculate the “returns” based on the total cost and they seem to think I get to ship things for free. And many don’t seem to be aware and aren’t reminded (because many pay dirt corporations don’t prospect for gold and same for some reviewers) of all that goes into getting the pay dirts and he wanted to discredit that notion by bringing up the idea that my products are just “back yard dirt”. Anyway, I’m not repeating or saying his name and he is not a known YouTuber that we know or I know. From what I saw he maybe has videos about video games or soccer or something. This is the first time such a thing has happened I think because we so fully lay out all the details of what we have for sale. Also, we have stellar record with PayPal, shipping right away, etc. With my post I wanted to bring up several things including positive and this ordeal. It’s not a huge deal or a lot of money but we don’t try to fundraise to lose money, smh. Hey cheers and thanks again Ed. Aaron

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