The King of the Klondike is ready to go all in.
Is the old man out of his mind?
To find out for ourselves, we asked Beets a few questions before Friday’s debut.
‘Gold Rush’ star Tony Beets.Phil Zimmerman/Discovery Channel
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: That’s a crazy amount of equipment you have.
How much land has yet to be excavated for gold?
TONY BEETS: Oh, s—.
We probably have 500 acres if not 1000 that hasn’t been excavated.
We drill and decide which places are worthwhile digging up.
We approach it by digging for holes across the land and see if a pattern appears.
If so, we start to dig and uncover all of the gold.
I think we have a lot of gold out there.
As long as we have the water licenses to mine, we can keep on going.
If so, we should be mining here for 30 years.
There are 5,000 to 10,000 ounces out there easy.
What have you seen during the pandemic?
Are amateurs coming out of the woodworks, thinking they can dig for gold just like you?
There are the odd ones showing up, but not that many amateurs are coming up to the Yukon.
It costs so much money to get started these days.
A small guy coming in will have a hard time getting started unless they have some cash.
To be serious, you better have $5 or $10 million bucks to make it happen.
This isn’t a hobby that you’ve got the option to just pick up.
If they paid me enough, any time!
When this show ever ends, are you planning to announce something like, “I never liked gold?
Platinum was always my shiny metal of choice.”
Gold is always my metal of choice.
It’s a lot easier to get ahold of gold than platinum.
Platinum used to be higher in price than gold.
But that’s no longer the case.
So I’m all for gold.
The 12th season ofGold Rushpremieres Friday at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Discovery.
Watch a sneak peek above.
