Originally Posted by
MileageAddict
The envelope from Alaska arrived today; greatly pleasing my son. Inside was a small bag with about an ounce of dirt. We dumped it on to a paper plate and carefully sifted it around. Lo and behold! We found GOLD! Not much, a few tiny flakes that would equal about a quarter grain of rice but that certainly was enough to get the kid think he struck paydirt!!! Using tweezers, we places the gold flakes into a little plastic box for him to save.
30 minutes of entertainment for $1.23. ^
My pouch of dirt arrived yesterday. As I do not have any children, and my wife just rolled her eyes, I did not have anyone to share the joy with. So the dirt is actually still in its little baggie. I'll have to remember the paper plate trick, since I'm not about to send off for the $80 gold panning kit.
I actually enjoyed reading through the pamphlet/catalog that came with the dirt. The personal testimonials were pretty amusing. It seems that some people out there take their dirt-sifting very seriously. Also, I have never before in my life received an invitation to spend $1700 on a 51-pound bucket of dirt.
The other interesting (to me) thing was that Felix did not use either of my 2 41-cent stamps. In fact, the envelope that the dirt arrived in only required 1 41-cent stamp, and it was not one of the ones that I had sent. So it looks like ol' Felix is raking in a 41-cent profit on his free samples.
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