I had an idea a few years ago, that it might be fun to make a hobby that pays for itself and even makes me some money on the side. My whole life i had a deep fascination for gems, semi precious and precious, as well as natural crystal minerals. I collected them since my teenage years and now have a huge collection of many different types of great rocks. I realized that i should sell a few of the ones i have heaps in stock and start to refine my collection with more valuable specimens.
One day i was watching youtube and saw a video of people panning for gold. I remembered that i had always loved sapphires and had even given my wife a yellow sapphire as featured gem in an engagement ring.
FOSSECKING
I searched for how to fosseck for sapphires on youtube and watched a few videos, and then i searched my home state (N.S.W. Australia) for places where they are found. I found out that there was a area in northern N.S.W that was famous for having high quality sapphires and that there is public fossecking areas available to visit. I bought the sieves online and asked my girlfriend if she would enjoy taking a trip with me to go digging up sapphires. My darling girlfriend was very enthusiastic and we organized our first prospecting holiday. It was a 7 hour drive to Glen Innes, and we stayed at a medium quality motel. The next day we bought a miners right from the visitors center and went to a local fossecking area. It was a large portion of bushland with a small creek and many areas where people had left large excavations. We started digging an huge hole and washing some of the clay in the creek, we couldn't find anything and it was super hard work. The next day i saw a guy working about 100 meters away and went and chatted with him about how he was doing it, he was great and showed us how to sieve the bulk away and look for the tiny gemstones. We worked together along side eachother for a couple of days and we found several gemstones up too around 5 carats in size. We went out together for a dinner and he took us home and showed us a breakfast bowls full of sapphires, that he had dug up himself over a couple of years.
The picture below is my own of a cut Sapphire found by me.
The next trip we went to the same place and dug another area and found hundreds of gemstones including Sapphires, Zircons and Spinel. I was really getting the hang of how it is done. We found hundreds of carats of precious sapphires and here are some of them pictured below, these are my own photographs.
We ended up doing 4 Fossecking holidays over a couple of years and accumulating thousands of carats of precious sapphires.
I started to research having them faceted (cut and polished) and found out it can be very expensive, i tried a gem cutter from Thailand and it was a disaster with him taking months and doing a poor job. I tried the local lapidary club and an old man cut a few for us, where each one he cut we gave him one of a similar size. He did an excellent job and i was so delighted to finally have some precious gems ready for sale or to mount in jewelry.

It is a real satisfaction and pleasure to take a hobby from knowing nothing to where you can sell some of the results of your efforts. I have sold a few every year since and swapped some for other precious gems. I reckon i will save most until i retire so it can be a type of retirement fund to cash up a few each year, i also sell them to friends whenever they show an interest. Funny thing is that the retail value is 5-10 times the price i sell them for, because that is closer to the fair wholesale rate that jewelers buy them at.
If you collect gems and want to swap some i am interested in diversifying my collection, and if you make jewelry let me know and i will sell you some cheaper than you buy them elsewhere. I would like to buy a few bitcoins now and am contacting some auction houses to sell a few more from my collection.
How much fun can you have with a hobby, mine is too much fun.