Exclusive: ‘Gold Rush’ Parker Schnabel Rues Royalty Deal Made With Tony Beets
On tonight’s Gold Rush, 26-year-old miner Parker Schnabel is unhappy with the royalty deal he made with The Dutchman, Tony Beets. He explains it in detail in TV Shows Ace exclusive clip. He’s frustrated because once an agreement is struck with Tony, you can forget about tinkering with it after the fact.
And two months into the season, Schnabel is into his biggest financial gamble ever. Mud Mountain is the dice roll, but is it paying off? Luckily he is holding pocket aces, according to him in our clip below.
“We are not going to have a successful season unless both washplants get up and running.”
Will Big Red or Sluicifer deliver Parker the gold?
Explaining his situation, Schnabel says: ‘We have a plan and right now, [and] we’re gonna stick to it.”
Schnabel is deep into his most significant risk ever. He’s bet two and a half million opening ground at Mud Mountain, which he believes could pay out eight thousand ounces.
But rolling the dice on Mud Mountain has left Parker about 900 ounces down compared to this time last year. Luckily he’s holding pocket aces.
Parker says: “We’re not going to have a successful season unless both wash plants get up and running. The solution just got moved down to Ken Stewart’s ground, which is good. It’s fired up, and it’s sluicing and making money. It’s watching rocks; it’s doing its part
now. It’s just a matter of getting Big Red fired up at the airstrip, and we need to start getting some revenue in.”
The Beets Deal
The mine boss wants to pull 3 000 ounces from the airstrip ground lease from Parker’s frenemy Tony Beets and that
comes with a unique clause.
Schnabel explains: “The deal we’ve got with Tony is a little bit weird on the old royalty front. So like on the ground by the airstrip, it’s
fifteen percent on the first 1500 ounces, and then it goes up five percent every 1500 ounces after that per plant. I don’t understand the rationale behind it. Whatever. I’ve argued it for years [and] they [Beets] don’t budge on it, so I’m done talking to a wall about it.”
To work around paying the higher royalties, Parker has tasked his crew with swapping out the wash plants once they hit 1500
ounces.
He says that Tony’s thinking that Parker’s crew would never go to all the extra steps here to play musical wash plants. “But if that’s what he was thinking, he definitely doesn’t know us very well,” says foreman Mitch Blaschke.
Blaschke hit 1500 ounces with one plant last week. Now he has to mine another 1500 ounces to get Parker back up to the Mud
Mountain casino.
He says: “Our big push right now is to get Big Red over here, get it all set up [and] once it finishes here at the airstrip we’re
going to move Big Red over to Mud Mountain, you know, that’s where Brennan [Ruault] and I have done this so many times. We
had a really good system down well. Obviously, he [Brennan] isn’t here with us this year.”
As fans know, Ruault bolted from Schnabel’s crew and went over to work for Rick Ness.
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Gold Rush airs Friday at 8 PM ET/PT on Discovery.
In addition to watching the series on Discovery, viewers can check out new episodes each week on DiscoveryGO. Additionally, viewers can join the conversation on social media by using the hashtag #GoldRush.
