Gold Rush: What Happens In Tony Beets' Gold Room?
Tony Beets, veteran gold miner and main cast member of Discovery's "Gold Rush," is notoriously protective about what goes on in his gold room, where all of the gold from the Beets family mine is processed. However, Beets broke his own golden rule in December 2022, and let Christo Doyle, host of "Gold Rush: The Dirt," take a peek inside the gold room and participate in the intricate clean-up operations.
Only family members (or those he trusts implicitly) are allowed inside of Beets' gold room. Additionally, only his daughter, Monika Beets, and family friend, Ruby Mahoney, are permitted to touch the gold. When asked why he chose the two women to operate the gold room, Beets admits the decision had nothing to do with Monika and Ruby's respective skill sets. "I don't care how good they are," Beets said in a clip shared by Discovery UK. "It's the people that you've got to trust."
Even the casual viewer of "Gold Rush" may be familiar with a gold room, which is where the gold in a mine is cleaned, processed, and separated from dirt and sand. Beets' gold room is a small building located on the claim, which houses a demagnetizer built by Ken Tatlow over 20 years ago. The cleanup process starts with all of the gold-filled dirt being fed into the demagnetizer, which separates the iron from the gold. The gold must then be washed and sifted through by hand before being sent through a shaker table, which further separates the gold from whatever dirt is left.
Why so secretive, Tony Beets?
In a behind-the-scenes look at the gold room shared by Discovery UK, Monika Beets explains that the length of the entire demagnetization process from start to finish depends on the coarseness of the gold and how many pails they have on deck. The gold is then sprayed with a power washer and sifted using a pan and screen. This step is necessary to further separate the dirt from the fine, powdery gold found in Canada's Yukon region. The third step calls for the miner to "jig the gold," as described by Beets, through a large green gold shaker table. The table utilizes both water and gravity to further separate the fine dirt and sand from the equally fine gold.
After starting his career as a machine operator, Tony Beets is reportedly the richest miner on "Gold Rush," and now runs the Eureka Creek Mine, one of the largest gold-mining operations in the Klondike. But, why has he been so secretive about the operations behind his gold room?
According to the "Gold Rush" star, the lack of access to the gold room is a normal practice in most gold mines. "It's just not fair to the employees to see all that gold," Beets explains to "The Dirt" host Christo Doyle, though he acknowledges that his employees likely still see the gold on TV. "But a normal place and a normal gold mine, it's not fair to the employee," Beets continued. "[The employee] gets a $10,000 check this month, and there goes the owner who walks away with a million or two. Right. They forget to see what it cost us and what little that is left of it."