User Reviews

All 7 seasons are good, they struggle, they fail, they find good jade now and then. The family love is warming and even includes the immature son, they know he will mature sooner or later. Lovely scenery, great jade and the big bonus with introducing the wonderful character Scrappy Larry (Larry Noel on facebook). Give him his own tv-show!

I don't know how to put this delicately, but I stopped watching the show because I felt there was a certain animosity towards their business partner Alan and the Chinese buyers. There was an episode where Alan was flying in with six potential buyers from China. There was a lot of griping and complaining and someone mentions, "Alan's bringing six Chinese!" That statement felt really weird to me. Was it that hard to say, "Alan is bringing six potential clients/buyers." Later you see Claudia's dad wearing a hat with an eagle holding confederate flags and it starts to kind of make sense. I don't know. It was a little off-putting.

I've been watching this for 7 seasons now. And it's entertaining, for what it is. But as far as any of them having a clue about what they're doing, that's a BIG NO! They're still making mistakes in year 7 that they were making in year 1. They work in the wilderness and every 'parts run' run is a $5k helicopter ride. Someone with common sense would stock basic parts, right? Not these guys. Example: They need to replace a burned out alternator. It's a couple hundred dollar part and they should always have a backup. The parts house has 2. They order 1 that requires a plane charter + a $5k (1100km) helicopter ride to the airport to pick it up. Plus, they had vehicle breakdowns on day 1 because they didn't inspect the vehicles and do routine maintenance on them after last season. Their son even commented '"this hasn't been cranked in 8 months". And they don't even know what real jade looks like. Last year they had a bunch of 'jade' for the buyer to look at and most of it was a look-alike stone (not jade). This is a TV Show set. Not an actual mining operation. Even their son admitted this season that they had only been doing it for 8 years (the duration of the TV show). At the end of the day, I enjoy it. But I understand it's just Reality TV and not 'reality'.