Switcheroo: Reasons Not to Direct Link Images Reason 27: Sometimes Nothing can be a real fool hand   People look at an auction like this, skim the words "160-Acre Arizona Gold Mining Claim Property" and all they can see is "160-Acre Arizona Gold . . . Property" and the low price. What do they get for their thousands of dollars? The right to hunt for gold on this 160 acres, which are still owned by someone else, or some government entity (in this case, the BLM). "This is a straight sale the winner of this auction wins the whole 160 Acre Gold Claim Property." Bullshit. They win—like I said before—nothing more than the right to hunt for gold on this 160 acres, which are still owned by someone else, or some government entity (in this case, the BLM). Hell, I'll let you hunt for gold on my land for hundreds, rather than thousands of dollars. Not only that, but I'll let you buy me a cooler full of beers, too—yes, I'm that generous! "There are big mining companies currently tesing this area for exploration." Wow, they're "testing" for "exploration"—could that be any more tentative? Finally, the scammer comes clean (which means, he provides a sentence he can point to later as proof of his openness): "This auction is for an unpatented association placer mining claim." No one knowledgeable about these matters would fall for a scam like this, but most people will have no idea what that means. All the bidders are thinking is, they're gonna get Land! And Gold! Possibly Girls! Maybe Chocolate! Unpatented Mining Claims in Arizona are not taxed and it only costs $125.00 to keep this entire claim every year, or you can perform 8 hours of maintenance to your claim and file a waiver with the BLM, and the cost would only be $10.00 with the BLM + the county fee's. The buy it now price is $9,999.00. So, it costs only $125 per year to file and maintain a claim . . . and he's willing to part with it for the low, low price of TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS. What a prince. Sure, people should know what they're buying, caveat emptor and all that. But it's still a scam. And hotlinking always sucks, but in the service of a scam it is especially egregious. Gold Dust Charlie has hotlinked two of my images of Nothing, Arizona—one of them featuring Wagner—as well as my text. People who view his auction need to know they're dealing with a scummy scammer. I think I'll direct his page viewers to an eBay page explaining gold claim scams: