no gold or diamonds in my childhood, amber did the trick though. From dirt cheap to mildly expensive, yet you'll never leave empty. Some people do it as business, some just as occasional hobby. It seems that any meaningful private commercial operation of digging, selling and jewelry producing is still mostly illegal today as it was back then in USSR, yet it have been a pretty booming business in Russia and Ukraine (and probably Poland, though can't say anything about amber legal regime there). Today's "Amber rush" in Ukraine https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-21/illegal-amber-mining-...