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tmaring
Penny Collector Member
USA
302 Posts |
 Posted - 01/08/2008 : 09:14:46
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quote:
Originally posted by Ardent Listener
Tmaring, I noticed that the store at your site is closed. Any plans to reopen it in the near future?
Ah that! After the toadies that stole the copyrights from the Professor's family sicced their orc minions on me I had to shut down the only part of my fantasy coining operation that was even close to paying its costs. Hosting the online store was then costing too much to justify the pittance it was bringing in, so now all sales are by check or barter or paypal. So, no plans for the forseeable future to bring it back, and coining work is strictly on a hobby scale as I am now working as an exploration geologist in the field about three weeks each month. That will likely continue as long as gold and uranium stay high.
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Tom Maringer
Shire Post Mint
Springdale, Arkansas |
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horgad
1000+ Penny Miser Member
USA
1641 Posts |
Posted - 01/08/2008 : 09:31:37
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"That will likely continue as long as gold and uranium stay high."
I wish that I had that kind of job security. 
Could I pay you to find me a gold mine to buy?  |
Edited by - horgad on 01/08/2008 11:24:33 |
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fiatboy
Administrator
912 Posts |
Posted - 01/08/2008 : 09:40:32
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quote:
as I am now working as an exploration geologist in the field about three weeks each month.
That's so awesome! (And let me know if you have any internships opening up.)
Be sure to keep us abreast of any pertinent info you would be allowed to tell us from an insider's point of view! 
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"Bart, it's not about how many stocks you have, it's about how much copper wire you can get out of the building." --- Homer Simpson |
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tmaring
Penny Collector Member
USA
302 Posts |
Posted - 01/08/2008 : 14:24:33
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quote:
Originally posted by horgadCould I pay you to find me a gold mine to buy?
Heh heh! Actually, that's kinda what we do! As you might imagine, the recent sustained rise in metals prices has made many folks want to get into the minerals business. The problem is that relatively few of them know what they're doing. I'm working with a group of geologists and we do contract field work evaluating mineral claims. The idea is that the information we gather and the conceptual model we develop increases the value of the property from whatever it was to a new and (hopefully) higher level.
It costs money to get a seat in this game though. A typical gold exploration property of four or five square miles on BLM land in (say) Nevada might cost something like $50,000 to stake, and another $30K every September to maintain the lease. Then you might have two geologists spend a summer season crawling all over it taking samples. It costs about $30 per pop for an assay lab to run EACH sample, and a typical sampling grid might encompass a thousand samples. So there's another $30K just in lab expenses, not to mention whatever you're paying your geologists, (and the going rate is pretty high these days) plus whatever they can manage to eat, their motels, and lots of gas for driving around. So, now you've got at least $100k into the thing and you're really only just starting to understand the geology. Background gold assays might run about 1ppb (part per billion), interestingly anomalous values might start at 10ppb to 50ppb. Actual ore grade material might run 700ppb or better. Above 2000ppb (2 grams/tonne) you're into real "pay dirt".
After a winter of trying to make sense of the data comes drilling. Hopefully all this reconnaissance work has identified a target area and you have some sort of conceptual model that you can sketch on paper, or describe with a bunch of arm-waving. You still don't have any ore, so now you need to get a drilling rig on site and find out what's really down there. Of course, this is federal land so you have to apply for permits to build the roads for the drill rigs and whatnot. Then you have to have a cultural and biological survey done to be sure you're not endangering an archaeological site or rare species. And finally you have to post a bond to insure that you reclaim all your disturbance back to the original surface when you're finished.
An RC (reverse circulation) drill rig can go about 2000 feet down and costs about $25/foot. A core rig can go deeper, and returns nicer samples, but costs more like $50/foot. You could get really lucky and hit something hot with your first hole, but generally you need at least three holes to define a plane, and five holes just to BEGIN to define a curved surface. So at $50k to $100K per pop you're looking at an initial drilling budget of something like half a million dollars. Call it three-quarters of a mil by the time all is said and done, because SOMEthing always goes wrong. What you now have for all that money is a sheaf of data.
If the data is good, you now have a good chance of making a deal on the property. You could sell it outright to a mining company, or cut some kind of a percentage deal with them, or even get a bunch of your own investors and try to gear up to mine it yourself. The thing is... the potential payoff can be HUGE... these sediment-hosted disseminated-gold orebodies can hold a million or more ounces of gold in them. Depending on the depth and grade, recovery costs might be $200 to $500 per ounce, so it's possible to found an empire on such wealth as that. The big players in this game... Barrick, Newmont, Queestake etc... have all done exactly that.
But, this game is not for the faint of heart! It's like buying lottery tickets that cost a million apiece for a two percent shot at a billion dollar payoff. Yes, the average return looks great, but you could shoot your wad in a big hurry and never find a thing, or you could get lucky your first time out! Fortunately I'm just in on the salaried consultant end of the thing! |
Tom Maringer
Shire Post Mint
Springdale, Arkansas |
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jorhyne
Penny Pincher Member
174 Posts |
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1 Ounce fine copper ingot?
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