The True Cost Of Silver

Note that finding cost is a major contributor to high prices. Exxon has about 360B in revenue but only 35B in profit. They literally have armies of scientists combing the world for new sources of supply. Hence, even if Exxon were non-profit, we would see at best perhaps a 10-20% decrease in fuel costs. In practice, though, I think most not for profit companies lose in efficiency what they gain by sacrificing the profit. Hence, if the federal government took over oil production I doubt we'd see any significant decrease in cost.

Ever hear of The Comstock Lode? That was the biggest silver strike ever and practically all of it was from pure silver ore mines.

These days, most silver does come as a by-product from copper ore processing but there are still some silver ore mines. The Hecla Mining Company in Idaho produces both silver and gold ores, which are then processed into metal.

No, me neither. If we think about it, though, there is 3x as much Earth under water as there is above water so there could be some HUGE silver and gold deposits out there that have never been found because finding them is too difficult. Much better technology could help fix that. If we can drill for oil in deep water, we ought to be able to figure out how to mine there as well.

Further down the road, we have a HUGE resource orbiting the Earth. It is only 1/6 the mass of the Earth but it is 100% dry land, so is only somewhat smaller than the dry part of the Earth. Mining on the moon should be feasible because the moon should be similar to the Earth in geologic terms, there is a lot of solar energy available, and we should find water, oxygen, iron, and many other useful things for building lunar cities and mining complexes.

After that come the asteroids between Mars and Jupiter. Imagine finding an asteroid that weights about a billion tons and contains a few % silver or gold! That would be some SERIOUS PM tonnage!

I think of things like this whenever I read a web site that claims that we are running out of silver or gold or some other resource. We're not. What we are running out of is the stuff that is easiest to get at. There are still HUGE supplies of most elements available to us if we will just get after them.

Earth faces destruction by asteroid hit tuesday
Space PM mining co miscalculated when steering it to earth

Put your head between your legs and KYAG.

This is funny.

I was just getting into the mood of imagining sitting there with the girl, wondering:

"Where the heck is the Moon?"

When I was kid in Nevada, I used to go hiking and would pass quartz with veins of Silver all the time. It was common. So Common that we had a rock garden in Fallon that was full of veined quartz because my grandma thought it was pretty. We also had some small quantities of gold veined Quartz but Gramps kept that in the garage because it was still illegal to own Gold at the time.

jmkendall: I have been to the Eldorado Canyon mine in NV. Quite interesting. First time for me in an underground mine. It used to produce gold as well as silver. It is a tourist destination now.

I have also seen the Super Pit in Western Australia. So far, that mine has produced over 1000 tons of gold. It is open cut. The hole is two miles long, half a mile wide and over 1000 feet deep.

It is easy to find the hole on Google maps.

Two problems with the "true" price of au and ag:

1) As has been pointed out, they are often by products of copper and other metals. Depending on how your cook your books, the price can be anything from cheap to free.

2) Even if a mine produces only au or ag, when prices rise, production moves to the lower grade areas of the mine, raising costs. The better ores are saved for when prices fall again.