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SPOT PRICE PER TROY OUNCE $4,024.76 AUD 1 oz

$2,686.93 USD 1 oz

17-October-2024 8:16 am
Exchange Rate : USD -> AUD - 0.6656

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[davsgold]

gold chart in Aussie dollars

[Drellim]

We’ll when you go to the store  u see the inflation  it’s sad for the dollar    But good for us prospectors  maybe 3500 in2

yrs   I told my friends to buy all the gold they could at 250   We’ll I did  and a happy camper 

 

[TTT2866]

Woo, even higher today! Any thoughts as to what it will reach?

[BMc]

2 hours ago, TTT2866 said:

Woo, even higher today! Any thoughts as to what it will reach?

Higher no doubt and good for now but what has me a bit concerned is the hundreds of new claims filed by mining companies that have virtually taken over various regions of gold country here in the US.  With new gold strikes, that's expected but a blanket claim saturation that forces out the individual prospector will seem likely to continue proportionally with the rise in gold prices . . . 

[GotAU?]

12 hours ago, BMc said:

Higher no doubt and good for now but what has me a bit concerned is the hundreds of new claims filed by mining companies that have virtually taken over various regions of gold country here in the US.  With new gold strikes, that's expected but a blanket claim saturation that forces out the individual prospector will seem likely to continue proportionally with the rise in gold prices . . . 

And with the record breaking price of gold to those levels, a rise of that four letter word- claim flipping speculators….

Seeing it go up another $100 today is going to cause another run on equipment and it will be the manufacturers time to mine the miners again.

 

[Clay Diggins]

13 hours ago, BMc said:

Higher no doubt and good for now but what has me a bit concerned is the hundreds of new claims filed by mining companies that have virtually taken over various regions of gold country here in the US.  With new gold strikes, that's expected but a blanket claim saturation that forces out the individual prospector will seem likely to continue proportionally with the rise in gold prices . . . 

Higher? Gold isn't the only metal soaring in price. All metals are going up. Gold mining and copper mining in the U.S. each produce on average about $10 billion in yearly revenue in recent years. Gold mining production is almost half of what it was in 2017 but a lot has happened to restrict production since 2017.  These numbers will go up over the next several years due to inflation even if production doesn't go up.

Those numbers are dwarfed by the biggest business in the mining industry - Concrete & Aggregates- yep $64 billion Concrete and $36 billion Aggregates annual revenue. When was the last time you heard of anyone protesting a limestone mine???

That may be the claim situation you are experiencing in a particular area you are interested in Mike but it's not a trend in mining claims. Here are the actual numbers.

At the end of the 2023 mining year there were 536,996 Active mining claims.

At the end of the 2024 mining year there were 553,423 Active mining claims.

That a gain of 16,427 claims for 2024 but it's actually less than a 3% gain so nothing to write home about.

A little more than 6 thousand of those new mining claims were in Nevada and nearly 10,000 were in Idaho so unless you are prospecting in one of those two states you probably didn't see much of a gain.😻

Now take those 16,000 new claims and compare that to the annual purge of mining claim closures next month. Last year there were more than 29,000 claims closed on one day in November. More people are letting their claims go than locating new claims right now. Those numbers will probably even out by next September and we will probably be right back around the same number of claims next fall. That might change for several reasons in the future but over the last 10 years the number of claims hasn't changed a lot.👽

Many of the new mining claims located in the last three years were located for lithium deposits. You aren't going to find much gold in a lithium salt desert pan. A lot of those Lithium claims have been dropped this year but new ones have sprung up in their place. The only people making money off new Lithium deposits now are market speculators. New Lithium mining and production in the U.S. has been quite effectively blocked, project by project, for the last three years. If that trend continues investors are likely to take their money elsewhere and many of those Lithium claims will disappear along with the money that pays for them. ☠️

I often see complaints about "blanket" claiming by mining companies. There are valid reasons for making blanket claims. A look around at the nature of the modern mining industry will explain why that happens. Today, for a large mining company to survive, they need to discover the richest and biggest deposits possible. With the efficiency of scale used in mining today exploration geologists are looking for monster deposits that can be mined for decades or even centuries. When they think they have discovered a monster their first act is to claim up the whole possible extent of the deposit.🧛‍♂️

Why do they blanket claim immediately? To find these monster deposits big mining companies employ the best exploration geologists they can get their hands on. These guys are rock stars in the mining industry. I work with one guy who has discovered more than a dozen of the largest deposits in the world being mined today and he is still discovering more. Pretty much the Mick Jagger of exploration geologists. With that type of success and fame you can bet big mining companies want to know what he is spending his time on. The first to claim wins in this game and if you don't claim enough you risk spending your profits on lease payments to your competition (not an uncommon situation). 👻

You are probably wondering - so where are all these wonderful new mines? This process works and pays off more than the public suspects. With modern mining methods new deposits are being mined right in plain sight yet virtually undetected. Within 100 miles of Phoenix I know of three new mines in production that don't look like mines. One is an ISL copper mine right next to Interstate 10 but most people mistake it for a small park. Look into mining processes like ISL (in situ leach mining) and block caving - modern mining isn't what it was even 20 years ago.

I'm thinking of putting a new map layer up on Land Matters that shows all the producing mining operations on federal land. Would that be something you would be interested in Mike?

 

 

[jasong]

A case of stats not representing reality then. In Wyoming for instance, virtually all of the historic mining districts have been blanket staked now over the past 4 or 5 years, and they extend some distance outside these areas now too. This includes uranium districts plus historic metallic districts. It's killed small scale mining and prospecting in the state and I don't know anyone who does it professionally or semi professionally who hasn't expressed some distaste at it all. For me, it's close to killing my job and business.

If a company is so large that they must subvert or use shall we say "creative" interpretations of the current mining law to survive, at the expense of the small scale miners and prospectors whom that law was created for, then that's their problem, and maybe they should pursue other types of prospects instead. Or let someone else do it who can do it economically. That's the free market after all. 

The law is clear - a claim requires a valid discovery. And that discovery can't be any old random thing, it has to be economic by a number of measures. Further, I can't remember the exact number but something like every 5 or 10 acres of each individual claim has to be "mineral in nature" - I forget the exact verbiage. How many of these blanket stake projects would meet these definitions when they don't even put boots on the ground other than a claim staker for many of those claims?

Anyways, I posted about it before, but the big thing now is uranium. And it's not going to slow down any time soon. But it getting late in the game to enter at this stage. There is a lot of money and research going into this now though, and similar topics, which I hope to eventually be able to elaborate more on. 

[Steve Herschbach]

1 hour ago, jasong said:

The law is clear - a claim requires a valid discovery. And that discovery can't be any old random thing, it has to be economic by a number of measures. Further, I can't remember the exact number but something like every 5 or 10 acres of each individual claim has to be "mineral in nature" - I forget the exact verbiage. How many of these blanket stake projects would meet these definitions when they don't even put boots on the ground other than a claim staker for many of those claims

I have had federal claims undergo the validity exam process and I think it was each 10 acres were required to be economically valid. It was a multiyear process and a lot of work. We did lose ground and some was 10 acres - half a claim. As near as I can tell it’s basically if the Feds want you gone for some reason (we were in a preserve) they can hit you up. Or they can ignore you. And seems like all those fees paid to support those huge blanket claims buys you an ignore. Little guy in the wrong spot, you get the eyeball. So yeah, what makes these claims with no discovery valid? An assumption of possible extension of mineralization, unproven? Seems pretty weak and in my case it was show the gold or lose the ground, period. Where is that line drawn for the big boys other than via budgets and opinion?

https://www.blm.gov/sites/default/files/documents/files/PublicRoom_Alaska_Placer_Mining_Claim _Guide_Validity Examinations_BLM_Lands.pdf

https://www.burgex.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Handbook_3890-1_minus_appendices.pdf
https://www.blm.gov/sites/blm.gov/files/uploads/Media_Library_BLM_Policy_h3890-3.pdf