Ghost Town Living - 2024-12-14
Check out https://drinklmnt.com/Brent for a FREE 8-count sample pack of their electrolyte mix with any drink mix purchase. Even down in the mines, I carry it with me everywhere. In this video, I investigate how much time and money it would cost me to create 1oz of pure silver from the abandoned mines I own. This is a question that I get asked a lot. Help Bring Cerro Gordo Back to Life If you enjoy these videos and want to help preserve this historic mining town, you can join the Patreon for behind-the-scenes updates, mine explorations, and restoration progress from Cerro Gordo. Join the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/ghosttownliving You can follow my journey on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brentwunderwood/ Cerro Gordo T-Shirts and more: https://store.cerrogordomines.com/ Mailing Address: PO Box 490, Lone Pine, CA 93545 THANK YOU!!
Now that silver is $72, I bet he is down there every day lol.
I just came back to this video because I didn't have time to watch it when it went live and I wanted to see how it looked when it launched and then to look at how it may have changed with today's prices. I only just started watching but I suspect that you are right XD
i did the math... if he is hes only makeing 10.2 an hour doing it... so thats a no and thats at 73.54 spot price right now...
@spark-1994 we all know the real price is something different, manipulationnnn. Japan was just trading at $130. China at $85.
$77 today
@spark-1994 Still would dig for silver for 10.20 an hour then work my job.
I'm a geologist at a mine. One of the issues with silver is that it needs to be very concentrated above the crustal average concentration to be economically viable to extract. Gold requires an enrichment factor of about 2,000x the crustal average, silver needs a factor of 10,000x. So even if silver is more common, less of it is viable to mine given the price.
Our site is enriched in both, but the silver isn't at the concentration needed to be minable. But since we are already mining the ore for the gold, we can extract the silver from the rock at the same time to get a bit of bonus profit. It's not a huge increase, maybe 10% of the gold's value, but you add the values together to determine viability and it nearly doubles the volume of viable ore.
The long explanation of most mines having a byproduct of silver
Those thresholds for profitability (10,000x, 2,000x) are interesting to know for precious metal speculation. Do you happen to know what the corresponding numbers were 20 or 40 years ago?
do they sell the base metals as a bonus then? I can't imagine them moving that much rock just for gold and silver without going broke. The margins must be thin between profit and loss
Yeah thats a lot of math. I'm math illiterate, I'd strait up hit rocks for a long time, and get gold and silver lol. In short, I'd waste Hella money in the form of my time getting the good stuff
@iyziejane I'm not sure, that was before my time, and it's hard to find good historical estimates.
But overall, the trend has been towards lowering the number. We don't need as high of a quality ore to be profitable now. Mining/extraction is more efficient, and the prices are higher.
A lot of mines are restarting work at depleted mines because we can now mine more rock that wouldn't have been profitable 50 years ago. In some cases we are even remining waste rock piles.
I am from farther in the future and silver is now $103
Im from the futue in China and silver is worth $115
Yes and if he did this efficiently with help he could pump about alot more in a fraction of the time. He needs winches, roll carts, hydralic presses to break up the rock instead of by hand, and bigger furnaces. With the price of silver now and how expensive it will be by the end of the year its well worth making this his full time job. He could make this alot more efficient. Of course at some point the galena will be alot harder to find and then it becomes dangerous and the real mining would have to happen and drilling and breaking the Rock to find it becomes very tedious
Im from the real future its will hit 187$ and sit good at 150s
I`m from 2050 and silver is at 5,000.
I’m even further and it’s 115
2026. Time to open up the mine!
The safety requirements today might consume more costs in California than current price of silver, say $70 oz.
@Johnny-dp5mu85
@Johnny-dp5mu 90 dollars now
@Johnny-dp5mu and for 100?
You lost me at California 😅
Fk that place. Give up half your metal to the government, half your income to the government.... gee, I wonder where all that money goes, because it doesnt go to infrastructure....
It might not have turned a profit in money but these videos are priceless.
He's making a fortune off these videos
@Drdum123 Good for him. He has worked his butt off to preserve history and taken risks that only one in a million would take.
@InsideOfMyOwnMind 💯
100%@InsideOfMyOwnMind
@hondaman4423 You must be fun at parties.
May I suggest that you have a modern assay done. In addition to gold and silver, other elements are now needful...Lithium... which was unknow to the old-time miners and discarded on tailings piles. A new assay might determine that the old Cerro Gordo mines could reveal new profit possibilities that could fund the rebirth of Cerro Gordo and your plans for it. I'm not suggesting that Lithium is present, but possibly other industrial metals/minerals may be. And, additionally, recovery methods are far more efficient than they were in times past. Your tailings piles might contain overlooked assets that modern recovery methods could maximize.
That size of an operation would surely become an open pit mine. Needless to say, that’s far from an ideal future for Cerro Gordo
@versi0nzero The parking lot in front of the mine house is a tailing pile. I would have used some of that for the road, landscaped with it around the buildings, endless uses.
He's not a capitalist, he's a romantic dreamer, two totally different mindsets
@versi0nzero With Brent owning the place it will remain historically correct, but other mines in the area would reopen and take advantage of whatever they could produce.
If lithium is involved, he would be forced to sell, or give up his property.
Great video! Silver is about to hit $100 an ounce! 📈
It did
103
On its way to $500...😂
@joefarm2897 I hope
@joefarm2897 On it's way back to $30 🤣
Brent, it is not an abandoned mine, it is YOUR mine.
I'd love to go communicate with the Spirits in that mine. Maybe get a lead on where the gold was stashed. Then go look for it. That would fix the Tariff issues we are about to face.
@scuss2 tf you smoking and where can I get some
Agreed! No longer abandoned.
It's actually not his mine btw. It's owned by 10 investors one being Brent..
Nah it's abandoned, this is all fake. Like everything on youtube.
Its likely that silver could be produced much cheaper by talking it from one or more of the old dumps. Although Galena was an important ore, cerussite was also an important ore at Cerro Gordo. Silver can be leached by a non-cyanide process using thiosulfate to capture the silver. This process captures silver, copper and gold, but leaves the lead behind. Tests would need to be done, but I have done this with oxidized silver lead ore at a mine in Nevada. Samples of the dump rock and assay test would need to be done to be sure it would work, but its likely that the Cerro Gordo ore would work in this process. It would result in a non-toxic MUCH cheaper process to get Cerro Gordo Silver. I'm a mining engineer by training, and I'd like to maybe do that testing next summer.
isn't it amazing, what astonishingly useful people turn up on YT!
I hope to see this.
This would be great to see!
Chris, that's fascinating. What would it take to setup some kind of a leaching pit? What size would be manageable, and how frequent would it have to be changed? With trailings all over the mountain, you'd either have to bring the trailings to the leaching pit, or if its mobile, take it to the trailings. Moving tons of trailings could also alter the landscape too. What kind of impact do you foresee on the area? Would the existing trailings need to be broken down in to a finer powder too? If so, I can see where a bobcat/track-loaders attachment could combine a bucket with a hammer mill (ran off the hydraulics) so you can scoop a pile, and while moving the scoop to the leaching pit, the hammer mill could be reducing the size of the rock.
You should hook up with Ghost Town Living on that!
In 1971 I worked between 4,000 ft & 4,400 ft down in Cominco gold mine in Yellowknife, NWT. Very grateful for memory thrills your vid gave me. At time, Cominco was second deepest gold mine in world next to one in South Africa. You could watch them melt & pour the gold at the top & then drive it to the airport. lol we always laughed at that. It was 54 yrs ago, ty sir again for your video & mems if the stope mine. Men who do this work and all similar jobs are great , largely unsung beings.
Funny, 1971 is when the fiat debt dollar was completely debacked from physical Gold, dooming us to the economic demise we are entering this era.
@WeeG-bwc77 Fiat Currency was not actually backed by gold prior to 1971 and is a big misconception of how our system of money worked, nor was it the cause for any inflation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-6WNmL26wE
Funny that it was a time that Jim Jones was planning to built Jonestown in Guyana!The dude didn’t have a carat of gold sense!
Considering all the interesting jobs that need to be done in society I have never understood unemployment. No matter which direction we look there is work that needs to be done. Sometimes I wish that I was young again so I could do a few more of those interesting jobs.
5:41 ahh yes, I don’t like heights, but you know what I do like? Heights but in the dark 😂😂😂
I cannot believe you go this deep into the earth solo like this. Seriously terrifying. You must have some massive stones fella.
And I bet they're silver!
Some people have no self-preservation instinct. 😆🤣😂
Last time i went 20ft underground i freaked out and had to leave😂
Makes me really appreciate the shiny bullion we buy from dealers, that is a lot of work. Thank you for sharing!
I stack a bit of bullion and Morgan dollars. It’s fun imagining my silver could have come from the mines I live by 😎
That goes for ANY metal that you use…….
@bnalive5077you are Correct Sir!
Yes Sir. Especially considering that to acquire that shiny bullion we need only to trade rectangular pieces of green paper for it.
I am not an educator, but this type of video is SO valuable to those that want to learn about mining in California. Thank you for your knowledge & positivity in these videos!
Given California's political climate, I'm not sure mining here is viable no matter what the concentration of mineralization.
Dumped down in 'indoctrinating school'. Nobody teached about the monetary system and how it works. It's all a lie.
WOW! I have a newfound respect for miners! Watching this video and seeing you go down 400 feet plus crawling in the little spaces and knowing how far it is to the surface that’s crazy!So, now when I look at an ounce of silver, I have a lot of respect for the journey it made from underground to me. Thank you very much for making this video!
Been stacking for years and I've never seen a video like this.
Silver really should be so much more. What a great video. Ty sir
Same. The most undervalued asset in the world.
It will be worth so much more, and soon. The price manipulation can only carry on for as long as the economy is stable, and it’s becoming clear to all that it isn’t anymore. When gold becomes too expensive the world will look to silver to protect their wealth.
@sswwiinnccee im actually worried. the existing supply deficit can only last a few years before there is literally no excess inventory to make up for all your favourite products, TV, phones, computers, solar panels, grid products, batteries. Unless they up the price enough where people will mine more silver, we will have shortages.
Yeah sucks. Should be more.
$38.06oz today August 5. 2025
I got a lot of responses to my previous comment about non-toxic leaching, and rather than respond individually to the many comments, I thought I'd just do one. Leaching can be run on on basically any scale from tiny to huge. Think all scales from a 5 gallon bucket to a mountain a couple hundred of feet tall (they do this to leach gold in Nevada). I was thinking for Cerro Gordo something more like a plastic kiddie pool about 8 feet in diameter. I did dump leaching at a mine in Nevada decades ago - its was a silver/lead/gold property (however we used cyanide as the leaching chemical). We screened the dump material to minus half inch and that should be good enough at Cerro Gordo. With well oxidized ore, its not really necessary to crush. The dumps contain values because the ores get sorted by the miners and stuff that is too low grade goes onto the dump. Only the higher grades went to the smelter because smelting was expensive and you wanted your operation to be profitable. So a lot of medium to low grade just goes onto the dump - because they could not afford to work it profitably. Dumps made of country rock where the miners were cross cutting over to the ore bodes would not have any ore in them, but it appears they did a lot of work in and around the ore bodies and this work as well as the ore sorting rock should run. Samples of the dump rock would need to be assay tested and samples would need to be leached tested on a small scale to be sure it would work, but its likely that the Cerro Gordo ore would work in this process. Silver can be leached by a non-cyanide process using a chemical called thiosulfate to capture the silver. The discovery that thiosulfate could leach insoluble silver compounds in the early 1800s was one of the discoveries that made black and white photography possible.
I'd like to get hold of Brent and discuss the possibility with him of maybe doing that testing next summer and filming some video. However, I have no idea how to get hold of him. Perhaps some of you know how to do that.
Isn't his contact info in the video description? I would like an answer to my question. You seem quite knowledgeable, do you know of any mines that would have pure silver deposits or is it always mixed with lead?
Just curious 🤔
@JudyGoodwin-l9b Kongsberg mines, silver islet mine, Michigan's Keweenaw peninsula mines all have naturally occurring pure silver veins. Usually in wires running through other stone, or in plates between them,
@JudyGoodwin-l9b Metallic silver in mines is pretty rare, but not unknown - much more common are minerals where silver is the main metallic constituent. This type of mine is where the silver is in the form of silver minerals with very little lead. The famous Comstock Lode of Virginia City, Nevada has a little lead, but much silver in the form of silver minerals like acanthite, polybasite, Stephanite, etc. There are also copper-silver mines with silver rich tetrahedrite, and some silver mines with gold and almost no lead. However lead rich veins with significant silver are a pretty common form of silver deposit.
@ChrisRalph Thank you so much, very interesting. Have a Merry Christmas 🎄 🎁
This is probably one of the more interesting videos I've seen in a while. Very neat, and just kept getting better.
This shows you how undervalued silver is
or how common lol
@ssadfadsfadit took him 45 minutes just to get down to it
@ExcaliburManufacturing did you even watch the video?
undervalued? such a stupid take. silver is inflated & overvalued. you're getting completely ripped off if you're stacking silver off it's current spot unless you're 1. stealing silver, or 2. have the access to the tools & a mine that contains it so you can DIY extract.
@Andrew-vr5bb your brain must be defecting. yeah, get a team to set up an actual industrial operation for whatever ore that has silver as a byproduct, and you'll quickly understand how common it is. gold aint $5k+ compared to current silver spot for no reason...
The only channel worth watching on your big TV.
Don't be surprised if you bump into me. Man, I feel like a soul visiting these wonderful areas that you share with us. You might think me as a old fool but I am very happy to roam your digs! Please allow this Old Firekeeper of the Great Smoky mountains of NC. To tag along After 3 Strokes and brain surgery I hope you will just let me enjoy your adventure's. Much love and a miners prayer 🙏 for you daily. Always The Old Firekeeper Great Smoky mountains of NC. In thoughts and prayers 🙏✌️🔥👍
fricken love this stuff! dropping a comment with my like to show my appreciation. hope you're well brent! happy holidays to you & yours
In the 10 months since he made this video, silver has gone from 30 to 53 dollars an ounce...
In the 10 years before, I've been pounded by people saying that it would go up any day now.
I watched it 10 months ago and now watching again 😂
True but gee wizz, still hasn't really added to the profit margin much
And……..down to $48.80 and falling
@2004franko lol ots not falling. It’s at $50. Slight pullback is normal on runs cause whales want to take profits. It’s still got room to go up
1:23 as a stacker, I can tell you silver is NOT trailing behind gold as gold hits new all time highs. Silver is probably one the MOST undervalued and manipulated commodities on this planet. Buy as much as you can!
You know why?
Because anyone can make it in their basement, literally
The good thing is, about the same percentage of people that know about xrp on the planet (less then 1%)
See it as a viable, and very lucrative hobby😂
The reson the old timers didnt remove this deposit was perhaps because it propped up the roof
When the mine was at it's peak the economies of scale and higher-grade ore would have multiplied the profit. There are many semi-dormant mines which are only reopened when prices are high, then closed again when it's no longer worth working. A small gold mine near me was re-opened in the 80's by a couple people which has produced enough for the two owners working it to live fairly well.
The real incentive is that there's always the chance you'll find a rich pocket or vein which will make you exceedingly wealthy in a very short time. The odds of that are tiny, but it only takes once.
When he runs his totals, it's like beekeeping, no money in, but you have an appreciation for what goes into it.
I hope you have a great winter Brent no collapses, light snow and no flooding.
What a great show, I'm a disabled vet who watches your show, GOD BLESS
2/508...retired. God Bless you and keep you well.
Brent, your channel and your videos have come a LONG way since you started at the little old ghost town of Cerro Gordo 4.5 years ago. Your enthusiasm and curiosity along the way as well as your little pieces of advice and eureka moments along the way have been inspirational. Keep it up, and thank you for including us in all of your adventures!
-Brett
17:59 I love how in a world I have that same bag of baking soda 5 metres away from me in my Melbourne Australia house. All because wanted a Costco hotdog
A wealth of information.....what a history and science class! You never fail.
I really still think you should make a shadow-box display of every material you smelt to later put in the hotel as a display item. Dated, where it was collected, what depth etc so there's a literal living history from the ground itself for people to see. Its fascinating to see you work and keep the history of Cerro Gordo alive, im so glad i fell on your channel through the Corridor crew, its a treat every time you upload. Thank you for all the work.
a pleasure sharing the ride with u.
We reached 60$!!!!!!!!! Congratz to all stackers!!
67+ 🤑🤑
Woohoo! Let's goooo!
silver may mean revert after hitting $70USD/ t ounce.
Then off the races?!
This is like Dejua vu back to 2016 or so. Silver went up and up and no one sold, no one that I knew. So they road it all the way down.
@$69+
Brave man. Fear or no, you did the things, and that's commendable in it's own way.
No matter what, i always enjoy the adventures to union mine. Such a cool place
Brent you never cease to amaze us. Thank you!!! ❤
I am happy that you are living your best life, Brent!
Brent, I’ve watched you from the very beginning. I wanted you to be successful and it looks like you are. I’m so excited about the silver. I wish you could get some minor up there to help you and assess it. Maybe you’ve already done that. I’m so happy and surprised this is great news.😊
Keep giving that knowledge out Brent. Hope all is well and stay warm this winter.
Being involved in Risk Management as an investigator I immediately feel uneasy when someone is travelling way underground in an old mine with nobody on the surface to help if something goes awry. When going into these old mines your life really is on the line so please make sure you take all needed precautions to ensure that each trip down into the mine is a safe one.
Brent has big ⚾🥎🏀🏐⚽ I can respect that! He is certainly no cowardly lion 🦁
OSHA has rules for confined space entry requiring a person at watch up on top and many other safety measures.
@50Quid-d3xit’s MSHA when mining
boring...
@50Quid-d3x pay off an inspector and OSHA disappears.
Pulls out an ounce of silver and you already see the fever glint in his eyes. Just beautiful. 🤩
I love your channel. Been coming back to it for the last year. Keep up the good work! ❤
I watched this video from start to finish. Big silver fan. It's exciting to see prices rising. I love what you're doing at your property. Thanks for sharing.
Really interesting ! I've been watching your videos for the last 4 years , and I still love how much I learn about the mining industry . I just have a lot of respect for all our ancestors who worked so hard to build North America .
Another fascinating video, I really appreciate the time and effort you put into these episodes.
Cost isn't everything, it is YOURS and you did it. THAT is really cool.
Merry Christmas! Stoked for this episode!
It amazes me how much you have learned sense you've been there. Good job. Thank you for taking us along with you on your amazing journey.
@GhostTownLiving - 2024-12-14
Watch to the very end! Here is the form to enter to win the resulting silver from this video! https://kingsumo.com/g/m55odnm/win-a-cerro-gordo-silver-bullet
@j.cyberdome - 2024-12-14
This video is gonna blow up.
@MountainManJH - 2024-12-14
we are watching it a second time very interesting
@FatMattVideos - 2024-12-14
My only question, How much profit from the lead? 😮, amazing video, great to see the entire process from start to finish, thanks for sharing this with us all!
@ShyotterNJH - 2024-12-14
love all you have done there
@P_RO_ - 2024-12-14
@FatMattVideos Not much call for or profit in lead compared to past times when it's use was commonplace.