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. Win the silver bullet I made in this video here: https://kingsumo.com/g/m55odnm/win-a-cerro-gordo-silver-bullet 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. 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!!
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.
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
I'm pretty sure he could put a price on this video.
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.
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
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!
I Love Silver, Its all I wear and I made Silver jewelry for a while. But... I am a part time scrapper too, as in, if I see something metal on the side of the road or poking out of a dumpster, I grab it. Folks have no idea what they toss out. IE: My best score ever- I once found a dumpster full of x-rays...I netted 42 Pounds of Silver.. All it took to get it was an investment for 8 gallons of vinegar, a quart of sulfuric acid and a battery charger. It took me 3 hours of work soaking and moving the films, 2 hours drying the silver sludge and dissolving it in acid and about a week changing electrodes and waiting as the silver came out of the solution by electrolysis. It produced some beautiful Silver crystal formations too. I kept a few and melted the rest into kilo bars and 4 Toz slugs. What I do find strange about the process, the crystals I kept, on a shelf and in shadow box, are still as shiny today as they were 20 years ago but the boxed and protected bars and slugs, are tarnished. Did I mention I love Silver? XP
Fascinating! I didn’t know X-Ray film contained silver. 42 pounds of silver? How many x-rays did you find? 1000’s?
@@dennisschlieckau8723 I was into photography in my youth, Most real photographs/negatives are made with silver. I honestly have no idea how many in total.... Never really added it up..Off a 20 year long memeory...5,000?..I mean...The dumpster was full..packed like a shipping container. The boxes were made for the film ..Maybe 2-300 shots per box? 150 +/- boxes.? 5k sounds about right but, that could be a little liberal now as I voice it out. I remember each box weighed around 65lbs. When I went to pick the first one up, I was instantly wondering why they were so dense. It did take 2 trips simply because I did not trust the poor old F-150 to carry it all in one go. XP
42 pounds is insane. Thats something like 18000 dollars depending on purity
@@sulovdeb5142 Back then is was more like $6,500 but a huge score either way. Best day scrapping ...ever.
A dumpster full of x ray film? Holy crap! Can only imagine how much that weighed compared to ordinary paper filling same dumpster. In today's money the 42 lbs of silver is worth $2725 but when you did process it the $
return might have been lower.
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.
I was 7 in 1979 and I remember my grandparents, who were silversmith hobbyists, worrying about the costs for silver to make their jewelry. I think they ended up going down to Mexico to try and find a cheaper supply. I love watching your videos and still have fond memories of meeting you this last spring up there. I think I have decided on the best way to make that pen for you from the dynamite box wood. I’m going to use some stuff called “cactus juice” to stabilize the wood just to make sure it will hold up to turning without disintegrating, like I had a piece of old shipwreck wood (obtained before it became illegal to collect wood from old shipwrecks) do last year.
Where did you and your parents live? Arizona?
@ Michigan.
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.
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 🎄 🎁
I hope you have a great winter Brent no collapses, light snow and no flooding.
Enjoyed...this. I worked for Bunker Hill in Kellogg, Idaho, until it closed. I was a "tapper" on their blast furnace. Ended up going to their Zinc Plant and became a Furnace man...and then to their Striping room where I ended up striping zinc off of plates until the EPA closed them down. It was all quite the process. We had the honor of being the largest lead, silver and zinc producers of the world, at one time. Also at one time we had more millionares per capita than anywhere in the world.
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!
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.
Loved the video! That ounce piece is priceless in terms of the story behind it! To have a displayed piece of silver where you can say you mined and refined it all yourself is amazing!
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.
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!
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.
@@versi0nzero size does not dictate mining method. mineral occurrence does
Also the appreciation of the conditional back in the 1800's and what they did for light down in those tunnels.
It's extremely hard now, imagine how hard back then.
Another awesome video as always, thanks Brent.
If you want to find some treasures like old medicine bottles/jars/plates/cutlery/tins and tools . Dig out old outhouses on the property. Often when they were in use were used as trash cans. Some rare medicine and food bottles and jars can fetch a pretty penny.
Keep giving that knowledge out Brent. Hope all is well and stay warm this winter.
fricken love this stuff! dropping a comment with my like to show my appreciation. hope you're well brent! happy holidays to you & yours
A wealth of information.....what a history and science class! You never fail.
I love the energy behind this channel. To all of the team, you are amazing.
Everything you did in this video, is freaking awesome.
Great to see you back. That's for showing all the steps of silver mining. I enjoyed learning about it. Hope you have a lovely Christmas 🎄🎁🎄
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.
a pleasure sharing the ride with u.
This is probably the best video I’ve seen in a long time! Super informative and also interesting.
Thank you for this!!
Merry Christmas everyone!!!
I love how excited you get with the pours :)
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.😊
Merry Christmas! Stoked for this episode!
I love watching your channel, I frequently go to Knotts Berry farm and talk about Cerro Gordo around the panning for gold section and the blacksmith. I remind people that everything made of metal comes from the ground and someone had to get it out and refine it and make it into something we can use. Mr. Knott would have loved you Brent
Wow all those tunnels in the rock took some work to make. Those guys knew how to work. I had family that worked in mining back in those days - can't imagine spending day after day working deep in the earth.
That was a damn interesting historical tidbit about the Hunt brothers. $50 an ounce in 1980!!! Crazy. I had no idea.
I own 6000 oz of silver bullion and have $40K invested in a range of global tier silver mines over last 8 years so this is fascinating!
I enjoyed your day of producing an ounce of silver from ore you personally mined out of the ground. I enjoy history, mining, and geology, and your videos have the magic combination.
I am also aware of the hazards of mining and refining lead. My step father, worked at the Trail Smelter (still going 100 plus years), and in later years, suffered from heavy metal poisoning.
Earlier in my life, I was also involved in molding lead fishing lures, but quit, when I started experiencing early symptoms of muscle pain and cramping. The problem resolved over a couple of years, and when I was tested for heavy metals 20 years later, the laboratory reported no abnormal accumulations.
I am 81, and remember the Hunt brothers escapade just as if it happened yesterday. I have a coin collection with lots of silver coins, and it was a temptation to sell them off, but I decided that the historical and numismatic value of the coins, made keeping them as coins, a better long term investment.
Merry Christmas
Me and a buddy collected a few lbs. of lead from the shooting range. We melted it down in the back yard and scraped off the copper jackets. We both had headaches the next day. No more playing with lead for me.
@@Jeff-jg7jhprobably a smart move. But like you said…Lead is an important metal
Lack of environmental protection during those 100 years plus caused untold damage to people, animals and fish in N/E Washington. Soil was removed around Northport, WA and people are restricted from eating certain amounts of fish coming from the Columbia River.
@@larryminton2670 Yeah, there are numerous maps, showing the areas of radioactive contamination from the testing done in Las Vegas. Lots of downwind contamination. There is also the contamination from Hanford to consider.
22 times face was crazy though. I couldn't resist, only hung onto small handful.
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.
No matter what, i always enjoy the adventures to union mine. Such a cool place
Thanks!
My dad was a miner and so there's a Silver mine in my family (grandparents owned). I was told that the Silver is what they were mining and they'd get gold and the gold was considered the gravy on top of the silver. I think that's how it is. My grandparents, my grandma was the chemist. They took core samples that had a lot of gold but they didn't do anything with it. Apparently, there's some location for these samples, a map. My uncle might have that. I thought with aircrete, it'd be easy to go to the mine and do some 'testing'. The mining site is far into the mountains, kind of inaccessible. It's located north of Nevada and south of Idaho. I know northern Nevada produced a lot of gold.
Can we even imagine having a working mine at Cerro Gordo, again?
Not sure how that would look.
A lot of noise, traffic, etc., etc.
Can't wait for the "grand finale" of this video.
Blessings, Brent, from an old lady in Southern California.
I really enjoy how the sound changes when you get into the mine shaft. It is both oppressive and very soothing 😊
A great and educational video. Hey Brother, fist rule of mine safety - never go in a mine ALONE! You should also look into a remote Lift control and call system - climbing back up that shaft can take it out of ya. Merry Christmas!🎅
That's why he has internet way down below. He knows what he is doing.
What's crazy I'm drinking an LMNT right before I work out! 😁 That stuff is the best!
Wonderful presentation! Very thorough and informative. Thx!
Glad you enjoyed it! Thank you
I agree. Assay the huge tailings pile. Just maybe there might be something of value in that huge pile that could fund your renovation project.
As a miner, I want to congradulate you on this basic primer presentation. Gold is the money of kings because it is a representation of human (sometimes slave) energy expended. Not many people get that aspect.
18+ only please
That’s what the old timer said in “Treasure of the Sierra Madre.”
And silver is the money of gentlemen.
Another fascinating video, I really appreciate the time and effort you put into these episodes.
Wow great video!! I love learning about silver and seeing how it’s found in the earth was very cool.
Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed it!
@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
@mrjpuff - 2024-12-14
This video is gonna blow up.
@jimhedlund2412 - 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!
@normajeanhedlund7429 - 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.