How much is a Megaton of Comstock Dirt Worth?

2008-05-31T22:53:00.001-07:00

How much volume is in the GSPG 6,000 acres of Comstock mining claims?

Bulk Ballpark Calculation to Demonstrate Potential
aka ROM (Rough Order of Magnitude)

Cubic foot of dirt = 100 lbs. It will not be lighter. If local geology states heavier, then we will multiply our final value by the increase, so 100# is a good easy number. *1

an Acre = 43,500 sq ft

a Ton = 20 Cu Ft of dirt; (2,000# per Ton / 100# of dirt per cu ft)
Imagine a box 4'L x 5'W x 1'D filled with dirt, a short bed pickup truck filled one foot high.
1 megaton of dirt = 20 million cu ft of dirt.
20,000,000 cu ft / 43,500 sq ft = 460 feet of depth (459.77)
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1 surface acre to a depth of 460 ft = 1 megaton of dirt

1 megaton of dirt is the thru put of the initial GoldSpring Heap Leach System in its first year. (CEO Faber said to the May 9 Mine Visitors they are considering more lifts per year to increase the leach pond to pad production.)

How much is a Megaton of Comstock Dirt Worth?

Averaging the ore body to be 0.01 OPT by considering the full spectrum from bonanzas to high grade ore to .01 OPT (the profitability break even point) to soil less than .01 OPT of gold. (Only gold is used in profitablity studies - President Faber of GSPG.OB).

.01 x 1 megaton = 10,000 oz gold / megaton of dirt (a rock bottom average, a ground floor average and easy number to multiply higher later. For instance the Exploratory GoldSpring Mine - the Plum Mine yielded an average 0.04 OPT of Gold (Au). Refer to the Investor Brochure.

The Plum Mine worked approx 1/3 of a megaton of ore in a time frame of approx 2 years. GSPG Phase 2 business plan will process 6 times greater in a year.

If each Comstock megaton of ore yields 10,000 oz gold at an average of .01 OPT, then the GSPG 6,000 acres has the potential for
60 million oz of gold = 6,000 acres x 10,000 oz gold / megaton of dirt.

$1,500 / Au oz x 90% = ~ $1,350 wholesale value of bullion
(predictable for next summer 2009)

$1,350 / Au oz x 60 million oz = 81,000 millions = $81 Billion USD.
That's to a depth of 460 feet.

Typical Comstock mines went to 2,200 feet.
2,200 ft / 460 ft of depth for 1 megaton per surface acre = 4.78 times more megatons per surface acre.

4.78 x $81b = $387.39 Billions
We are doing abtract considerations. Of course there are modifiers such as the logistics and investment capital to perform a large scale plan.
However if a person gets stuck in all the limitations - analysis breeds paralysis. Vision motivates accomplishment.

Would the whole 6,000 acres be strip mined?
No. So someone says subtract something from the 1/3 of a trillion.

On the other hand the averaged lump sum does not take into consideration Bonanzas that skew profitability to a much higher value. 176 bonanzas are possible if extrapolating out from the 30 plus year history of the Comstock of the 1800s for 33 "known" bonanzas. (Do you think some people got away without letting anyone know they mined a small bonanza? (Do you hear Snidley Whitflash's wolfdog snicker?) The Comstock mined by hand with pick, shovel and real horse and mule power. Later came steam and early days hit and miss gas engines. Science of mining and the engineering were also far less capable than today.

So it can be argued that the subtractions are counterweighted by modern technology and 176 potential bonanzas. So are we back to a potential of 1/3 trillion USD?

Of course someone wants to say no.

People used to also say man can't fly. That people would have psychological trauma from riding too fast on early steam trains. President Ulysses S. Grant was astonished at how a locomotive "violated space" at 18 miles per hour. How could someone go to the Moon? Yet Jules Verne wrote about it 100 years before it happened. His space capsule had dimensions similar to the Apollo capsule. The Saturn V rocket was not a big gun, but it was a big stick. Modern artillery has been nick named a Thunder Stick. Saturn V's thunder.

Symbols eventually fall away to the real solution set, but the solution was motivated by someone describing a vision that had no technology for it at the moment. So are you going to be caught up in the details to say no? Someone will solve them, if there is incentive. Mining history has created new technology and interesting financial arrangements.

None the less, discounting 1/3 billion
by 50% is value of $190 billion,
by 75% discount is half of that for $95 billion,
a really big discount of 7/8ths is $48 billion.

Make it an easy number: GSPG 6,000 acres is approx 9-1/3 square miles. So due to constraints only a square mile, a ninth vs an eighth, is open pit mined which rounds the total value down to maybe $43 billion.

Yes but, the depth isn't gonna be to 2,200 feet.

460 feet in 25 years maybe too shallow.

Okay, okay, then let's comprimise to 800 feet (I can't believe I'm even agreeing to this).

600 feet for one square mile of open pit mining at .01 OPT ;~}
(5,280' x 5,280' x 600') / 20 cu ft / ton = 836,352,000 tons x .01 OPT = 8,363,520 oz of gold x $1,000 per oz (even at 20 years later?) = $8.3 billion

Also the average of all ore maybe .04 OPT as there is enough history in the historic Comstock and the recent Plum Mine to support the estimate of an overall average close to .04 OPT, so multiply x 4 =
$32 billion USD

Let all the inflation and economic factors rage against the costs of production and paqrtnerships to cancel each other out. So $32 billion can still be the last figure standing.

So the balance of 8 square miles subtracts 1 square mile for infrastructure of roads, mills, leach ponds, unsuitable terrain, what al, for a balance of 7 square miles where target drilling goes straight to sites for a potential of 150 bonanzas, since the other 25 could be uncovered methodically in the strip mining, which could be 11 individual open pits in a 25 year explotation plan. Maybe the big miners joint venture since they are so desparate and the plan is so grand. So each major miner joint ventures a square mile and GSPG only gets half of that - 75 bonanzas - what is that worth? Is it 43 miilion minus 32 billion = $11 billion for just the bonus bonanzas?

The big miners don't like that. They also what to strip mine methodically and dig deeper. Someone else finds the bottom of the Comstock. Is that human nature?

Those are potentials worth the risk of exploration and patient profit mining to determine where to Target Drill to Bonanzas.

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* Heavier dirt means a ton of dirt occupies less volume (cu ft) which means more gold per cubic acre of dirt.

Cubic Acre = 208.71' wide x 208.71' long x 208.71' deep
( similar to 208 ft wide x 208 ft long x 209 ft deep )

1 megaton of dirt = 208' wide x 208' long x 460' deep
( precisely 208.71' long x 208.71' wide x 459.77' deep )

Some of our core drills went 460 feet deep.
Our first pass calc has 460 feet deep for a megaton of dirt.
459.77' deep per megaton / 208.71' per cu ac = 2.2 Cubic Acres per Megaton of ore.

2.2 Cubic Acres per year starting this summer and ramping up!

Eventually Historic Comstock One due to * Technological Advances * in mine engineering went to a depth of 2,200 feet. The Mexican Wenze went to 3,000 feet deep.

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The bottom of the Comstock has never been found! ************************************

Deeper wherein is the potential for the feeder branches of the historic bonanzas. Deeper still - the mother lode.

Moving mountains from "A" to "B".

Then there are multipliers of other mines being played out, inflation and the need for USA to have specie. PreciousMTrader on the Yahoo Message Board for GSPG.OB keeps posting about factors in current economics that add value to precious metals.

Then there is silver... Google "Nevada Silver Kings" - not too shabby.

Footnotes
*1. 100 - 150 # from "Broken Pounds" after removal from "In Place Pounds" and before entering the Mill (page 1, bottom):
http://books.google.com/books?id=MXoxAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA1190&lpg=PA1190&dq=How+much+does+a+cubic+foot+of+ore+weight%3F&source=web&ots=Id4iD_bfYf&sig=Np5nEdbo6CCeGMkM68TSQ7K7i7g&hl=en

Regular ole gravel has a density of about 100 pounds/cubic foot,
http://www.onlineconversion.com/forum/forum_1113869717.htm

A cubic foot of top soil weighs in the neighborhood of 75 - 100 pounds.
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4RNWN_enUS222US228&q=Cubic+foot+of+soil+weighs%3f

A cubic foot of cyanide solution weighs 64#/cu ft. Cyaniding Gold and Silver Ores: A Practical Treatise on the Cyanide
http://books.google.com/books?id=o5JBAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA45&lpg=PA45&dq=how+much+does+a+cubic+foot+of+ore+weight&source=web&ots=rVisr8qtvq&sig=wxGBW1DwVYPOLK5cwOrzFdp3adU&hl=en#PPA47,M1

Conversion Factors - a big table http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001729.html