So buy shinies now?
I'm a silver man myself. Gold is too fucking expensive.
Gold is interesting. I had the good fortune of having Newmont Gold Company as a client several years ago. Got to go to their mining site in Elko, NV.
Of course, I expected to get in some little train or elevator and travel into a deep cave or deep hole in Mother Earth as that's the image of mining most of us have been presented. Not the case, not at all.
They mine microscopic gold. Literally tear down a whole mountain, crush it, and then rebuild it in a different place with drip lines throughout. Through the drip lines, they pump in a cyanide solution. The cyanide leaches the microscopic gold from the rock and flows into a collection pool near the base. That liquid is then run through steel wool and the gold bonds to the steel. Finally, they heat and burn off the steel wool and presto, pure gold.
It's a huge operation. as you can imagine. The sheer size of the area used, the amount of heavy equipment required, and the manpower to move mountains.
All quite fascinating. I talked at length with one of their engineers. First, about the cyanide -- doesn't it create a deadly toxic wasteland? Short answer, no. It's period of toxicity is quite short. They had air cannons around the collection pools to ward off birds and wildlife. The cyanide in the mountain becomes inert in a very short period of time. He pointed out one mountain. It was green with vegetation and you wouldn't have known it had been deconstructed and rebuilt. So environmentally, no harm, no foul.
Next, I asked about cost. At what price does gold have to be to actually make a profit, given the billions I see spent in doing this? At that point in time, his answer was $400 an ounce. Anything above, they were making money, anything below, they were losing money. (No idea what it would be today.)
It was all very interesting. So were the brothels in Elko. Gotta keep those miners in the middle of nowhere happy!