Specimen Ore Exposition

[AnnaMountain]

So in the days of old, most mining camps and districts in Colorado would have a massive ore specimen exposition - in my district it was definitely a big deal and the talk of the town for most of the season

We’re talking the prettiest, shiniest, most mineral-rich specimens you’ve got.

I was reading one of the old 1800’s papers of my district the other night, and it was talking about how they had made a road (that happens to now go through my property) just to pull a 300lb specimen down from the top of the divide for the upcoming exposition. I’ll post some clippings here in a bit as they are fun to read.

Anybody game for an online exposition of ore samples you pulled out in 2019? It’s always great to see the colors and indicators everyone has in their area.

Newspaper snippet attached:

 

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[tamrock]

I don't have any real museum pieces, but I did pick out a chunk of silver ore on a visit to a mine where the vein measured maybe 24 inches and yielded 300 once a ton and the end of the stope where the vein pinched to maybe 8 inches they could still pull out diluted ore at around 30 onces a ton. Not a mine I work at, as I was only there being shown the operation along with a rockdrill rep looking over some areas of the mine they plan to purchase a few new stoper drills to get after. At the Denver museum of science and industry at the mineral hall, you can veiw some fantastic specimens from the glory days of Colorado's mining industry. Also the museum in San Francisco has some awesome specimens from the gold rush days I believe. So much of the spectacular pieces of ore in the west have been picked out and played out a century ago now, but you just know they didn't get it all. I've seen some pretty neat articles recently on some of the high grade gold coming out of the Fire Creek mine in Nevada.

 

[AnnaMountain]

hehe Tamrock you have saved the reputation of this site - I was beginning to think nobody was actually pulling ore out this year! Now granted you have cheated and this isn't *your* ore...but we'll let it slide.

That looks delicious...exactly what the old timers were looking for in the colors and contact points...what a great specimen! You can even see the empty vugs where there was most likely pyrite at one point before it disintegrated - thus some of the iron staining.

Love it!

 

[AnnaMountain]

This is one of my fav specimen pieces we pulled out this year - sylvanite and calaverite and pyrite all together mingling having a cocktail party:





The one below is prolly my 2nd fav, as it shows the honeycomb of sylvanite on the side there:

 

[AnnaMountain]

Oh - and to me, below is one of the best educational specimens you could have - shows you what the ore looked like laying on the ground unfettered, and then the magic that can happen when you crack it just right on a vein:

 

[tamrock]

Well if your ever inclined to muck up a bunch more of that fine looking rock I can definitely point you in the right direction. It's pretty easy all you need is money and in todays cost of mining it's a lot. It's all doable and the key is never count your chickens before they're hatched. I can't recall how many I've seen do that in the last 40 years. Seems they were better at it when gold was at $400. an once then they are at todays prices. I keep thinking todays modern method of mining really isn't all that efficient for some operations as it was in the days I did the grunt work. We had shops to regrind rock bits straighten and unplug drill rod and all kind of equipment was torn down and again rebuilt from the ground up to go back in service. Today the bean counters see all that as needing people to do things that way and that's a liability, so they just contract it all out or toss it in the trash and buy more, but I guess I can't really complain about that, as that's what keeps my light bill paid, as long as the competition doesn't eat my lunch, which they never seem to stop trying to do. I do think the small operators have a good shot of making a comeback as there is money starting to come their way now. I guess we'll see what comes of it, if I don't hang my hat up to soon, which I feel like doing at times, but there's just something about dealing in the mining business, I so enjoy that get's me up to hit it again.

 

[AnnaMountain]

lol, "pretty easy all you need is money"...so highly understated It all comes down to "where there is a will there is a way". If you never put down your shovel, you *will* end up getting somewhere.

I'm prolly one of the few left that actually does things the old school way - but I'm also not in need of hauling out 100,000 lbs of ore per year - 2,000 does me just fine. I literally have a pickaxe, a shovel, a hammer, a bucket, a pan, a scoop, an old fence post pounder and rod for crushing, a gold cube, mortar and pestle, and a small ceramic furnace. And a website...that's prolly the biggest piece - an avenue to sell. I hit it hard from snow melt to snowed out - sometimes May sometimes June - through about right now - then play in the material all winter. 60% get sold as specimens, 10% gets made into jewelry, 20% goes into "treasure bags" that get sold at a seasonal campground for sluicing, and 10% actually makes it into its liquid form to be stored for when prices soar. Lots of silver to be had out there...if the price will ever rise to a reasonable level.

 

[AnnaMountain]

Somebody else post some ore pictures so you don’t get annoyed at me posting ore pictures

Here are a couple other stellar examples from my neck of the woods:

Coloradoite






Another way you can make money from mining - I sell kids rock collection starter kits - get the lil’ peeps interested in our way of life at a young age

 

[tamrock]

Yeah I had ambitions to find a poke like that when I was young single and living in Lake country. I worked with this one fella and he and his brother worked a claim that was handed down from their grandfather outside of Breckenridge. They'd work it on their days off. They bored 16" holes with a single jack and hand steel, shot the single stick powder rounds with explosives you could pickup from the lumber yard back then and muck sticked it in a wheelbarrow. They took me in there once and I tried my hand at single jacking, which really wasn't that tough because the rock had soft low compressive strength, so you could drill a 1-1/4" hole in about 20 minutes or less. It was just like hundreds of the old timers that mined tons of rock in the past. Heck for all I know they might still be up there mining under the radar.

 

[tamrock]

Somebody else post some ore pictures so you don’t get annoyed at me posting ore pictures

Here are a couple other stellar examples from my neck of the woods:

Coloradoite
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View attachment 1764735

View attachment 1764736

Another way you can make money from mining - I sell kids rock collection starter kits - get the lil’ peeps interested in our way of life at a young age

View attachment 1764737

This place bought a single boom jumbo to go after rhodochrosite mineral specimens up there in Alma. There's big money in mineral specimens for sure and that's something quite a few small operators do and do well at. Primo mineral specimens are in big demand by collectors and I can't believe some of the dollars the serious collectors will spend on some. It can be in the thousands for that rare and perfect specimen.