Idaho Silver Valley

  • newtechxl


    Du findest ja alle die irgendetwas mit gold und silber zu tun haben. :D
    Wenn ich auf die obige liste schaue dann bin ich gut vertreten in Idaho mit SRLM.PK CDE HL NJMC.OB. Habe noch Shoshone SHSH.PK, die sitzen aber nur in Kellogs Idaho. Ich fuhr mal durchs Silbervalley in Idaho 1998 ,eine schoene Gegend im Sommer kann ich nur sagen. Da fahre ich wieder hin bei 9 $ Silberpreis. :P

  • North America’s Newest (and Last) Comstock



    The Wallace Street Journal



    By David Bond, Editor


    The Silver Valley Mining Journal



    Wallace, Idaho – It lies beneath the Bitterroot and the Cabinet Mountain ranges, where Idaho and Montana collide along the Idaho Panhandle. The rock-rabbits call it the Montana Copper Sulfide Belt. Better to regard it as the Comstock Lode on steroids.



    Hecla, U.S. Borax, Kennecott, Noranda, Asarco, all have plumbed its depths. Through no fault of its own, the Montana Copper Sulfide Belt resides mostly beneath the Peoples Republic of Montana, a once-proud Western state now inhabited mostly by I’ve-got-mine-so-get-lost Hollyweed types. Redford and Turner and Sam Peckinpah aren’t content with their own monstrous estates there and will not rest until they can control the entire state by legislative or judicial fiat. Which makes mining in Montana a bit dicey because unlike making movies about teenagers having deviant sex, mining is unwholesome and a threat to future generations.



    To describe the Montana Copper Sulfide Belt is to describe a reef of silver so huge as to boggle the imagination. The grades won’t make your socks roll up and down, although there are pockets on the Idaho side on the Snowstorm worthy of a Sunshine Mine. It’s the sheer enormity of the thing. Its accessibility. Its uncomplicated metallurgy. The sumbitch comprises some 1,600 square miles! All silver. Still open at strike and depth, which means we really don’t know exactly where it begins or ends after that. It just means it goes as far as we’ve looked.



    The Montana Copper Sulfide Belt is part of the even larger Pre-Cambrian Belt Basin that reaches from North Idaho’s famed Silver Valley all the way up to Teck-Cominco’s legendary Sullivan Mine in Kimberley, British Columbia. Nearly every hard-rock metal known to man, from copper, zinc and lead to silver and gold, can be and have been fished out of this super-group.



    Unlike the convoluted and near-vertical dipping high-grade veins of the Coeur d’Alene District proper, the paydirt in the Montana Belt lays more-or-less flat, thick, and evenly disseminated in the Revett Formations. When the late Fred Owsley of Asarco took me through their operations at the Troy Mine back in the mid-1980s, he referred to this deposit as “stratabound.” Asarco was using room-and-pillar mine construction there, a bulk rubber-tired operation relying on the competence of ground you don’t find in the Coeur d’Alenes proper. Silver in the Belt ranges from about 2 to 20 ounces per ton, but you can get away with underground mining the lower end of that range because you can get so much of the stuff out, and the copper values at today’s prices nearly pay the bills. The silver resides with copper in a sulfide deposit that probably was the bed of a massive inland sea, or the bottom of Lake Missoula . The water got super-hot and melted the metal into faults that turned into veins, or the metal got hot and boiled the water – who knows? The important thing is, all this silver landed there. We are talking, if you work the math, billions of ounces.



    Three companies are working this area right now. Here is a brief discussion of each:



    Mines Management (MGN): MGN controls the Montanore deposit originally discovered by Borax in the early 1960s and abandoned by Noranda in 2002, who burned out dealing with the Montana greenies for 16 years. Early exploration found significant bedded mineralization within an area measuring more than 12,000 feet in length and averaging about 3,000 feet in width. The drilling did not limit the deposit in its long dimension, and the geologic model suggests the possibility of a significant extension to the deposit. Over much of its extent, the mineralization is contained within two parallel, slightly dipping beds, separated by up to 200 feet of un-mineralized quartzite. The thickness of each silver/copper bearing bed averages about 30 feet. Mineralization lies in two parallel beds with the thickness of each silver/copper bearing bed ranging from 10 to 54 feet. A high-grade ore zone is estimated to contain 30 to 50 million tons grading about 3.0 ounces of silver per ton. Overall the deposit contains approximately 135 million tons averaging 1.92 ounces silver per ton and 0.75% copper.



    MGN’s property lies beneath a federal Montana wilderness area but can be accessed from outside the wilderness. Mines Management recently resumed a mine-permitting process at Montanore.



    Revett Minerals (RVM): RVM took over Asarco’s holdings at Troy and Rock Creek, Montana, in 1999. The Rock Creek endeavour has become a poster child of the Montana greenie movement, attracting rock stars like Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt to perform in nearby Sandpoint, Idaho, to raise funds for legal challenges to the proposed mine, where reside an estimated 229 million ounces of silver and 2 billion pounds of copper in inferred resources. Despite all the wailing and gnashing of teeth, state and federal regulators’ permitting decisions generally have gone Revett’s way on this sensitive property, and RVM envisions a 10,000 ton-per-day underground operation there, with an estimated annual production of 7 million ounces of silver, and 59 million pounds of copper during the first 9 years of production.



    Meantime, RVM reactivated Asarco’s old room-and-pillar Troy Mine and mill – closed after a 12-year run in 1993 – in December 2004. Full production at Troy is expected during the second quarter of 2005, with total 2005 production estimated to be 2.8 million ounces of silver and 23 million pounds of copper. At full capacity, the Troy Mine is expected to average 3.2 million ounces of silver and 26.4 million pounds of copper production per year.



    Timberline Resources (TBLC): Timberline is the new kid on the block, and the only play on the Idaho side of the Montana Copper Sulfide Belt. Last year TLBC signed an earn-in deal with Hecla for a 49 percent interest in the Snowstorm Copper-Silver project, featuring the historic Snowstorm Mine, a small but highly profitable operation from the early-1900s that produced 800,000 tons of ore averaging 4-percent copper and 6 ounces per ton silver. While maps would lead one to believe the Snowstorm area to be within the Coeur d’Alene Mining District proper, mineralization at the Snowstorm occurs as disseminated copper and silver found in the same Revett quartzites that host the Troy, Rock Creek and Montanore deposits, but of a significantly higher grade. The Snowstorm property lies in the southwest corner of the Montana Copper Sulfide Belt where it overlaps the northeast corner of the Coeur d'Alene Mining District. The project area includes unpatented claims recently staked by Timberline along with patented mineral rights owned by Hecla and will be unitized, subject to Timberline's completion of earn-in requirements.



    TLBC’s agreement with Hecla calls for Timberline to expend $250,000 on first-phase exploration efforts no later than October 2006. If TLBC keeps its end of the deal (the company raised $312,000 net through a private placement and offering last year, and another $195,000 through the exercise of warrants earlier this year) Hecla can elect to remain in as a 51 percent holder, or opt out and retain a 4 percent net smelter return from the property.



    That’s the Montana Copper-Sulfide Belt in a nutshell. We’ll be taking in-depth looks at each of these three players in this space in the months to come. Welcome to Comstock, 21st Century.

  • Hi Idaho Fan


    Super Gegend, war schon dort.


    Das letzte mal wo wir ueber Timberline geredet haben ist sie -38% gefallen mit wenig volumen was eingentlich das problem ist.


    Bei den Silver Valley Minen wird es laenger Dauern bis sie Schlagzeilen und Volumen machen.


    Long time junior mines zum Spekulieren, ...in meinen Augen.


    Ein paar Stufen unter IMA und Avino, etc.


    Good Luck & Gruss



    Eldo

  • @ Eldo


    Wenn Du im Silver Valley investieren willst, dann solltest Du Dir mal die verschiedenen Leasegeschäfte anschauen. Meiner Meinung sollte dort das Geld liegen.
    Blanketpower erklärt das sehr treffend in seiner Analyse über


    American Silever Mines.


    Newtechxl

  • @newstechxl


    Kannst schon recht haben aber ich habe schon genug dort investiert, z.B SHSH.PK, SRLM.PK,NJMC.OB.
    Leider alle im roten Bereich. :(
    Was machen wir mit Tumi ? was meinst du dazu.
    War ja lustig gestern wie Timberline um 45% gestiegen ist mit einen volumen von nur 5000 Aktien oder 2000 USD.
    Ich wars nicht ! :D


    Gruss


    XEX

  • @ Eldo


    Bei Tumi hat das Management and den Basispreisen der Optionen rumgeschraubt ( so weit ich informiert bin. Quelle: Stockhouse.com). Tumi ist jetzt aber sehr günstig. Ich würde halten. Steinige mich aber nicht, falls die noch weiter fallen.


    Eldo, sag mir was zu New jersey, warum hast Du gekauft? Habe Sie auch auf dem Radar. Scheinen solide zu sein. Was ist die Story? Welches Potential ?


    Newtechxl

  • @Newstechxl


    Danke fuer deine Meinung ueber Tumi. Cinco Minas ist gestorben wie du weisst. Ich glaube da haben Insider verkauft die es vorher wussten.
    Gestern nach Ladenschluss kam die Nachricht,heute bei Eroeffnung gleich 13% am fallen. X( ist wohl ein Flop, was solls !
    Auf New Jersey bin ich ueber einen Tip von einen Bekannten gekommen der sich aufs Silbervalley konzentriert hat und in Idaho lebt. Auf ihrer Webseite kannst du ein wenig mehr rauslesen ob du etwas daran findest. Ich habe sie leider zu frueh gekauft und bin ebenso im roten Bereich, vielleicht auch ein Flop, what the heck , hoffentlich ziehen meinen anderen die aus den Dreck.


    http://www.newjerseymining.com/


    Cheers,kauf das ganze Tal nicht auf ! :D


    XEX

  • http://www.silverminers.com/publications/showPub.aspx?id=998


    A Valley full of Silver !



    by Christian Wirth



    Located in the Northwest of the United States in the state of Idaho is the location of the famous “Idaho Silver Valley” which produced more than 1 billion ounces since 1884. Since the discovery of silver in the area there has been a continuous production. Incredibly about 5 per cent of the silver rich district have been explored adequately till today. It is expected that there are still over one billion mineable silver ounces. The valley is the richest area of primary silver on the planet. Famous mines are the Sunshine, Bunker Hill, Galena, Coeur and Lucky Friday. The main players are Sterling Mining, Hecla Mining and Coeur d´ Alene Mines. After a deep depression the Silver Valley is going to awaken and many mining companies are working to set up production again. The rise of the silver price opens the opportunity to have a profitable production. The costs of production can nowadays, because of new mining technologies and a good infrastructure easily compete with other silver mining regions in the world. There are already around 1000 miles of shafts and tunnels in the valley and inexpensive hydroelectric power and good transportation are available.



    Mining in the Valley is a rather predictable business (by mining standards!). You get a skilled labour force, a ton of geological data, known metallurgy and an established low cost infrastructure combined with a stable environment.



    Interesting to know is that Wallace, the capital of the Silver Valley, was once described as the “richest little city on earth”. Most of the miners used to have their headquarters there. Silver Valley companies were coveted by Middle Eastern royalties, Texas oilmen and London financiers, because they saw their investments in the valley as a hedge against US economic uncertainty.



    Another important city for mining and mining stocks was Spokane. In 1980 there had been about 130 companies that were traded at the Spokane Stock exchange. The Exchange specialised in mining stocks and provided the trading of the stocks from the valley. In 1991, because of the bear market in silver the exchange closed and also many of the miners where merged or went out of business. Most of the remaining companies stayed on the OTC, in order to reduce the costs and to wait for the next silver bull market. Actually there are about 36 mining companies that are listed.



    You can divide them into producer, explorer and lease companies. It is still difficult to get good information and research material, but that is also the challenge for the investors, as we know that the early bird catches the worm.



    28 June 2005



    Christian Wirth is a commentator of the silver market with focus on the “Idaho Silver Valley”

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