There were 5,000 good copper showing in Ontario found between 1900 and 1972. This means drilled, trenched or both, with width length and depth indicated. General geology was fair on average with porphyry andesite contact in evidence in most cases. Actual number of mines formed from this group of showings was 50, so the pure chance of a copper sulfide showing in Ontario becoming a mine was 100 to one. Gold showings, as just occurrences are of course much lower on the totem pole unless you qualify them carefully as to size, grade, width, length and depth indicated by drilling. As pure occurrences it is hard to say, as in one Township in Ontario I used to prospect (It will remain nameless for security reasons but is was within 200 miles of Hemlo) there were found 15,000 showings. Of course most of these were really just grab samples. There were never any mines in the township, but there were a few in the general area. Showings of size with drill holes in them in the books, in gold, would be off the top of my head about 5,000 in Ontario. Gold mines where any amount of production was hauled out, from 50 tons to 50,000,000, would be off the top of my head, and only in an order of magnitude, from 1900 to today, about 300. So it is one in 17 is the surprising answer. (95% of them have a quartz feldspar porphyry on the contact, so look forthat world in the drill logs and news announcements. 80% of them are mineralized with sericite, so look for that too. Perhaps 80% of them have pillow lavas and tuffaceous shear zones. Most of the veining is quartz carbonate. Most gold mines of depth have low silver, so watch out for high silver assays, as they reveal a problem with the temperature regime of the mine structure. Most good gold mines are in large scale structures or corridors where other occurences of gold or mines are found on strike for up to 100 miles away. Watch for that major association with large scale structures. Most gold mines are associated with regional faults and cross faults or prominent folds across those faults. They are often found a flexures of the prominent faults. Most gold mines are lensoidal and a large group (20 ore more) of holes missing the main structure is not a major concern. Because of this fact, any drill program that predicates less than about 100 to 200 holes given an average width, has no hope of proving or disproving a real mine. So any program under 2 million dollars is likely to fail to prove a mine in the first round of drilling unless you get spectacularly lucky with the width and grade. See Aurelian for proof of that. As a case in point, the Kerr Addison Mine, a 13 million ounce orebody, took eight years, and bankrupted 3 companies trying to come to grips with whether it was mineable or not. It was finally definitively proven by a 3,000 foot vertical hole after a shaft had been sunk and many holes drilled underground. The true nature of the shape or structure of the veins had eluded the best geologists of the time (1938). Today that work would cost about 40 million at least. As a yardstick on development costs of major mines, it took 50,000,000 to put the Lakeshore Mine Gold Mine (Kirkland Lake, Ontario) in production from 1924 to 1929. Today that would be one billion dollars. Today KGI, a realtively small company, has the Lakeshore, the Wright Hargreaves, The Teck Hughes, and the Macassa all in a row under its aegis. I would put that at 10 billion in mineable ore. Now if you want to know from me whether KGI is a growth stock, you may infer between the lines and draw your best guess.
What kind of mine is the qualifier that is hard to put a number on. The thing is, the standard of when to sink a shaft has changed since 1930 for several reasons. The old timers used to usefully start a mine on three years ore drilled. Today the standard is much higher -but- it is impossible to tell if the drilling will prove a mine often. They try to prove by drilling almost 1,000,000 mineable ounces, or 2 mill with some companies, before a production decision is made. With Archean verticalized orebodies that shuts out way too much ore imho. Also 50 tpd or even 5,000 unless there was a profit shown is not really a mine, so the number is probably more like one in 50, same as copper. What is it today with present techniques? Again it depends on what you call a showing, and what proves to be doggie on cursory inspection. 14 mines in Timmins exceeded the million ounce category. How may showings were drilled with more than 20 holes? Hard to say. I would say perhaps 150. So now we are in a gold camp, at 11 to one to find a really good mine!!! not bad... Now you may see why I like old mines and being near them. How many were ever mined out that ever operated? I say none. Other experts may disagree. Some, not so expert perhaps, think they all were. I don't know if that is realistic.
The beauty of this business is that the most erudite experts can be as categorically wrong on just about any theoretical or pragmatic point as one would be to say the Titanic was really unsinkable.
My theory is this. If you can hit 20 holes in a row with 100 foot spacings that would make any engineer say, "holy cow I wish I had that ore", the probability of having a mine are about 1 in 2. It's 50-50. Either there is a mine there of some scale or there isn't.
Now if you compare the number of companies on the exchange to the number of production companies on the exchange to come up with a pure chance figure you are not totally left out. There are about 1600 companies on the VSE, and about 50 of them operate mines. Hey we are in good country, the pure dartboard blind man's buff of pin the tail on the donkey wins us a success ratio of about one in 32. Now it is presumed that one could hedge one's bets with guessing which managers are better, which properties look better and which companies seem to be able to attract the necessary risk money to find one of those mine suckers. This should improve odds markedly. How does one go about doing that? Well, for one think listen to Loantech, as he knows oodles about geology, mining, drill hole statistics, management competence and which companies are covered all over with sticky money glue. Of course that was a cruel shot. He is going to tell me that he knows squat about all that, and he is just being lucky like his ole fren "rr". Who shall remain nameless.
You know what I found out in 45 years of following mining stocks? Most geologists are the lousiest investors on the planet. They lose their shirts a great deal of the time. This is because although some times the game is about guessing the value of a drill hole or a group of drill holes, it most often is about guessing how hard a group of promoters are lying to you and perhaps themselves. This is not the province of geology, but of social speculation, which I will grant they don't give degrees in as of yet.
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