North Bay Resources Inc (NBRI)

[es1]

Actually minimum wage was raised from .30 in 1942 to .40 in 1948 (a 30% increase) and gold went up from 33.85 to 34.71 (a 3% increase)in that same period.

Adjusted for inflation wages dropped about 10% and gold dropped about 30%

It was in the 1950s that wages started to gain (150% in 10 years) and gold was stuck at $35 but that was long after the decision to stop mining was made.

http://money.cnn.com/interactive/economy/minimum-wage-since-1938/

http://www.nma.org/pdf/gold/his_gold_prices.pdf

Seeing that Best was mining at about a 20% profit margin it was not wages that forced the halt of mining. It was a wise move though since in the following years the POG:wage ratio took a dump.

The question really is what would have stopped the mining. I have heard it said that after a few years it would have been flooded and caved in but I find that a bit hard to believe.

IMO the trend showed that the future was not going to be bright for the gold mine without a higher yield than they could get. They chose to stop mining and moved on.

What I would like to see is the yearly output of Bests gold production. If the gold production was very high at the start and dwindled off, or if there was no gold for years and then a motherlode, would have a lot of bearing on the chances of NBRI finding profitable gold.

There are a lot of tunnels in this mine. A lot of the work done here in the past was moving a vast amount of rock with no gold in it and finding the pockets of gold that made it worth while. NBRI is in no way capable of moving vast amounts of rock to find those pockets.
I look at it like this... if they have 5 miles of tunnel and produce 60K ounces of gold you will need to dig a mile of tunnel to find 12K ounces, or 2 ounces per foot. NBRI has dug about 1 foot. They need masses of rock moving to be profitable.

Best was pulling 800 tons a day to make a 20% profit margin.
With gold being worth about 2x what it was when Best was mining(adjusted) we will need 400 tons a day to make that same 20% profit margin

JMO