azrh… The trouble with Gold Mines, (A family member owned one for about 4 years in Arizona,) is that with fairly efficient mining Equipment, the average extracting price was around $1,200 per ounce, and this was a number of years ago!
I was out there for a while when my Family member told be; "T., if a minor component Breaks, (and his equipment was not top-of-the-line,) it costs no less than $2,500 dollars to replace the problem component," and that is just the very simplest of things, like a broken gear, or even something simpler?
Then to buy the Computerized equipment is a very expensive proposition, costing millions of Dollars, even for slightly used systems? Since many Gold Mining operations go out of Business, there are used systems galore out there! Say the cost of mining one ounce of gold costs only about $ 1,000 dollars, (about 200 dollars less than it costs about 8 years ago or so,) chances are that the market will only accept so many ounces at one particular time, whereupon the price of Gold lowers below your asking price! Right now Gold Ranges from $1,500 to 1,295 dollars an ounce, so your Gold mining operation will be able to sell only so much at any particular time, where the excess, (one wants to continue the Mining operation, not halt it every couple of months or so,) will have to be refined into Bullion blocks and stored away somewhere?
Gold will often rise to new Heights, as people will see the immediate explosion and go along with the mania that always attracts new buyers, but the fall is never too far away as the mania begins to be understood!
At the time my Family Member bought the mine, a healthy reservoir of Gold by the way, it cost him, (Well not him, but the foolish Investors,) about 4 Million dollars, but since the monthly mortgage costs were pretty high, (I was not privy to them,) a certain amount of gold had to be extracted and refined every month! Well, with the cost of Labor and other costs, my F/M could not keep up with the monthly costs, so the original owner took the mine back! The only things that are sustainable about gold is the GLITTER and the almost indestructible quality of it, nothing else, though some miners may have contacts that need the gold and will buy it, but at a discount usually! My F/M also had a two garage sized Refinery in Albuquerque, NM., and hauled the Basic ore from Northern Arizona to Alb'e, around 600 Miles or so, twice a week to refine what the extraction machinery reduced to the basic ore!
Gold miners are some of the most ruthless people around, my F/M included, so they are the best sellers in the world, as who isn't susceptible to having that lifetime opportunity of getting rich in Gold? It usually doesn't take much selling to convince a potential buyer that GOLD will always be the underlying value of everything in this world?
Though the depression in Gold has been sometime static in the negative zone for quite a while, there might be another "Boom" sometime in the next 3-6 years or so, so good luck AZURE Investors, the time for another surge might not be that far away? But beware, as the overall depths of Mining operations are never fully understood, and overlooked by the promise, (Illusionary usually,) there is quite a risk involved! But the basic facts of Ounce Costs and the Sales factors are always pretty much the same over time, though they costs increase faster than the sales profits! GLTA.
