When gold was $35.00 an ounce...

[cmerlo1-migration]

I recently rediscovered these, and thought I'd share...In the early 1970's my mom and dad found this mine's abandoned office while hiking in the desert in Kern county, California. We were living in Taft or Buttonwillow at the time. My mom found these assayer's reports, and some other paper, and decided to keep them. She later gave them to me. It's hard to imagine gold ever being that cheap, and silver at less than $.75 an ounce!

 

[WoodenJefferson]

Those are pretty neat, I wish I could understand all the entires, btw gold prices were regulated.

 

Excerpts from history, at the time, Gold was regulated in the US to sell for $35 per ounce, no more.

 

FDR's famous Bank Holiday was not a consequence directly of The Great Depression, but rather of a run on gold by speculators getting rid of the dollar: they expected social spending and consequent inflation (Keynes's recommendation for getting out of the slump). So in 1935 FDR outlawed the ownership of gold by Americans, recalled all gold coins (excepting coin colectors), and fixed the price of gold artificially at $35/oz. The US could spend freely on public works projects and get away with it because we had the largest gold reserves in the world (France and surprislingly, Germany, were not far behind).

 

After WWII came the Marshall Plan, and by this mechanism US gold reserves were effectively transferred to Europe via massive postwar spending to rebuild Germany, France and England. By 1964 the Dollar was weak enough that silver coins were worth more than their face value, so LBJ stopped minting them. The Vietnam War caused inflation, as do all wars (no well-off population would ever choose war were the costs explained in advance, and were it understood that the war must eventually be paid for via either higher taxes, inflation, or generally by both). So by 1971 France held enough Dollars to demand payment in gold that would have cleaned out Ft. Knox, the US gold depository in Kentucky. Therefore, Nixon deregulated the dollar (he first raised the official price of gold to $38) and the rest is history. By 1973 gold hit $800/oz.

 

[Oldtrader3]

Some of are assay reports of diamond drilled, mine, core samples. They are quoting gold and silver ounces/ton (i..e. 0.07) from assays per each foot of core samples. The foot assayed values are converted into dollars per ton at assayed ounces. The core was drilled every (5) feet, rods were pulled, and then core was loaded into grooved boxes were it could be marked and identified by foot of drill depth and angle. Later the core was split, sample were numbered and pieces of split core showing "color" (sulphides) could be sent for assay by the provincial government. Drilling crossections could than be mapped to delineate ore bodies.

 

Core drilling was also done underground in ore seams or lenses. Some of the assays are taken from ore cars or from the "Bell" mill where the ore is ground, screened and is ready for the concentrater. I would assume that the A,B,C references were samples taken underground in various tunnels.

 

I was a diamond driller assistant for a year when I was sixteen years old. I quit High School for a year and worked as a driller assistant in northern counties and the eastern townships of Quebec. The work was 12 hours/day, six days/week but it paid $5.00/hour in 1959/1960 when minimum wage was $1.29/hour. We drilled mainly in the winter with ten feet of snow on the ground and below zero temperatures because of this portion of the country side being primarily muskeg (peat swamp) which was impassable for a one ton drill to be dragged across on skids. The drill rig was towed by tracked Weasel into the drill site over snow and ice..

 

Additionally, I worked as a Manager assisting on a drilling site in Costa Rica doing exploration for sulpher on the side of a vocano when I was in my twenties.

[Oldtrader3]

Gold was officially fixed at $35.00/oz. and silver at $1.29/oz. until 1964 when the U.S. Congress demonitized silver and gold and let them float in a free market.

[cmerlo1-migration]

Thanks for all the great information! I sent a link to this post to my mother- she'll really appreciate it!

[Houston Investor]

I remember buying my first US Gold Coin - a 1907 SG $20 in Gem BU for $82.68 in 1969. Then in the fall of 69 off to college (and forgot about coins) which was serious business - you really needed to make your grades then to stay out of the Nam (It seems our leadership did not have the guts to nuke N Vietnam let alone flatten / decimate their cities, government command centers, and ports with firebombing, napalm, and gas). The 1907 Saint sold in 1974 for $260 to finance an engagement ring when my enthusiam for coins had cooled somewhat. If I still had it today I believe it would be MS 66.

 

1969 would have been a good time to start a serious collection of US Gold Type Coins. Then in 1980 when gold hit $800 an ounce (our wimp of a president Carter let Iran go to the Religious Nuts instead of doing what it took to prop up the shah) that might of been a time to take some profit on the gold and load up on US Currency (National Banknotes, Large Size Type) which was cheap as dirt then and have a fortune in it by now.

 

If we could only know future trends............

[World Colonial]

We can always look back when something we wanted was really cheap. If I had known they even existed, I would have bought high grade South Africa ZAR and pre-Union patterns in the 1980's. One dealer I know told me that a collector he knew had acculated quite a few of these patterns in the late 1990's. I told him the guy was really smart. If they are high quality, he has made 5-10 times his money in less than a decade.

[Oldtrader3]

I used to by MS Saints for $42. each in 1968 at the Royal Bank of Canada and jewelry stores in Texas.