hello there my name is Brent and right now I am headed 900 ft down an abandoned mine shaft from the 1800s and now you can see the entrance I am headed down here to do a 12-hour shift similar to what they would have done back in the day my hope is to extract some valuable minerals in this 12 hours this stuff is just so rare and at the end of it we're going to see how much I pulled out [Music] the mine I've headed into is the union mine at Ser Gordo which back in the 1800s was the largest silver mine in California it was the largest and the most infamous it was known as the mine that built Los Angeles due to all the people it employed in the growing city but it was also one of the most deadly mins no dude this is scary this is not good with the newspaper is reporting mining accidents fires that trapped miners underground and even in an incident in the 1870s that buried 30 Chinese Miners and their bodies were never recovered in total they pulled over $500 million wor of minerals out of this m shaft around me all this cool stuff and most of that was Galina which is a silver and Lead ore but there's also a bit of smithsonite which is a zinc ore but other minerals as well there was gold copper turquoise and more so today I'm going to visit all six levels of the mine explore each of them as much as I can I am finding a lot of dynamite and pull out whatever minerals I find and there's just some the coolest crystallization I've ever seen in any Rock so let's see what's down there [Music] so here we are at the first level of the Union mine this is the 86 level and this is going to be the first level that we're going to explore and my plan is something like this the union mine has six total levels here are the 86 200 450 500 700 900 I'm going to spend 2 hours on each level so 12 hours in total pulling out all the minerals that we can every level different minerals every bit has a little bit of a different personality and at the end I'm going to take them all back to the top we're going to review what I got clean them up a little bit and we're going to see how much they're worth um I'm excited this is the first time I've ever gone to every level of the mine in one day it's the first time that I've gone to every level of the mine in one video so not only are we going to see some cool minerals you're going to get a complete tour of the Union Mine by the end of this video which I'm very excited about the 86 level of the mine is the first level down and it intersected the Santa Marina workings which was one of the earliest and most prosperous discoveries in all of sarog Gordo so much so that originally it was its own mine but eventually it merged into the larger Union mine the 86 also intersects the Jefferson chimney that's where I'm headed and it's also where I found minerals that I've never seen anywhere else in the Ino Mountains and the Jefferson chimney was the largest or deposit here at Soro it is the one that's responsible for the majority of the $500 million of the minerals that they pulled out of here and the primary thing that was in the Jefferson chimney was Galina and Galina is going to be our first mineral that we're mainly looking for today and Galina is silver and lead some silica and some other stuff along with it and today lead sells for about a dollar per pound you know lead's used for Batteries ammunition construction some weights and stuff like that silver sells for about $30 an ounce silver you know is used for jewelry coins some medical stuff photography so we're going to say that the Blended average of Galina is about a dollar per pound of it raw that some of these minerals are going to be more valuable you know in their state that they're in rather than just the spot price of the mineral for instance Smith's tonight another mineral that I'm going to be looking for is about 50% zinc and zinc trades for you know just over a dollar a pound but there's pieces of Smiths tonight that sell for tens of thousands of dollars because of their beauty and kind of collector value so we'll talk about a little bit later on but there's going to be a difference between you know the spot value of the metal and the market value of these things as a collectible which the lines will blur a little bit [Music] we're headed up there there's a pocket of fluorite over here and the goal is each level fill up a bucket so I have six buckets for the six levels inside the bucket I'll show you what we're going to be mining with I have a respirator a chisel a hammer drill which might make some miners flip over in their grave I have another respirator some gloves that's basically it so this is the Jefferson chimney here at sagoro and this is why the whole town exists this is the main deal this is everything and it's hard to even give you a good idea of how big this thing is if you look up this what appears to be a cave is all man-made so this was being made by man they chiseling out Galina and it extends 1100 ft down that hole but what really contries me if you can see across the way there's cribed rocks where my light's shining right now back and forth there appears to be a shaft beyond that and you can see that on the map too I just don't know how they were getting across this Traverse you know you look it's probably at least oh a good 40 ft across this hole right now and so how are they getting stuff out of that I don't see a connection back behind me to a different level I don't imagine they'd ran a bridge or something and so one day if I can figure out bolting my way across I'd love to get over there all right so as we get to the back of this this is that little pocket I'm talking about this is fluorite and I'm going to turn off my main light you can see the beautiful purples and this is going to have a higher value kind of in the collector's realm of things over the industrial value you can see as it's just glowing in the dark all this cool stuff [Music] all right we got quite the Hall of this purple mineral now some of these pie going to crumble but some are going to be really pretty after I shine them up a bit the miners would have spent no time going after this purple rock they would have been on Galina and then zinc but it's funny because during the Galina era which was about 1860s to the 1890s they weren't paying attention to Zinc at all and then by the zinc a they're still paying attention to gleena but they're on to mainly zinc so what has me thinking is that like you know depending on the times depends on what minerals were valuable given the context of COG Gordo and so these days you know uh gem mineral rock collecting much bigger deal so suddenly this fluorite that was passed up probably in a similar manner that the zinc was passed up during the 1860s now can make sense to mine and so we're just in a different era of mining what do we have here uhoh we might have something I don't want to mess with there's a chance that's blasting caps which we don't want oh my god look Yep this is very not awesome and so Dynamite needs an impact to explode if you throw it in a fire it doesn't do anything and so these were are called blasting caps and Blasting caps are that impact that you need you see all the tools they had right here you got your fuse which you attach a blasting cap to the end of then sometimes it's like a minute per foot of burn and so you were to pack your cap on the end of this put that in Dynamite like this this makes the cap go pop the cap going Pop makes the whole thing go pop and again I don't really want to mess with this but there we go all right so didn't have anything in it but made by California cap company Oakland number five demolitions all right this is I think got some stuff that maybe we can search for afterwards oh my god look St David's day the ninth social reunion Friday evening March 1st 1878 this is the like earliest earliest earliest sarog Gordo that is so freaking cool you know every time I'm down here I feel like I'm looking for something else the first times I come down into the mine I was almost always looking for artifacts stuff like this then then I kind of got the rock hound bug and started looking for all the Rocks but if I see a pile of trash I'm going to look through it all right goodbye 86 level next St 200 level for a coule whoa whoa hey something's stuck stop stop the 200 level of the mine is the most infamous of all the levels that's because in the 1870s a collapse there killed up to 35 Chinese miners a newspaper article about the time says they were mining in the limstone below the 200t level and failed to shore up the tunnel with Timber and it finishes with their bodies were never recovered but beyond the accident there's reports of Rich copper veins in the 200 and all sorts of other minerals the level is also connected to the Omega tunnel which is a portal to the outside which I found a couple years ago but has since collapsed and since the mine was closed the 200 level has only been explored twice both times by me so I'm interested to go back down there and keep a closer eye on the minerals all around that level all right and now you can see the entrance to the next level so this is to get into the 200 the actual entrance is about 10 ft below me in the shaft but that's boarded up and since this Dirt has come down and allowed a crack back into the level so we're going to snake back in there ooh o no so right off the bat as I was sneaking in that extremely tight space is this this is a piece of malachite maybe a little bit of crystola and deep inside there's a really deep green that almost looks like velvet it's called velvet Malachite and there's just some the coolest crystallization I've ever seen in any Rock here there's some blue in there potentially some turquoise this is just something I don't see at any other level it's interesting the different characters that each level has that blue is so nice it's pretty Eerie being on the T level just understand the history of it the context the fact that one day some guys walked down this exact shaft I'm walking down and they never walked back out and I think part of the reason I do these Explorations is to try to bring history back to life that's been My Hope from day one with the Channel with all my adventures and it gives you a better understanding instead of just reading about something in the newspaper you know for instance the 200 I've been here now now you know it contextualizes history it brings it to life I think it makes it more real and more important all right so this is strange this is the area where you'll see just a ton of this I want to say that's turquoise look at that oh my God that might be the prettiest Ro I've ever seen C so it's all here but it doesn't appear that it was mined right here you know if you look look around you're seeing more of just the Lin Zone Sandstone it looks like it was built up here for some reason and this is huge that's that's the that's the best rock I've ever seen at sagoro this stuff is just so rare intriguing I need to find where this came from so the stack that we found is right there in the this little side shoot that they're following if you look up you can see burrowing out and right still in the wall is some of that brilliant brilliant Malachite and turquoise so there seems to be a pocket right here and the malachite the green is a copper ore so they're tunneling out right there maybe there must have been a huge bit and as you can see those same greens and Blues wow look at that so I was looking more at this little pocket and they marked it here and they were definitely going off of this main choot when they were going to wherever they were headed to which would have been the union chimney which would been back this way which was Galina so I do think remember remember really I was saying where they purposely mind this this appears to just be a little exploratory thing for this ore it follows even the curvature of where that vein was going of the Blues and purples and greens and I don't know if they're doing that to get the copper content or if they saw the value of the azerite and the Malachite and all of that this is the big rock I just poured some water on it look at that Blues turquoises the whole thing it's just got such interesting character [Music] big guy's got to [Music] go all right I got my full bucket of the pretty stuff and my big rock back to the collapse and now it's going to get interesting because I need to get all those things in myself back through this going to be a huge pain you see behind me there's some massing Machinery down here this is actually where the Omega Mega tunnel which is something I tried to dig into for many years would have connected and the 200 level is huge there's a huge history to it I have a full video about exploring it I spent a good six or eight hours just exploring this level so in two hours I'm allotting this we're not going to see that much but I'll link that below if you want to check out the entire exploration of the 200 level for now we're going to try to get these rocks back to the Hoist so we can get on to the 400 level which is a level where I know there's some Galina so we're going to finally see the main thing that they're looking for as well as I know that there's a little pocket of smithsonite which is probably my favorite mineral it's also the thing that they made into zinc so the next level is very historic but between here and there getting all that stuff back to the [Music] Hoist no no no dude this is scary this is not good [Music] voice is there that was about as postop phobic as I've ever felt back in the mind that's a come on you can see that Gap isn't any taller than a [Music] bucket that come [Music] on got back with a bucket and the bag the big pretty Rock might need see stay there for a while maybe I'll come back one day that sucked so there's the actual entrance to the 200 as you can see it's just boarded up with good reason and I say this each time that probably the last time I go to the 200 except to retrieve that rock but we got the stuff and now we're headed down 400 ft down the mine the 400 level of the mine is one of the most success ful in terms of minerals I found everything from Galina to smithsonite to small bits of gold and even Levi genes down there and in the mines Heyday there was a massive Galina vein that was found between this level and the level below it and in the zinc era a massive shoot of Smiths tonight was found that the USGS report described as more coarsely crystallin smithsonite so I'm hoping that we can find the two main minerals that built this town all one level good we're going pretty steady here all right and we are here this is the 400 level of Sarah gor's Union mine and this is a level that I like a lot this is potentially one of my favorite levels because back this way if you head to the north you get to a little pocket of Galina if you go to the South there's a Cool Tube with some Smiths tonight and in between those all sorts of things so we're going to try to get some Smiths tonight we're going to try to get some Galina that is the first era of COG Gordo lead and silver the second era of sordo zinc so we are headed towards an area of the mine that was heavily used during the zinc era of ser Gordo which was kind of 1912 into the 1940s so you can see here 7135 so we're headed to an area that was primarily going after zinc and zinc in this case is is held within smithsonite so smithsonite is what we're looking for and you know zinc these days is used for a bunch different things it's used for galvanizing iron to keep it from rusting it's used in cars it's used in health people take it to have better immunity all sorts of different things we are looking for it um primarily from a collector's perspective I would say Smith tonight can be very opaque and beautiful blue it can be white it can be all these different things it can contains about up to 60% zinc so this would have been the heart of kind of the Gordon era and LD Gordon is the guy that came down here after everybody thought the place was bust he came down he discovered zinc he made this the largest producer of zinc for the State of California in the nation actually for a bit oh hello that is not Smith tonight but that is something definitely we're going to mine we're headed down this little shoot they had continue on down get some dang ore huh so this is the wall I'm going to work I believe the Smiths is the bubbly stuff on the outside you can see I've taken a little bit out before but this other stuff in here is very interesting too you know I I don't know exactly the composition of everything just to give you a better idea have all the colors and this is what we're going for this bubbly stuff that's what we want I'm going to head down that shoots and ladders but even up here you can see Galina so it's grayish but it's got that sparkle to it that twinkle and down here it's very easy to tell when you see it so imagine when the miners caught a glimpse of that there's no real doubt in their mind of what to do these days I'm going to head in between the 400 500 level where they've left a little wall of Galina you know back in the day they were doing so many tons per day that they couldn't be wed this little amount [Music] and here we are you can see just how shiny this gleen is and again they left this little shelf that's kind of on this transfer way down to the lower levels see that crazy shoot there and I would just dump it all down there and pick it up to the next level but the level is collapsed to get to the bottom where the shoot goes but imagine back in the day and you can tell you by the color of the dirt they were just ripping it down throwing it down here to get rid of it all right almost halfway through my shift looking pretty dirty and got to find at least a dozen minerals already I think we're doing good um the 500 and the 700 are levels I've never really looked for minerals before so I'm excited to see what's down there you know before I kind of knew where I was going in these levels the next few are just wild countries so we're going to see what we can find and just like that my time at the 400 level is complete time for the shift to continue 150 ft below this deeper into the Earth the 550 level the 550 is a level that I haven't explored that much but has a long and stored history it's one of the main locations of the Santa Maria vein which was a vein of really rich copper ore with a little bit of gold reported as well and in the history of the whole Coto mine there was only ever about 2,000 o of gold compared to over 5 million ounces of silver so this idea of finding and coming across a bit of gold is really exciting and welcome to the 550 level of sor Union mind I would say this is my least spent time on level um which I'm excited to spend more time here let's look some names we got Jetson Reed baru by Morgan Jor Gordo Frank I don't exactly know which way to go but we're going to meander so you see there that pipe would have been compressed air so they're doing something major back here I collaps but that's not going to bother us what is this this is the craziest thing i' ever seen look it's almost like it looks like a growth is that a grow is that something growing look at how it looks o i remember this this is a dynamite room Powder Magazine if you will inside there it's good oldfashioned Dynamite giant gelatin 40% strength Dynamite is basically just um nitroglycerin that's been stabilized in dichotomous Earth or clay basically and over time what you really have to worry about with old Dynamite is the nitroglycerine crystallizing So eventually it seeps out or weeps out and it crystallizes on the surface of these and that can be very volatile cuz then it's no longer stabilized it's very you know volatile it can explode this big level so far weak on the mineral front I am finding a lot of dynamite this says these explosives were inspected and found in good condition before they were packed keeping a cool dry wall ventilated Place Hercules Power Company Willington Delaware that's nice right below it got a little bit of newspaper again Rising taxes waste income slice this way out striking out on minerals at the 550 but kind of cleaning up on sides I got got that I got that and I got that all right so we're eight hours through the 12 hour shift I'm pretty tired I've been moving around probably not doing as much mining as the miners were have done but I feel like I've been kind of squeezing through some holes trying to find out even what to mine but next up is the 700t level and that's a very important level at Cog gordoa that's the one level with water here and so we're going to go down there then finally end at the 900t level the deepest of the deep the place I've been spending a lot of time trying to fix up um but it's interesting you know it's interesting how long 12 hours can feel when you're down here and it seems that time is going quite slow goodbye 550 it will looks good next view is 700 the 700 level of the mine is an important one to me it is the level with the water and there is water that was discovered and established by the time the USGS put together a report in 1963 that said good water sufficient for Camp use was eventually found on the 700 level of the serogo mine and in many ways the water there is more valuable than any mineral I can find but getting that water and any significant amount out of the mine is something that has bothered me for years so I'm excited to check in on it and potentially find some more deposits of smithsonite the ore on that level was dead white in color the miners would call dry bone all right welcome to the 700t level of sagor Union mine this is an important level there's a lot on this level there's miles of mine that way there is miles of mine this way but this way is something special that I'm going to give a quick Side bar too this is the only known water source anywhere around Cog Gordo happens back here it drips in from the ceiling and it goes into a little sump I once spent 2 days down here just living in explored this level very extensively and even set up a little bed down here but I haven't seen in a while recently when I come down here I bypass the 700 go right down to the 900 so we're going to look what's going on with my old sleeping arrangements so this is it this is the only water around Soro there's a lot this again there's a sump get pumped up to the surface goes out a lot behind it is my sweet my uh poolside Retreat if you will let go over this I got myself a little grass def sell a chair some Al alcohol that's now looking pretty gross I even got a bed that don't know what I'd recommend sleeping on but this is the 7 heart foot level of the mine this is just kind of something fun that I'll eventually get out of here [Music] well that looks pretty nice all right we got a canidate can't find anything else we got something so we headed deeper and deeper into the mine toilet typically the toilets you know For Better or Worse were an old Dynamite box filled with carbide to control the odor and you just pick a corner of the mine that you're not using anymore or one that you are and that becomes a toilet here's some old carbide and the newspaper that I've been seeking through all day you know the reality is why is a newspaper in a mine it's down here from toilet paper but I got gloves on and isn't after a certain point anything just comes into dirt is that how it works that's what I'm going to tell myself oh so gross so you can see that 1930 it was November 1930 so just about 100 years ago it's got to be enough time right right right that shows that these later levels lower levels are mining later there's another pile of what can only be described as well you can describe it yourself so this area they're looking for something you can see cuz they're going going along this way and they started going straight up and Blasting you can tell is even over here look on the wall drilling where the dam would have gone so something they liked was up here so what I try to do is I try to look around the ceiling see what scraps you know what little bits are left behind sometimes there's some Galina sometimes there's some green and what I'm seeing here is green once again yeah oh wow wow there we go I think look at that holy cow I hope that's coming out as green in the lens as it is to [Music] me yes wow that is a beauty there's more where that came from I Just Came Upon what is probably the rarest and one of my favorite minerals at cogo so you can see here this more opaque coating here this is blue Smith Tonite we found some white ones earlier but this is a little bit actually it's a lot look at the crystallization in between those two rocks this is going to be a very big piece of blue Smith Tonite not here this is not it that's going to be your malachite alites this opaque kind of like looks like the ocean is the blue smithsonite you can see a little bit on the surface of this right here and this stuff is very hard to come by because it actually looks beautiful and I just can't con a bunch right behind that big rock I took out so I'm going to be careful checking this out but this is awesome this is what I'm always looking for is this blue Smith sight so I'm hoping that maybe behind some of these more if I take them down we can get them out and that is a big big win I'm going to need confirmation but you know they're running up against this fault you can see by the smooth sides and I think that this entire thing is Smith tonight so correct me if I'm wrong but like maybe they're following this whole thing know it makes sense due to the date of the night newspaper to go after the zinc of the Smiths Tonite I'm pretty sure that there's just a huge tube of Smiths tonight that used to be here and they've left the scraps behind but if you look up it reminds me so much of the white Smith snip and these bands which would just be an incredible amount so see how this is white just pure white almost like chalk I'm almost certain that this is the zinc zinc carbonate they're looking for which is right next to the other stuff that I just found that I think is the smithsonite you see that see that this white powder rings aell from the USGS report but this just looks like chalk almost oh but inside it looks like the Smith's night again all right back at the Hoist here the 700 we got a good hole turn the tide a little bit from the 550 I got what I think is zinc Smith tonight we got bunch of the green rock I pulled out maybe some blue Smith tonight more Smiths tonight I think I might have discovered an entire like Shaft full of just Smith tonight which would just be crazy that is true um but we're coming down to it only two hours left 200 feet below this at the 900t level I'm getting back on this cage we're doing the home stretch the 900t level is as deep as it goes and it was first reached in the 1860s it's a level famous for its ore where the Santa Maria vein deposited small pockets of quartz with glean inside of it but it's also Infamous for the incidents that happened there there's a fire in 1877 that trapped three miners at the 900t level before they could eventually Escape up through the 200 level the Fire cost the company something like a million dollar in today's money but they were able to recover and then also in 1877 a minor fell to the very bottom of the shaft and was found there is a quote shapeless mass at the 900 level so I'm going down there and I hope to understand a little bit this history but also find a bit of this white quartz with the gleen inside it that can be really valuable all right and here we are the bottom bom of the line as deep as it goes off of the Hoist this is the 900t level of Saro Union mine and it looks a little weird you might see a lot of modern stuff and that is because I've been working on transforming this level into a house and this is my bed I have a shelf I have my desk I have a chandelier I have my kitchen I am slowly transforming this into a room 900 ft underground that's why I brought some of the waters as well I have some concrete that I'm going to lay down to make this a little less dusty but we are not looking to work on my home improvements right now we are looking to get some minerals so I'm going to unload from the mine shaft right there and we are going to head out so while the 900 is the lowest level of the Hoist it is not the lowest level of the mine there's actually five additional levels that are down this way all the way down to a 1290 level so imagine 390 ft below this and all of those right now are behind this collapse this is a recent development and that's a big reason that I'm actually building out the little Suite over there so I got have a base operation to slowly try to clear some collaps that way I've spent a lot of time over there so I know there's not any minerals that caught my eye so we're going to take a left see what else we can find try to get a good last Harrah before we go to the top and look at all of our spoils yes that's velvet malachite that's that same dark dark green malachite that we saw back of the 200 even oh man this is probably the area I'm going be focusing on for our final haul oh they're chasing it up there too but left a little behind for me I think that's going to be where we're spending our time oh wow look there's Galina actually inside of that too I've never seen the Galina that close to the Copper ores so they were doing double duty when they're chasing this thing you can see a little bit along there huh Galina inside of [Music] that back at the always got some pretty nice green and Blues in this 900 batch so now it's just to take them back to the surface clean them up see what they're all looking like goodbye 900 level and that is it my 12-hour shift probably didn't work quite as much as the guys did back in the day but I can kind of get a feel of what being at least underground for 12 hours is and I did get a lot of rocks I feel like I got a couple hundred lbs of rocks at least so get back up top tomorrow I'm going to wash them off it's dark up top now you know and so wash them off maybe cut a couple of them see what we got see what they're worth and uh do a little bit of a tally but I enjoyed that I think that every level of the mine here has a different personality different minerals there's some that just blew my [Music] mind all right it is day now so here's the hall there's the different buckets I'm going to get these loaded in my truck that we're going to go down and clean them up wash them up a little bit and see just how good these look I mean already though look at some of these greens this was from the 200 level oh man I'm excited to clean all of these and see how much we got [Music] all right and now I'm to the one place on the property with an actual hose and we are going to clean these things up get a better look at what we pulled out of the mine and then maybe take them down to the G Mineral Society cut them up and really get a better sense of what's inside and I am stoked we're going to start right off with my most exciting ones these are from the 200 level I'm going to wash them outside we're going to bring them to the workshop give better look out of the light oh [Music] yeah all right this is the 200 level and these things are looking just amazing I mean look some of the colors on these these have these incredible greens and Blues right in the end you have that kind of thick what appears to be like turquoise looking stuff look at these all laid out just really incredible specimens down here [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right and in the end here is the hall that's what we got if we start off here at the 86 we have all the purples that I was looking at yesterday all above ground lot of purple some fluorite it's going to look really pretty when I cut it up over here the 200 level the infamous 200 if you look down there's all the greens the blues the coppers mied with some turquoise I'm very upset that I didn't get that big one out the big guy I'll have to go down and get it in a future that's the 200 level 400 level we have some really interesting crystallization as you can see some really interesting crystals crystals crystals and then of course Galina what built this town for the first era at the 700 level we have what I'm now now almost certain is the zinc ore here's the Smith site that they're going after that they call almost like white like sand or chalk there's a piece of that here's more of the Smith snite with a good blue in it so that vein that I was curious about down underground I believe is a massive vein of just smithsonite you can see on this one the blue smithsonite bubbled on the surface when I found that piece some really really cool stuff down there there and the Smith tonight is going to definitely keep me going back down for more you can see kind of a cross-section there finally the 900 level we got some really interesting rocks we have this kind of quartz with Galina mixed into it you can see the shiny Galina in there silver and lead and these ones that I can't wait to cut down the gem mineral if you look there's some bands of really interesting colors in there that I don't think are fully shining through when laid out like this so I'm going to cut a number of these and we're going to see what these look shined up and now we're going to take our haul into the Gem and Mineral Society here in Lone Pine we're going to polish up a few and see what they look like a little cleaned up all right now I got the rocks from the 86 from the 200 all the different levels I'm going to cut some in a saw I'm going to polish some others and do both some different ones just to see how that really comes alive when you cut it the first piece is probably this fluorite out of the 86 we're going to cut this on the big saw then I'm going to take some of this Malachite and um turquoise and we're going to shine this up and see what it becomes so stay tuned we're about to have pretty cool looking rocks [Music] all right cut number one now I'm going to go along this side try to get some of these purples out and then we're really going to have this thing going [Music] all right so we got our cut rocks we're headed back to the hill to see the final results all right and so this is the hall over 15 lbs of ore I pulled out during that 12-hour shift in the union mine I ended up with about 60 lb of this turquoise cacola malachite situation from the 200 level which is probably some of my favorite rocks I've ever found at Cog Gordo I have 40 lb of the purple fluorite that I pulled out of the 86 level I have 30 lbs of smithsonite which is you know uh one of my favorites and then I have 10 lb of Galina and about 20 lb of other miscellaneous minerals from down there that's exciting I feel like that's a pretty good day and now I get to the point in a Miner's life where I got to figure out what I'm going to do with all of these minerals you know if you can get them out is one thing but selling them is another it reminds me of one of my first weeks up here I found this briefcase and in the briefcase there's all these documents from different Miners and one of the minor is LD liry and ly was a minor up here he was giving to go on his own you know he wasn't employed by the mine he was trying to stake his own claim and there's just countless letters of him trying to sell his ore I remember one he's trying to sell some zinc ore and the guy doesn't want it then he's trying to sell some lead silver or which would been in the Galina and the guy advises in it he says listen it's going to be very expensive to ship that I don't know if it's going to be worthwhile but if you do it uh he was trying to sell to a broker that person wanted a 10% commission and then there was another letter that I found and that basically said listen you have all of this zinc ore it's just not worth it to ship it here I'm not going to buy it and this is when L had about 230 tons of rocks so imagine mining all that time and just not being able to do anything with it you know if there isn't a local buyer what were you going to do back in the early 1900s um so for me my first step is I'm going to take my goods and I'm going to go down to the local market similar to how you know ly would have done back in the day I'm going to go down to Lone Pine there's a rock shop there we're going to see what these are worth to them um and if not we're going to keep tinkering away and figuring out what these rocks are worth in these days this is the market get rocks and Gifts all right I'm feeling a little bit like LD lery uh the rock shop did not want my rocks apparently they only sell rocks they do not buy rocks but interestingly enough their Rock of the month they're very highly prized behind some glass was some blue Smiths tonight and it looked really familiar and I asked hey where did that come from Saro Gordo and so their most prized Rock in there right now is Smith andite from Cog Gordo which apparently they don't want any more and the person in there told me that most Rock shops aren't going to buy rocks which frustrating um I'm going to call a couple more and in the last case if we need to they're still the internet but I'm feeling a little bit like the miners must have back in the day do you guys uh buy rocks or just sell them um I usually don't buy rocks but we're not LIC a purchase oh okay do you know anywhere in Vegas that is by any chance is unfortunately not that I know of we don't purchase from out all right definitely feeling like LD lery now nobody apparently wants to buy minerals off the street I have called dozen or so places no no no one place even told me that you need a certain license to buy minerals just from the general public so uh luckily for me I am not as stuck as L would have been in the 1930s I have this magical invention called the internet and so I'm going to head back up to sordo and list these things on eBay that is going to be my bringing these gems and minerals to Market in the 21st century so uh we'll see who knew that getting rid of these things is pretty tough but let's go back up there see what this 12-hour shift brought me all right so the 10 samples listed on eBay I'm going to update the description of this video as well as the top comment when all those sell so we can officially know exactly how much I made during my 12-hour shift down there um all the proceeds are going directly into the American Hotel here I think there's something a little bit poetic about the minerals from the mine once again rebuilding this town as they've already done two or three times now and there's something nice about that so check it out but all the other minerals all the rest of my haul The Rock Shop didn't want are going to be up here at sagoro I'm putting them in the museum our Museum's open every single day from 9:00 to 5:00 there's no charge it's free come on up check out the town check out these rocks I'm going put a little sign in there which level each of these are from um and yeah other than that thank you you know thank you for caring about the town thank you for caring about the history here caring about my adventure um these past four years have been the most beautiful four years of my life and I get to do all sorts of fun new hobbies with all of you like Rock counting and everything else so I really appreciate appreciate it I feel like this week I got a little taste of maybe what the miners were going through during their 12-hour shifts not nearly as hard but and hopefully I was able to share a little bit of that with you guys too so thank you guys once again um I hope you guys have a great week I hope you guys get out there to explore a little bit and I'll see you guys next time [Music]