Any body out there following this outfit or have shares in it? The old Talisman mine in Mt Karangahake, Hauraki. Just at the entrance to the K gorge driving from Paeroa to Waihi on the right hand side. I will leave it at that for now & see what interest others may have on the matter to get a discussion going. Cheers.
JW 
I have shares in them. Fingers crossed they do well so I can pay the mortgage off.
Sounds like an interesting piece of ground but NTL has been bleeding cash, then periodically raising more capital, for as long as I can remember.. Good to see that they’re finally underway with some crushing and concentrate trials. I’m very wary of buying any because of their track record.
Not trying to spread misinformation. BUT Ive heard a disturbing rumour about one of the gold operations, struggling to pay the tradespeople, on the westcoast big operations. Just be wary guy’s
The hype is scary. Tempting to get involved myself
Yeah have some shares and watch them quite closely. Have had a tour through, they’ve done a lot of rehab and shipped off a decent amount from the Mystery vein to be assayed. Waiting to see what the latest returns at.
How long you had shares & how long are you prepared to wait? Some have been waiting 20 odd years & more. A few weeks back they had a massive leap from from .040 on the 15th sept to .063 on the 23rd sept on the back of a report of a parcel of their concentrates that had been sent to Melbourne for treatment & refining. I don’t recall an amount of concentrates in weight & I don’t recall what the final result of bullion produced or if it was even mentioned. I do know that the refiner asked for a higher quality of concentrate. So that doesn’t sound too good. Directors of NTL were buying up large which fueled the general buying spree to spike that increase. Since then there have been no more reports of anything & it looks like there has been a bit of selling as profit takers cashed in & lost confidence. Gold being at such highs you would think if it was good news for NTL then they would be broadcasting it.
Bullion of course being the total weight of precious metals refined. In this case that is the total amount of gold & silver, not all gold. I think some of these Business type people don’t understand the hard rock mining process from mining the ore to processing it to bullion & the fact that bullion isn’t all gold. That has a big impact on its true value if they think it is all gold. In fact historically the Talisman produced 4 times as much silver than gold from its proceed ore. In comparison the Martha mine today produces 80-90% silver to 10-20% gold. They say the silver pays for the running of the mine & the gold is all profit.
The money I believe to be made from NTL is in buy & selling shares at the right time. Don’t hold your breath for gold produced to have anything to do with it. It hasn’t since the old mine closed. I have followed this outfit for years & it has always been the same as far as no gold in the form of a solid bar produced. The share price being influenced by the say so from management but nothing concrete in gold coming out of the ground. This is all just my opinion from my observations over the years. I see it as some one playing gold miner at the share holders expense. Paying themselves directors fees & management fees. It certainly hasn’t come from any gold produced & sold. Will that change? That is the carrot that they dangle. Reminds me of Glass Earth.
JW
Very good comment. Historically companies haven’t done as well as the hype that surrounded it anytime in the history of New Zealand . Individuals have done better. You never hear the truth. Why would you share your success with gold?
Hi there Pirate. When did you have your tour & I am guessing you are talking down the number 8 level. If so, did you go right to the end as it is a long way in? I have been away from that area for 12 years so things may have changed since I was last in there. Don’t suppose you got any photos? Cheers
JW
I’m with you goldsborough. The hype sells shares & timing is everything. Management don’t lose out, or the company that floats the shares. The workers in the mine get a wage until the gold runs out. A mine never closes because it was finding gold & had made enough money. It closes when the gold runs out. Papers past is full of such hype to build up public confidence in a company to buy shares & so often these mines came to nothing. That’s not to say that money wasn’t spent in further prospecting & sampling but so many fizzled out. Why? Lack of gold despite the hype & samples shown.
The individuals were more likely a small bunch finding & working a find themselves. Some where tributers that were allowed to work a company mine when the mine wasn’t doing so well & the company laid off their wage workers & the tributers paid the company a percentage of what they got. It also kept the mine going by having someone working it. If it sat idle there was risk of the company losing the mining rights to it. Often when the tributers worked through a lean patch & happened on to better values the company would then take it back over. That was usually the deal. They may have kept the tributers on, on wages. In which case the wages were then a weekly pay packet. Some tributers did very well working on tribute before the company took it back over. I wonder how many tribute workers high grade, pocketed rich specimens, instead of declaring it.
JW
Yes read that in the diamond mines in south africa they paid the natives for the number of diamonds they found and didn’t steal. They use to break the large ones up to get more money. Wonder how many nuggets were never declared
Yeah No.8. It’s badly collapsed and you can’t get back to the dubbo end. Very tidy up till there and around to Mystery along Keillers Cross Cut. Further along it hasn’t been rehabbed as you approach 5a and there has been a shaft fall away to the point you can no longer skirt the edge to proceed. So excellent infrastructure for where they are working but beyond that has degraded over the last few decades. I didn’t take any photos from there sorry, wasn’t sure if I was allowed haha.
Cheers Pirate. I have spent a lot of time up there when I lived in Waihi. I used to mountain bike the old tramway tracks that were all over grown. Back then the powers to be tried to detour people from going in there. I in fact opened them up with machete & hand saw so I could get my bike through. Head lamp on to ride the tunnels. Back before it was opened up as the Windows Walk. Of course back then the tunnel didn’t carry on & you couldn’t get down to cross the bridge & ride back out on the other side. Have even ridden up to the trig on top of Mt Karangahake numerous times. Up past No 8 level & to the left, as the road/track forks, past the tunnels above No 8 & past the old Dubbo drive entrance. The very first time I rode up there, rather than carry on doing the round circuit, I saw what looked like a track going straight down through the bush from the trig. It kind of was a track but it was very over grown & a bit of a mistake. I was committed though & it just seemed easier to carry on down through the bush than push the bike back up through it. At least gravity was slightly on my side. It eventually linked up with the “road” lower down but above the No 8 level track/road.
I did the same thing up from the old Golden Cross mine up the Waitekauri valley & down to the Stamper battery. The old ore cut track bench was still there but really over grown & the bridges that used to span the side creeks were all rotten & fallen down. I actually never completed clearing that one & my machete & hand saw are still up there hidden away. It was too much of a mission to get across most of those gorgy little creeks. It was fun though adventuring down that old ore cart track from the mine workings to the Stamper site. As the crow flies it is about 5 k’s in a straight line but through the bush & the winding nature of the lie of the land that the track followed it was a lot longer than that. I often wandered who was the last person down that track before I went down it & has any body else done it since me. I was pretty crazily into my mountain biking in those days.
Opened up the old tracks on Union Hill in Waihi for biking. One track went right beside two vertical mine shafts that were completely open. The mining company or someone got wind of this mad prick in there biking & got in touch with me to what hazards I knew of hiding away in the bush. I knew the hill inside out & I actually put them on to a mine drive that they were unaware of. It actually linked up with one of the vertical shafts but was pretty well hidden by the bush. They were doing their health & safety stuff & the fenced off the vertical shafts & any other hazards of which there were a few. I had my own private little mountain biking track in there that you could take numerous different routes in riding it to mix it up a bit. It was bloody cool actually. No one else seemed to cotton on to it, not that I advertised it. It did suffer from tree windfall but even that was fun going in with a chain saw & clearing it. I’m prattling…… Later.
JW
Not prattling at all! Sounds like you need to write a book! Hopefully I’m carrying on some of the legacy, I love finding old tracks and clearing them, I’ll have to keep a look out for the tools you left behind!
That kind of stuff needs to be documented. Was a good read mate
Well, NTL seems to be sucking a kumera at the moment. I aren’t surprised to be honest. I just don’t believe the ore reserves are there to make it a going concern. Hasn’t in the last 30-40 years. If it can’t make a go of itself with gold at the highs it currently is then it never will. Gambling on finding a rich patch at shareholders expense. But even if they do you most likely won’t hear about it & it will probably only last for 5 minutes.
What’s the definition of a gold mine? A hole in the ground with a liar at the bottom.
JW
I currently have 21,415 share in NTL and 2,006 shares in Santana Minerals. SMI will do great, however NTL has had a rocky past 24 months, with their shares plummeting to nearly 1 cent and being delisted from the ASX and then rapidly rising to 10 cents to drop back down to 0.024 cents which I purchased 10,711 shares to make my cost price marginally small. I think they are a under-valued company and could have a potential short squeeze. The problem with the flucution is due to short sellers and scalpers. People on reddit queenstreetbets are all looking at this and seeing the price go up buying shares and selling quickly! Long term investing can outride volatility.
So far NTL has got their wash plant and as long s they can get their shares going back up to a stable price, they can have good chances of competing with SMI and OceanaGold if they make the right decisions.
NTLs latest 6 monthly report shows they burned through about $1.7m for the period
First shipment of concentrate netted about 6 ounces of gold.
One man with a suction dredge could produce more gold than that, with almost no overheads…
NTL dont have the gold. Why on earth would they send their shit diluted concentrates to Aussie to get results. They were told to improve their concentrate values. But if the values aren’t there, they just aren’t there. Even the Oldtimers pulled out of that vein. People are finally reading between the lines & waking up to the fact. That or just cutting their loses. It has always been a lemon. If the values were there it would be a different story don’t you think. More so with the price of gold these days. Terra Firma, who have been contracted to do the mining I feel are owed a bit of money & as it isn’t forthcoming so have ground to a halt. Always hoping to strike a rich patch to boost the concentrates. I wonder what the shipping costs are to freight the cons over to Aussie & to get processed, & why can’t they do that here & process to the final product. It’s not like it is a massive operation. That would save them a truck load of money sending it off shore & paying someone else to do it. Glad I got out when I did. I took a gamble on the share price & came out slightly ahead & put that back into Santana. I certainly wasn’t counting on the gold to do it. It is mostly silver any way. Playing gold miner at the shareholders expense. A leopard can’t change its spots, & so it goes on 40 odd years later. At least Santana knows what’s in the ground & it only seems to be getting better.
JW
Santana will go thru the roof in the next 6 months
Santana will skyrocket and eventually people will be saying “I wish I bought that stock when it only cost 50 cents or $1!”. I’m not going to write off NTL, it’s like a cigar butt, it still has a few good puffs left as Warren Buffet would put it. They just have to do the right steps, cut their costs down and find enough gold to pay back their shareholders. If they could do more exploration it would be a good move. We will see where they’re at in the next 6 months, make it or break ?