NATIVE SILVER on DIABASE: HELLENS-EPLETT MINE, COBALT, ONTARIO, CANADA - NR!

Description

Here is a classic locality specimen of a native silver growing with other cobalt and silver minerals across and through a dark diabase matrix.  There are a few small seams of ore minerals growing through one side of the piece, and one face where it broke of the host rock show some fairly rich scattered silver across large portions of this side.  This is not a "bonanza grade" ore piece, but it does show nice silver and it is totally natural and has not been cut on any side.   This piece is a vein section of silver and cobalt ore typical of the Cobalt mining area in Ontario, Canada.   This was collected by a friend of mine that lives a few hours from Cobalt and is able to travel there a few times a year and see if he can find any hidden treasures in the mine dumps!
It comes from the old Hellens-Eplett Mine, Cobalt Area, Bucke Township, Cobalt-Gowganda Region, Timiskaming District, Ontario, Canada.  It measures 13.5 x 10.0 x 3.7 cm in size, weighs 15.0 ounces, and it comes professionally labeled and ready for immediate display!
Per Wikipedia:  The Cobalt Silver Rush started in 1903 when huge veins of silver were discovered by workers on the T&NO railroad near Mile Post 103.  By 1905 the rush was underway and the town of Cobalt sprang up to service the mining efforts.  By 1908 the mines around Cobalt produced 9% of the world's silver, and in 1911 alone produced more than 31 million ounces of silver.  However, the good ore ran out fairly rapidly, and most of the mines were closed by the 1930s.  Several of these mines were reopened for short periods of time during World War II and in the 1950's, and there was a final attempt to mine leftover ore pockets in the 1980's, but all mining activity ceased more than 30 years ago.  Over the history of mining in the Cobalt area, more than 460 million ounces of silver came out of these mines.
According to the Mindat web site:  This mine was "named after two presidents of the company: A. Leith Hellens and William Eplett.  The deposit was discovered in 1983 by Silverside Resources. They drove a ramp in 1985 to explore several high grade surface diamond drill hole intersections but the deposit proved to be uneconomical. The mine closed in 1988 and a last shipment of 2,806 tons of stockpile ore was sent out for milling from which 65,891 oz. of silver was recovered. Total production was approx. 140,000 oz. of silver recovered from 7500 tons of ore.  In 1988 the company reported finding a copper-zinc ore body in Keewatin Volcanics in the mine; however, this never amounted to anything significant (Northern Miner 1988, Vol. 74, No. 32).
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