A sample of native silver showing some "herring bone" morphology in the vein. Safflorite coats the silver within the rich vein. Pink erythrite belies the cobaltg content of the arsenide.
The specimen comes from the Castle Mine, the deposit was discovered in 1917 and developed through two shafts by Castle-Trethewey Mines Ltd. Production to the end of 1931 totaled 6.5 million oz. Silver and 300,000 lbs. Cobalt. The mine was reopened by Agnico-Eagle Mines in 1983. They rehabilitated the Castle #3 shaft (11 levels to 850ft.) and operated until sometime in the late 1980's.(1) The property still has all three existing shafts, and totals 78 square kilometres where only silver in a small area was targeted, leaving substantial discovery potential.(2)
