I'm curious...
Which properties did you work on?
A small fact that is becoming clear in the industry is that exploration is getting more and more expensive. Take gold. Right now it cost about $400 dollars an ounce to mine and refine gold. The cost that you never hear about is that the cost of exploration is about the same amount, bringing the total cost per ounce to $800 dollars. Given today's price of $1200, that's still a nice profit, but a very big up-front cost. Gold production peaked about 8 to ten years ago, and the average grade of production has dropped to 0.2 ounces per ton.