One of his friends had 700 feet of small-gauge mine track and a hundred-year-old track bender laying out in his back 40; plus he also wanted to join the team. Perfect.

Recently, a left-leaning Arizona federal judge, James Soto, who is an Obama appointee, shut down a proposed copper mining project for the flimsiest of reasons. He basically disregarded and rewrote federal mining law.

In this second part on cobalt, I will take a look at the various types of cobalt deposits and how you can prospect for them. Who knows—perhaps the next big cobalt strike will be yours.

This is the point where you might ask, “What do these types of contracts typically look like and how are they negotiated?” Well, that is the topic of this month’s article.

The metal is expensive, not because it is rare but because of the expense to produce and work it. The minerals mined for titanium are all oxides, unlike many base metals that are mostly mined as sulfide minerals.