Cobalt prices have been on the rise lately. In fact, they have increased from around $15/lb to over $45/lb since November 2006. This chart only shows activity through December 2007, but if you check the current sales price at BHP Billiton, you will see that they are currently making cobalt deliveries at $46.25/lb. Not a bad increase. In a little over a year, cobalt prices have basically tripled. This should be good news for cobalt mining companies or cobalt miners with significant cobalt resources.
(Update 1/10/08, Cobalt price is up to $47.50 today)
One such company is Caledonia Mining (Symbol: CALVF)
CALVF currently trades at U.S. $0.113 per share. Obviously it is a penny stock.
Caledonia has a diverse compilation of properties that include gold, base metals and diamonds.
Caledonia's cobalt property is called the Nama Cobalt Project.
The NI-43-101 technical report concluded that the combined Indicated Resource for Anomalies A and C at Nama is estimated as 121,874,000 tonnes with a weighted average grade of 0.047% Co and 0.043% Cu. The Nickle portion is approximately 0.015%.
This is only one of Caledonia's many properties. This property alone has an estimated resource of 114,561,560 lbs of cobalt, 104,811,640 lbs of copper and 36,562,200 lbs of nickel. At today's prices of $46.25/lb for cobalt, $3.27/lb for copper and $13.26/lb for nickel, this is a total value of $6,126,020,985 U.S. dollars.
Caledonia has fully diluted shares totalling 590,273,165. This would put a value of current resources at $10.38 per share just for the Nama project.
This does not include its currently producing gold mine, the Blanket Mine, that has proven and probable gold of nearly 500,000 ounces with inferred gold resources of nearly as much.
Nor does it include its other gold, diamond, platinum and other base metals projects.
Take a look at this long term chart of Caledonia and you will see it has the potential to explode in price in a short matter of time.
It has had two massive run ups in share price. In 1986 it rose from under $1 to over $7 in just over 1 year. Then in 1994 it rose from under $1 to over $9 in less than 1 year.
The question is, does it have another run coming? I don't know. But, I do own 69,300 shares of CALVF and would love to see it make another big run. Be sure to do your own due diligence as these are numbers that I calculated based on information on Caledonia's web site. Remember to invest at your own risk. Penny stocks can make huge gains but can also make you lose all or substantially all of your investment as well.
