1920 — Harry A. Frank, Roaming through the West Indies, Blue Ribbon Books (1920), unnumbered page:
The Americans abandoned what had become a more than useless concession, and to-day a mineful of water, colored with copper sulphates and lapping undetermined streaks of ore, remains the property of the Virgin of Cobre.
1998 — Duane Lockard, Coal: A Memoir and Critique, University Press of Virginia (1998), →ISBN, page 42:
In the process it scoops out more coal in eight hours than a whole mineful of handloaders could dig in days gone by.
Noun: "(figuratively) a large amount, particularly of something obtained through mining"
1892 — Horace Smith, "My Boating Song", in Interludes: Being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses, Macmillan and Co (1892), page 117:
Oh this earth is a mineful of treasure,
A goblet, that's full to the brim,
1953 — "Paris Memo", The New Yorker, 26 September 1953, page 84:
Be there on the stroke of five; sometimes it's almost impossible to out-tip an ex-king or a man who raises diamonds by the mineful.
1973 — Jean Renvoizé, The Net, Stein and Day (1973), →ISBN, page 212:
Incidents flashed through her mind one after the other, too fast to catch; that they even existed, that there was a whole mineful of ore to be examined, she could only now acknowledge.
1987 — Tanith Lee, Tales from the Flat Earth, Nelson Doubleday (1987), page 145:
Three of the white stone cats of the city, big as elephants, prowled on the farther bank, before a flight of steps more than three hundred in number, and every tread laid with a mineful of sapphires.
1990 — Judith Rossner, His Little Women, Pocket Books (1991), →ISBN, page 185:
I had taken all this with a mineful of salt and had not been calling Violet more often.
When Ashok Banjara walked into producer Jagannath Choubey's glittering Diwali bash the other evening (and what a bash it was, my little cubs, more sparkle than a mineful of diamonds, […]
1996 — David Stebenne, Arthur J. Goldberg: New Deal Liberal, Oxford University Press (1996), →ISBN, page 32:
"We got a mineful of information…," he claimed, because "when they land[ed] in a port… they didn't want to sit on a ship, so they wandered around Germany in various ports."
1997 — Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963-1964 (ed. Michael R. Beschloss) , Simon & Schuster (1997), →ISBN, page 178 (footnote):
One may take this comment with a mineful of salt.
1998 — Jane Dickinson, "'Hole In The Head' Crackles With Good Writing, Intriguing Characters", Rocky Mountain News, 15 February 1998:
Diamonds - a whole mineful - glow at the heart of the matter.
2008 — James Lear, The Secret Tunnel, Cleis Press (2008), →ISBN, page 44:
Next came a glittering cloud, all wisps and sparkles, which eventually revealed itself to be Miss Daisy Athensasy in a swansdown-trimmed gown and a mineful of diamonds.