The effect of the Comstock Lode was considerable ("Lode" - not "Load" - is a Cornish-English dialect word for ore body). The twenty or so years of maximum productivity between 1859 and 1880 produced about $350,000,000 in gold and silver. Sold by ounce at today's standards it would equal tens billions of dollars. The productivity was at about a 1:10 ration, gold to silver, and coincidentally the price of gold and silver were at a 1:10 ration (gold = $16 per ounce; silver = $1.60 per ounce). This meant that the monetary value of productivity was about 50/50 gold and silver.

The effect of the discovery of the "Big Bonanza" in early 1873 was particularly pivotal because of the enormous quantity of gold and silver produced. It resulted in what Nevadan's refer to as "The Crime of '73" when the federal monetary system stopped guaranteeing a standard price for silver and instead embraced gold exclusively. Germany also walked away from a silver standard because the market was flooded with Comstock silver, and the natural price (without pegging it to gold) began to decline.

I'm not entirely comfortable with economic history (I'm a folklorist who masquerades as a social/cultural historian). I discuss this issue to a certain extent in my book "The Roar and the Silence: A History of Virginia City and the Comstock Lode" (1998) and Grant Smith, who focuses more on the mines and the economics of the discovery, discusses this in his older "History of the Comstock Lode."

I hope this helps.