Well the sad fact is you have to sell the realization of potential and not just the potential and a brave stab at it. You must be able in the audience's eyes to be on the round where it is conceivable you can reach out and grab the gold ringer. Of course that does not tell the punter what machinations lie behind the green door where lurk the cadillac and the goat. There the stage hands have been arranging goats, sweeping up paper trails and working on the carburetors of caddies. The cameraman has been sweating in the hot lights and the trapeze artists work out constantly. In the meantime, the editors wait patiently with their scissors. You only get to see what is good for you. I wait in the wings with script in hand but they only give me today's draft. I cannot read the reviews in advance. I don't know if it is going to be a hit. Fiddler on the Roof it is hard to predict from outside the sound booths with a creaking violin and some old guys playing Klezmer.
It is all orchestrated. The first violin should not play the denouement until the fat lady has cleared her throat. Thousands have worked on this script. right now we are in the mists in a swamp and it is long ago. Before the dinosaurs roamed this fair land. The railroad did not run. Only prospectors picked up the occasional shiny rock glinting in the noonday sun, and wondered about its significances. After taking a 4 day prospector's coarse in Hamilton. Reporting back the the assayer, they dutifully lost their claims trying to sell then in the bar to a passing geologist. 74 years later, some Fellahs, camping in the ruins of that pyramid, unearth the remnants of miner's tombs connected with that dynasty. Plans are drawn up to build a pyramid that befits the times and the newly risen middle class, most of whom never rode a horse or used falcons to hunt along the grassy banks of de Nile, where future financiers passed slowly in reed baskets, hiding from Fez Horrid and his taxes.
Some people believe the south and the old gold mines shall rise again. The Major companies seem not to be too enamoured with narrow veins of gold, whatever the price. Whatever the degree of certainy, whatever the grade. Costs and availability of affordable labour are the chief controls here.
We has a similar plan, but we won't let ourselves get caught without a plan to produce, that seems real and so many shares out that our paper load seems daunting to the day quibbler amidst rumours of dwindled chances of rock engineer.
Rox's chiefest problem in financing is how to keep their paper load from repelling investorama. The punter becomes jaundiced after 100 million shares. What's in it for him? However within analytical boundaries it matters not how much paper is out there, so much as how much gold is behind the paper. In this Rox is doing fairly. Uniquely fairly, actually, as no other TSXV junior has this much gold behind any number of shares that has a reasonable chance of production - given sheer genius and daring. This is the crux. Given that the Rox story is about production of what they can reasonably presume is grade at depths mineable, has the excitement gone out of it? Is there a place for share price increase and share expansion? If they had a real powerful story to tell instead of just a reasonable one, then yes, and if it were real that they could extrapolate a mining method and the dollars were in the doing of it in everyone's eyes, then yes. They have all sorts of gold. The question of mining sadly is NOT answered by the history! Why? Because the pundits of pedantry, not many of whom has mined as many tons as we, do not believe that the labour and the techniques clearly spell profit. We know otherwise, but is the equation in place at Rox? Well for now, I have to truthfully say no. Neither a clearly defined and in-house developed mining method or the personnel to do it right now exists. Of course they could say that they are ready to develop it when it clearly needed. That may be so. I know they have thought it out. I know they can discover it. But the situation right now is that they have not declared to the world how they plan to fill that gap. So for now it's drill, drill, drill. When all the bricks fall into place they can define what they can do. How much money do they need? I think about 7 million for the underground at the Empire, and 5 million for the mill. Do all agree with these perhaps-doable figures? I think that is the rub. That is about all they can afford. And that is 48 million shares out, unless they manage to get a lot more share support than is normally out there for these kind of development deals.
One thing is certain. Gold is not fading and the deposits that they demonstrably have are not getting smaller. We have told them that what they needed was some developers, not just promoters who can come in and put the paper and the techniques to a lighter vehicle willing to tackle the mines themselves for a share out. I don't think the market believes us that we could do it. They think money is solely where it's at. If that were true, then Teck or Dome would tackle it, but it is clear it above their ken. Why? Because it would cost 4 times as much to capitalize and they would have fixed costs and tonnage underground. That won't work. Mining narrow vein gold is for juniors who want to do it. There is no flip of even 500,000 ounces of 0.5 OPT 4 feet wide. We can get that in one property. Nobody wants it but us. But I believe we could handle it. Dome could not. Not enough ounces and too narrow to make it. Needs techniques and will to mine I know they have not got. They ain't River Gold.
The mines of Beardmore need lean and mean, hard and fast, and cheap as Borscht. It is there. I ain't giving away how. That is my meat.
In the meantime we can look for giants in the swamp. It may never raise our share price over FWR, but with a gold mine in the office literature and hit in chalco in the cedar break ... well, we could be the next King Solomon of Mines. Albeit with a moth eaten robe and wearing a lop sided crown. We have put away the Mums for the day when the news comes back from the drill.
It took 8 years and 3 companies to develop the Kerr Addison Mine. Be patient.
If you want to be rich someday, have greedy patience.
I still say Rox is an investment and time shall bear me out on this. They have survived 20 years on the TSE, and just about got to mining in the 80's. Few others did at all. It was the times. Times are changing.
I think they shall spin their moly play out, and quite possibly get the Empire to pre feasibility by 2008. They will need help. perhaps a partner, perhaps some farm outs. I indicated to them in 2003 that they needed roll back. I think it would have helped, but they said no. I know what they do need. Time shall tell about implementation but I guess that is inevitable. Money demands and money shall get.
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