I often come back to the story of, when I was a reporter at the newspaper of record out here in Van City, the day my boss’ boss decided to forego an imminent promotion and take a job at a smaller news organization.
Less money. Less power. Smaller title. Smaller team. It didn’t make any sense to me.
So I asked him why he made that call, and he said, “because nothing matters more than who you work for, what you’re going to learn from them, and being close to those you respect.”
That answer sat with me for years, and in all the time I’ve been running Equity Guru, I’ve tried to surround myself with people who fit that description, whether alongside me or working for me, and I’ve always aimed to be giving those people as much as I get back because I want to be that guy people want to work near.
Why am I telling you this?
Because people often dismiss junior miners who set up shop next to a good company with good land as ‘closeology’ deals, but the same thinking applies there as did with my boss.
Sure, you can buy yourself a piece of remote scubland to drill far away from everyone else, but if a company has a good piece of property, and they’re doing good work with it, and discovering good finds, and their share price is going in the right direction – AND the land right next to it is available, grabbing that spot makes a lot of sense.
Grabbing it and WORKING it.
Two neighbours respectfully working alongside each other have the potential to create an area play. But you have to do the work to get there.
The benefits of closeology work on the ground, but also on your combined reputation. It works in finding financing. It works in building infrastructure.
“Hey, you’re building a road? Cool, I’m building a mill.”
Closeology isn’t always a win. Sometimes it’s lazy.
We saw one of those lazy deals earlier in the year when Defense Metals (DEFN) neighbour Neotech Metals (NTMC.C) spent a million bucks plus not working their grond but doing German promo, all to yell to as many people as possible, “we might be as good as DEFN,” which got it briefly to a $150m market cap.
Then of course we came along and shone a light on how dumb it all was and it went bye bye, mostly because the company had ONLY set up shop next to the better neighbour and done precisely zero actual work to compliment it.
Ya gotta do the work, bro.
Karim Rayani knows how to run a closeology play. In fact, he’s made a bit of a career out of it. He doesn’t have the money to lead from the front, so he’s got to find good teams to slipstream behind.
He’s got projects for days, in a variety of metals and places, and the business model is the same as my boss’ back in the day.
- Get close to good people
- Watch what they’re doing
- Do the same
Benton Resources (BEX.V) is a $32 million market cap copper explorer in south-central NewFoundland with a project called the Great Burnt Copper Deposit.
The company has completed 12 holes for 2,630 m in the phase 2 drill program that was designed for infill definition of up-dip and down-dip limits, as well as expansion down plunge and along strike. Multiple intersections of stringer, semi-massive and massive sulphides have been intersected from 0.5 m to 17.75 m, including a 4.1 m massive sulphide zone in hole GB-24-34 which is the deepest and most southern drill hole ever drilled in the deposit. An undercut hole is currently under way to test down dip of the intercept.
I love that passage. Mining investors should put it on the wall next to their trading rig.
The CEO of Benton is working his phase 2 program, and using it to test the limits of what he found first time around. Undercutting, up-dip, down-dip, infills, multiple intersections, massive and semi-massive.
Some explorers will drop drills where they know they’ll get results because that’ll fuel the next financing, even if it doesn’t do much to grow the resource. Others go looking for the edges of that resource and risk missing it entirely, to get as much new knowledge as possible.
Those latter guys are my boys, and Benton is doing that as part of a prospect generator model, so while there are Plan B’s and C’s aplenty in their arsenal – they’ve got all eyes on the Great Burnt, a joint venture with Spruce Ridge Resources (SHL.V).
And it’s working:
The Interloper:
Rayani’s Falcon Gold (FG.V) appeared next door to Benton in late October of last year, right before Benton started their initial drilling of the prospect.
Rayani had done a little research and figured these guys might be on to something.
He said at the time:
This Property not only has the potential to host important Exploits Subzone orogenic gold mineralization but also copper-rich massive sulphides that contain gold. These new claims lie along the same conductive trend which hosts significant gold and copper mineralization held by the Spruce Ridge / Benton Resources JV yet have never been drill tested or subjected to any systematic exploration programs. Our desktop studies have shown this is a drill-ready project – exploration and drill plans are now in the permitting stage. We look forward to announcing our exploration and drilling plans in the coming months.”
Falcon could have sat back and waited, but they didn’t – they applied for drill permits immediately, before Benton had even got a drill in the ground.
It could have gone wrong. It could have been a yawner.
It wasn’t.
The company is excited to report that all 11 holes drilled to date have intersected semi-massive and massive sulphides containing significant chalcopyrite (copper) mineralization. Benton’s first priority is the expansion of the Great Burnt high-grade core in the Main deposit which has been extremely successful to date.
Hot damn.
Falcon had gone in cheap, and picked up property nobody was watching, then perched by the fence and waited for beautiful numbers that have been rolling in ever since.
And the moment they got their permit, they were drills in the ground.
They got the property on October 31, and they had drill permit applications out December 8. By March 3 they had the permits and a few days later had a driller hired.
No messing about, time to get to work – and all while drilling phase 3 on his Central Canada asset.
Falcon hgs shifted from $0.02 to as high as $0.06 in recent days, and while there may be a lot of churn needed to clear out some old hands before it really begins to track upwards, the consistent trading volume of this month is a new thing for FG.
FG runs a market cap right now of $5.5 million, which brings not just the Great Burnt play but 16 others.
No, really. 16 others.
Not many companies require an entire fucking world map to show you what they own. Less of them still for a sub-$6 million valuation.
Closeology + work done + value = interesting.
— Chris Parry
FULL DISCLOSURE: Falcon Gold is a client, and I own some stock. Don’t believe a word I say, I’m conflicted up and down, but take a look for yourself and do your own due diligence and I think we’ll end up agreeing.
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