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| Memorandum to:
Earth From: Heaven: Subject: The Third Commandment Date: Later, Cabby Dear Earth: It has come to Our attention up here that several nation-states temporarily leasing the third rock from the sun from Us are violating the terms of their Lease Agreement, dated Aug. 31, 2000 BC. The Lease Agreement, hereinafter the Ten Commandments (c.f. Decalogue) and hereinafter the "Lease" and signed by both lessee Earth and leaser Heaven (hereinafter the "Parties"), states in relevant part: "Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain." A certain tribe of Earthlings, known hereinafter as Americans, has invoked the phrase "In God We Trust" in a vain endeavour to legitimatize a certain form of valueless paper scrip known as the Federal Reserve Note which passes as a form of money in contravention of other certain Commandments and the United States Constitution, the latter of which states, in relevant part: "No state shall ...coin money; emit bills of credit; or make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts." (Article I.10.1) and further defined by the U.S. Coinage Act of 1792, to wit: "The Dollar or Unit shall be of the value of a Spanish milled dollar as the same is now current, that is, running in the market, to wit, three hundred and seventy-one and one-quarter grains of silver." Please understand that we in Heaven are a negotiable lot, and raise no objection to Our name being used on gold and silver coins of any realm here before referenced, regardless of their foreign policy. However, the extant circumstance must not be permitted to prevail. You are hereby instructed to remove Our good Name from any paper scrip or other usurious document within 30 days upon service of this Notice. Insofar as there are no attorneys in Heaven, please return receipt of service to the law firm of Gerry Spence, Jackson, Wyoming - We are in regular contact with him. Otherwise We will have no choice but to revoke the Lease and blow your crummy planet to kingdom come. As a final gesture of good will, We further pass along a request from Andrew Jackson, the seventh United States president and a violent opponent of central banks, that his visage be removed from your worthless 20-"dollar" Federal Reserve Note. See you in the Hereafter, and have a nice day. With kindest personal regards, We remain God P.S. Sorry about the kingdom come part. Comes with the turf. CC: The Wallace Street Journal |
Well, finding a Memo like this from God Himself near Buzzard's groceries (Buzzard is an orange-winged Amazon parrot who doesn't listen to God much but sure screeches at Him a lot) is gratifying, but He didn't leave us any stock tips. Kinda buggers us, to be left fending for ourselves. But soldier-on we shall, as we must here in the Sleepless Silver Valley. With 2 billion or more ounces atop the 1.19 billion ounces we have already mined poking their shy heads above-ground, it is kind of hard to ignore silver. What's gone largely unnoticed over the past 16 months is the huge, district-wide land play afoot here.
We have in this district three mama-cats, each of which has a litter of kitty-cats. There are other cat major lairs nearby, but the three along the Osburn Fault are the Lucky Friday, the Coeur-Galena, and the Sunshine silver mines controlled, respectively, by Hecla Mining Co.(HL), Coeur d'Alene Mines Corp. (CDE), and Sterling Mining Co. (SRLM).
SRLM has been the most fecund of the mama cats, with her litter now including Merger (MERG), Chester (CHMN) and Mineral Mountain (MMMM-good). Since taking possession of the Sunshine Mine in June 2003, Sterling has aggressively tied up the real estate around the Sunshine and its adjacent property, the Consolidated-Silver mine. If the old Sunshine Mining Company had bothered to do this in the 1960s or 1970s there might still be a Sunshine Mining Company. Back in the 1980s it cost Sunshine $60 million to navigate itself around the myriad claims surrounding the mine; Sterling has neatly tied the whole package up - and without giving away the farm.
The kitty-cats got exploration commitments and net smelter return payments in exchange for long-term peace and quiet. Which puts the kitty-cats in the cat-bird's seat whilst giving Sterling peace-of-mind and a land position now of an incredible 15,000 acres - very little of which has been explored with modern technology but straddles the world's richest silver formation. (Sterling, which also will be entering silver production in Mexico in the Zacatecas district later this month, has by virtue of its aggressive acquisition, exploration and development focus on Mexico and Coeur d'Alene District silver properties, snuck into No. 7 in silver mining's Top 10 in terms of owned or controlled silver reserves and resources. For a closer look, buy a look at David Morgan's just-out report on SRLM posted at www.freemarketnews.com. The report's proprietary - meaning you've got to pay for it - but Morgan permitted us the following peek: SRLM's a good buy under $10. Not bad for a stock that was four bits 18 months ago, before the fun started.)
The senior of the recent Sterling deals is with MMMM. A week ago, SRLM completed the second phase of its surface exploration work on the property with promising results that justify sticking a surface diamond-drill rig - the first this camp has seen in 16 years - on Mineral's property next month or two. Sterling's exploration program identified a main target area that trends through the Mineral Mountain property. This target is approximately 2500 feet long (east-west direction) and up to 1500 feet wide (north-south), and the size and extent of the target suggests a large- scale vein system. Mineral Mountain is a sleeper at 65 cents. Not many under-a-buck stocks around we know of in the middle of silver country with a diamond-drill on the way.
Most recent of Sterling's lease-acquisitions is Merger Mines - a strategic property covering 380 acres of patented (meaning even a Bill Klinton reincarnation in the White House can't take it away) land between Sterling's Sunshine Mine and its East-West property (Sterling's original 1903 claim) currently being explored by Coeur d'Alene Mines in the Silver Valley of the Coeur d'Alene Mining District in north Idaho and adjoined to the east by the Coeur Mine. Coeur d'Alene Mines recently drifted into the East-West and found - guess what! - silver there. Cazart! Could there be such a thing as silver in the Silver Belt.
(We need to digress here. The Coeur d'Alene Mining District was already 50 years into production, a big smelter and refinery already built, millions of tons already mined and concentrates milled, and hundreds of thousands of bullion ingots poured, before the Silver Belt comprising the area from the Crescent to the Caladay, and including the Sunshine, Coeur, Con-Sil and the Galena, was even discovered to contain any silver. Old-timers called it the "dry belt" because they thought it was bereft of ore.)
Last December, Sterling caught up with Chester, which owns two strategic claim groups surrounded by or adjacent to Sunshine - the Chester and the Bismark properties together comprising 175 acres. Chester has a total of 2.3-million shares out, currently (and very thinly) trading for a hair above $3. Largely unnoticed by the market, Chester has been an aggressive player of late. Last November CHMN picked up the operating Dragon Halloysite clay mine in Utah, now under lease to Atlas Mining (ALMI on the BB), and in the same month acquired the Conjecture Mine - an historic silver producer in the Lakeview district northwest of here, and in the same kind of rock formations as the Silver Belt - and sold a lease-operator deal to Shoshone Silver (SHSH). It's a district with huge potential that has never been explored at depth.
Mama-cats Hecla and Coeur have not been as fecund as Sterling's group in their land acquisitions - because they've already settled in to nurse their kittens. Placer Creek (PRCK), Silver Buckle (SBUM) and American Silver-Lead (ASLM) are snuggled in next to CDE, which has committed a dozen million bucks to reinvigorating its Coeur-Silver Valley operations at the Caladay, Coeur and Galena mines. Ditto HL at Lucky Friday, where new level development is under way. Hecla prevailed in Idaho District Court two months ago in a mine breach-of-lease case brought against it by Independence Lead (ILDM) over the lucrative Gold Hunter silver vein which is the core of the Lucky Friday's workings. ILDM shareholders should not despair, however: a return to profitability at the Friday after a decade-long drought will inure to ILDM's balance sheets in a nice way. Not too far of a reach from the Lucky Friday teet is VINS, Vindicator Silver - another convenient exploration target should silver get (or even stay) hot is trading nowadays at two bits, down from its January high of 40 cents.
The foregoing are the most silver-sensitive equities with any liquidity at all on the Pink Sheets or the BB. Invest in them at your own risk; ignore them at your own peril, in these agonal last days of U.S. monetary hegemony. And if you really want to step off the front porch, nose around the Pine Creek district west of here. Mascot Silver-Lead (MSLM) hasn't had a trade since Wednesday but it's under new management; they've got 250 acres of patented and unpatented ground around the old Little Pittsburgh Mine and last year picked up the Sidney Mine - another 125 acres. Joe Wallace, their new CEO, is a player and a personal friend. New Jersey's (NJMC) CEO Fred Brackebusch, a mine-finder and mine-builder of no small repute, is on their board. Also look up long-inactive, recently jump-started Idaho General (IGMI) on their new website and ask yourself, what's a former Freeport-McMoRan honcho doing mucking around with a 66-cent Idaho silver, lead and zinc district penny stock.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Indeed. Unlike Bill Murphy we have no Stalker within our orbit. But we will begin to pay more attention to missives delivered by our green Amazon Buzzard, who hints of much bigger things to come. . . .
Sep 8, 2004
David Bond
Editor: Silver Valley Mining Journal
David Bond covers gold
and silver mining equities for a number of national and international
publishers, including Platts Metals Week, a division of McGraw-Hill.
He lives in Wallace, Idaho, heart of the planet's richest silver
fields, the Coeur d'Alene Mining District. He is former editor
of the Wallace Miner, and holds regional and national firsts
in investigative journalism from the Atlantic City Press Club
(National Headliner) and from the Society of Professional Journalists
(SDX/SPJ) and has edited or written for newspapers on both coasts,
Canada and Alaska.________________
321gold Inc
