RE: VOISEY BAY !!!!! GOING FOR GOLD!!I agree that it is almost always better to ride the main play that the peripheral companies. However, Voisey's Bay is a poor example. DFR was indeed the only winner, and everybody else struck out (except for one "tease" by Donner).
Hemlo had three major winners, Corona, Lac, and Goliath/Golden Sceptre on adjacent properties.
Ecuador is very nascent in the development of their mineral industry, and as one of the pioneers, ARU has almost surely scooped many of the plums.
ARU has definitely discovered a monster deposit, possibly one of the best deposits ever found, and the odds of other companies repeating this event are uncertain at best. But not impossible.
There are deposits throughout southern Ecuador and stretching through Peru. So far, the ARU deposit dwarfs anything else found in Ecuador. Keep in mind, though, that Newmont's main gold mine(Yanococha)is in Peru and has a 32 million ounce reserve, while Barrick's (Pierina) has 7 million ounces, so that corner of South America has already demonstrated at least 3 monster finds.
It is definitely not a "needle in a haystack" Voisey's Bay type scenario. When have you ever seen artisanal miners making a living scraping the ground at Voisey's Bay?
Companies are poking holes all over the place in Ecuador and Peru and hitting good mineralization. Nothing to remotely compare with ARU, to be sure, but that doesn't mean that somebody will not make another excellent find at some point.
I've held ARU since 2.90 and want to hold until the inevitable takeover. I recognize how extraordinarily rare this find is.
But - I also hold shares in some of the peripheral companies. If you have good geology, you just never know when you sink a drill hole.
Ecuador:
https://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:SPTtRVr5CKsJ:minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/country/2004/ecmyb04.pdf+ecuador+mineral+deposit&hl=en&gl=ca&ct=clnk&cd=17
Peru: (need to copy & paste this link into the address bar)
https://www.minem.gob.pe/archivos/dgm/inversiones/exposiciones/PDAC_EXPOS_2006/PDAC%202006%20MCardozo.pdf#search=%22lancones%20basin%20gold%22