There are some useful lessons here.... You can have a decent, or even great, ore deposit and an experienced team...and still crash and burn. The stars really have to align for a mining project to be successful, and NCI had some bad luck early on from which they never really recovered. They bet the farm that a small mine could generate cash to fund a bigger project and they lost. I don't tink the management was incompotent. They just rolled the dice and lost.
Mining projects are not much different from other startup companies. Most of them are not successful. They are for gamblers, and let's face it, gambling is fun. If you don't enjoy risk, stick to reliable dividend payers and S&P ETFs. I've had many investments in mining projects, most of which have gone nowhere. My losses are far outweighed by one big win (Ivanhoe), a couple in which I had modest gains (Taseko, Pretivm), and a few in which I was smart enough to exit while I was ahead (Niocorp, American Creek, Bell Copper). NCI was the first however, that was up and running and went belly up. Most never even get to the construction stage. One thing I've learned over the eight years of mining investments is that scale matters. It's very hard to make small projects profitable. The resource may be great, but if it's not huge, it's not likely to be worth the time or effort, nor be attractive to a major.
In farewell, I have to say this has been one of the more entertaining forums on Stockhouse. There have been some very interesting posters, although I'm not sure it's because they're smart, or just completely bonkers. In any case, good luck to all in your future mining investments!