Season Of The Pitch

VANCOUVER, B.C. – This is the season of the pitch.

The come-on is all over us. The Denver Gold Show (I skipped this year) is recording its highest attendance ever: asset managers, exhibiting companies, media, prowlers, promoters, sell-side analysts.

Carlos Baca of Fortuna Silver (FVI, Stock Forum) tells me today, “Very busy. Record attendance, over 1,000 people. We had over 18 meetings.”

I am not the only one whose e-mail in-box and voicemail are heap-leach to the brim. The steady rise in most metals prices this month is pedal to the open-pit mettle.

I just got this from Habanero Resources (HAO, Stock Forum) in The Yukon. I pass no judgment; just passing along the note. Close-ology, or the art of getting close to a verified concession/claim/resource, is out there in force.

Habanero tells us that Macquarie Private Wealth initiated coverage on ATAC Resources “with an $11 price target based primarily on its Keno Hill Region RAU Gold Prospect in the Yukon. Habanero has property in the Keno Hill Region of the Yukon and … is now under way on its White Gold Prospect bordering the Golden Saddle discovery.”

Actually, Macquarie’s report about ATAC (ATC, Stock Forum), an almost $600 million market-cap company, is informative. “ATAC’s Osiris target has many geological similarities to Nevada’s Carlin Trend. Osiris (is) a near-surface, sediment-hosted, Carlin-type gold-arsenic system being drilled for the first time. Hole 1 intersected 4.65g/t gold over 65.2m from the Osiris horizon. … Some 100 km west, Rau also hosts the Tiger Gold zone – a carbonate-hosted deposit with more than 100 drill holes and +1m-oz gold potential.”

Habanero in contrast is a $10 million market-cap company. Once again, I pass no judgment. The art of being close is … well … an art.

Habanero describes itself in material thusly: The company’s White Gold Project in The Yukon, “is directly bordering, and the closest property, to Underworld Resources’ (KGC, Stock Forum) actual discovery zone (Golden Saddle). … This property is also directly north of Kaminak Gold’s (KAM, Stock Forum) Coffee Prospect. Habanero also has prospects in the Keno Hill region of the Yukon in close proximity to ATAC Resources’ Rau discovery.”

To its credit, at least for persistence, Habanero and President Jason Gilgiotti, whom I do not know, have been pursuing their 100 quartz claims near Golden Saddle at least since spring 2009.

In June 2009, the company said it had registered the claims. The “two separate contiguous blocks in Stewart River Area of the Yukon … are in close proximity to the recently announced discovery (May 27, 2009) by Underworld Resources,” Habanero said at the time. Kinross Gold recently gobbled Underworld.

I did not mean to go on at length about Habanero, and I have no intention of following the company. I wish it well. I just wanted to demonstrate that being close in a rising commodities market is what prospectors regard as a strategy.

Here is another type of close-ology: being tight in a district whose mining legacy stretches back centuries, like the colonial town and region of Guanajuato in Mexico. The silver district produced most of the Spanish Empire’s wealth starting in the 1600s.

Speaking of proximity: the two miners most active beneath the storybook-pretty town of Guanajuato are steadily increasing their grades, their blankets over properties in the area and their silver output: Endeavour Silver (EXK, Stock Forum, EDR, Stock Forum) and Great Panther Silver (GPR, Stock Forum). I own both, which operate at either end of town, and I have seen both in action there. Both are Planetary Prospects of Ticker Trax.

I like that kind of close-ology.

For more coverage of Mexico, Colombia and elsewhere, please view Thom Calandra’s Stockhouse articles.

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HOLDINGS: Thom’s holdings are listed for Stockhouse members at www.Stockhouse.com under the “portfolio setting” for user TCALANDRA. It is public and free to view. He and his family own recently minted gold and silver coins and shares of about 30 public and two private companies.