We like to think of Las Vegas as the original Sin City. But Virginia City, Nev., claimed that title much earlier. In 1863, the number of arrests equaled one-third of the mining town’s population of 30,000 people!
I can’t wait to get there next week… and prospect for a little gold and silver.
But I’m not going to stand waist-deep in a stream bed (or get locked in a jail cell). Instead, I’ll visit five red-hot little mining companies in a whirlwind tour through the Nevada desert.
This isn’t my first trip to Nevada, and it won’t be my last. Nevada is one of the best mining jurisdictions in the world – it produces 80% of the gold mined in the U.S. – and it has a mother lode of up-and-coming companies digging up precious metals or on the verge of production.
Here’s a look at some of the projects I will visit:
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A high-grade gold and silver discovery close to the historic Bullfrog Gold Mine. Excellent drill results keep expanding the resource.
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A million-ounce-plus gold project that is on track for production in 2014. Its owner also has an “assembly line” of rich projects waiting to come on line.
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An underground mine with more than 1.6 million ounces of gold. This mine’s owner plans to ramp up to 100,000 ounces of gold production by 2016.
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A recently reopened mine that has plenty of gold and silver left in the pit and newly discovered resources all around it. This mine’s owner has a resource with more than 3.4 million ounces of gold and 40.6 million ounces of silver in Nevada alone, and a Mexican project that’s even bigger. Yet this stock is dirt-cheap!
I’ll also meet with a producing miner in one of Nevada’s most historic gold districts. The company keeps meeting its targets, boosting production and expanding its known resource. But its stock is also undervalued.
These companies haven’t caught the eye of the white-shoe crowd on Wall Street yet, but I’m sure they will!
For one thing, they are making their plans at a time when gold and silver have both tumbled from their highs. So these miners are squeezing every penny until it cries “ouch!” These projects work at the low metals prices we see now; they’ll deliver even richer rewards when metals prices go higher.
Still, I’m not sure which - if any – of these stocks I will recommend. That’s because I have to give them my “boots on the ground” inspection. I want to see not only the things the companies talk about in their reports, but the potential profits – and potential pitfalls – that you can find out only by making a site visit.
Management is probably the most important factor in a company’s success. And the beauty of these companies is that some of them are run by people who have already hit it big once. That makes their odds of doing it again much higher.
Many fortunes have been made in Nevada’s rich mining history – and more
will be made. But you don’t have to be a miner to be among them. You can build your wealth quite nicely by buying the right stocks.
I learn something new on every trip I make into mining country. I can’t wait to see what I learn this time.