Is it Monday morning yet?
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[ Note to members of The Mining Play :
A couple of months ago I wrote the below short history of the Alto/Medinah/Auryn. I wrote it off the top of my head, with no fact checking, stringing together bits and pieces as I’d heard them over the past decade. My motivation? I would love to have this story – our story – reported on by a serious journalist. No more information by the drip-drip-drip of the water torture method. Online, I found a list of journalism pros working in Santiago, and I sent it to two of them. The first seemed vaguely interested, then begged off. The other seemed more engaged – “I’ve been living in Santiago for 35 years and I’ve never heard anything about this!” – and then he too disappeared. I also sent a version to Medinah/Auryn, hoping for comment, but heard nothing. Shortly afterward, I became distracted and turned my attention to other things. The fascinating events of this past month, and particularly of these past 12-24 hours or so, make me wonder what this saga’s next chapter will be – this does not feel like a trifling development to me. I have been asking myself: If our story had been more widely told, would the Harvard/Wharton folks in Las Vegas have been able to work in the shadows the way they obviously have been doing? If you know any appropriate working journalists, and if you feel so inclined, feel free to share this. I’m not quite sure just why I feel like sharing it here tonight, but I do. ]
AS CHILE WORKS THROUGH its social/economic/constitutional reckoning, a small mining group is developing, a world-class mineral deposit (gold, copper, molybdenum) on a plateau visible to the naked eye from downtown Santiago. No journalist is known to be working this story, which has national and international implications.
Part 1 – “The Alto”
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Tucked into a range of rugged mountains seventeen air miles northwest of Santiago, a 6,000-foot-high plateau spreads across forty square miles of rocky, uninhabited scrubland. Miners know it as the “Altos de Lipangue Mining District” – “the Alto,” for short.
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Eons ago, molten gold bubbled from the Earth’s core up to the Alto’s surface. Ancient Incas visited the site to gather gold by hand, and in modern times the world’s largest “nugget” (it is the size of a basketball) was discovered on the Alto and removed to a Santiago museum.
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In the decades following Chile’s birth as a nation (in 1818), more than 1,500 mining claims were filed by prospectors working the Alto; many scratched out fortunes while employing rudimentary mining techniques.
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By the1980s, following decades of surveying, mapping, and core sampling, industry experts knew the Alto’s innards to be crisscrossed with veins of bonanza-grade gold. Furthermore, these veins appear to lace through not just one but two monster deposits (porphyries in mining lingo) of high-grade copper and molybdenum, which in the long run may prove exponentially more valuable than the Alto’s considerable gold.
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Mining conglomerates capable of developing such sprawling finds were continually stymied by the swarms of tightly-packed claim holders, but by the year 2000 control of the Alto had effectively been consolidated under a single corporate entity, Medinah Minerals (MDMN).
Part 2 – Oldest story in the world
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For a small scrappy outfit like Medinah (adept at claims acquisition, but lacking actual mining experience), the typical strategy is to partner with a mining consortium capable of assembling a team of experts from the geological, construction, legal, environmental, political, and financial communities.
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For longer than a decade Medinah flirted with suitor after suitor, without finalizing a deal. Inappropriate characters crawled from the industry’s shadows. Lies were told, books were cooked.
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In 2016, a group of activist shareholders, distressed by Medinah’s lack of progress and depressed share price (down to five cents at the time), uncovered a decade-long scheme through which company insiders had been sabotaging and looting the company.
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Legal actions (detailed in public records) quickly routed the perpetrators, and Medinah was rescued from bankruptcy by Auryn Mining (AUMC), which swapped roughly 25% of Auryn’s own stock in exchange for 100% control of Medinah’s rights on the Alto.
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Safely in the hands of competent professional management, Medinah was nonetheless deeply wounded. While Auryn – the Alto’s new sheriff – began formulating long-range development plans, short-sellers smelled blood and drove Medinah’s share price down to five one-hundredths of a cent ($0.0005 – Dec 14, 2020). But a company with the rights to tens or perhaps hundreds of billions of dollars in near-surface mineral wealth, at low altitude, in the most stable geo-political entity in South America? That is a hard beast to kill.
Part 3: Light at the end of the mine shaft?
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In 2019, ten percent of Chile’s GDP and fifty percent of the country’s total exports were generated by its mining sector.
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Many of Chile’s most important mines are located hundreds of miles from Santiago, often in the thinned-out air at 10,000 feet and higher. Infrastructure and transport have always been tricky and costly, and recently the melting of Andean glaciers has made access to water and power increasingly problematic.
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The Alto’s vast assets are a fifteen-minute helicopter ride from the Presidential Palace, with power, water, modern highways, and modern infrastructure right at hand.
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In recent years Auryn has steered millions into obtaining new, more-nuanced mapping of the Alto, and into designing a forward path. Auryn’s management has a stated goal of turning the near-surface gold into a positive cash flow, a key tool for unlocking the Alto’s deeper treasures.
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Updates to shareholders have been sporadic, and Medinah’s share price has continued to hover near its $0.0005 basement. However, Auryn’s 2021 Q1 financial report, released in early April, states that for the first time in many years, gold ore (averaging 45 grams per ton) is now being trucked from the Alto to nearby processors, with operations on the Alto expected to be cash-flow positive by Q2 or Q3 of 2021.
Medinah Minerals = MDMN
Auryn = AUMC = AurynMiningCorporation.com
[ NOTE: Thousands of investors have lost fortunes large and small here. The modern parts of the tale span at least three decades and would best be told in book form, but the writer of the above snapshot (an author himself, with his $125,000 grubstake whittled down to $5,000) feels too old to contemplate writing it. He simply hopes to catch the interest of, and to offer assistance to, a journalist hungry for a career-defining story. ]
– madmen
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I recognize I am playing the " sky is falling" character", and I confess I am doing it out of ignorance. Is this some sort of grab of control of MDMN effort by Baumann and co? Are we somehow at risk as ordinary shareholders? Would love a splainer from Doc, Karl, Wiz or anyone else who understand what this court options COULD mean.
TIA
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chiles, I think WIZ said he’d update us soon. 
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Yes we can certainly take a lesson from the Redit/Robin Hood boys. If we stick together it would be fun to squeeze these crooks.
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https://stocktwits.com/symbol/MDMN
Notice of Entry of Order Granting Motion to Shorten Time.
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Thank you JCN! Question why isn’t the company BOD coming out and explaining what is happening?? We got to find out on ihub that Baumann is filing a motion and going after Medinah and trying to take over. Hope we can get some clarity this week.
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The company is responding. Not much shareholders can do. It was just filed on 6/23.
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Thanks Wiz! Do you believe she has been the buyer as of late to try to take over share control? If so I would think we see this buying moving forward if this in fact is what’s going on. She’s got a lot of buying to do if she wants to get that 23%
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No idea what her intentions are, or if she even knows that the 16 million shares of AUMC are probably worth 9 figures!
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Wiz, am I wrong in thinking that she picks stocks with great potential, loads up on them, and then promotes them like “meme” stocks and ends up with huge profits.??? Here are some stocks she’s chosen in the past and the results from stocktwits.com
$AMLM .07–>1.75 2400% $APLD .07 —>2.25 3115% OSKA .002—>.225 11150% CATG .01—>.44 4300%
Maybe we’ll become the next GameStop or AMC. 
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I think the Auryn folks own a majority of MDMN, right?
And I don’t think THEY are selling, right?
So, I don’t think these folks could get majority control of the company.
But, then again, I’m not totally familiar with the custodianship plays, as I see they call them.
From the little I’ve read, the end game is for the player to get control of the target and then sell the target to somebody who needs a publicly listed company shell. From what mdmnwork points out, it appears these folks have been successful in the past.
just another slow 43 million shares traded kinda morning… 
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Bubba,
Shell companies are usually clean and also sell for a fraction of what it would take to buy out the mDMN shareholders. it makes no sense that this is what is going on here. I think there is something else at work. I am hoping MDMNWONK’ s note is a nod in the right direction.
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Please get off the ask and let this run. Thanks
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So, going on mdmnwonk’s theory that MDMN may be the next Gamestop/AMC, somebody must have done a bit of DD and feels like there might indeed be at least some substance to MDMN. We do have MDMN making a PROFIT coming up here soon. So, maybe Mrs. Bauman also believes that? Hmmmm … wish I could get hold of the court proceeding documents and be at the hearing coming up July 1.
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Can anybody say in simple terms what the significance of this July 1st court date?
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Watching level 2 there are a small amount sell orders and an average 1/2 hundred thousand on the bid side, however someone is accumulating millions shares at the ask in small volumes. When we had the first run couple of weeks ago there were large buy orders that took out many share holders that wanted out and now that shares are in stronger hands this could take off extremely quickly.
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I just don’t understand why someone or individuals is selling almost 200 million shares so far around .004
You should see a increase of at least 500% with this much buying and selling
I sure hope something good is coming because don’t feel that confident right now
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