In the summer of 1963, when I was eleven years old, I spent a week at a forested Boy Scout camp in northern Virginia, maybe ninety minutes drive from the White House. The final day, Saturday, was also Family Day. My father and my two younger brothers (eight and six) came to spend a few hours and then drive me back home. The afternoon sky was a gray blanket of low clouds that threatened to dump rain but never did.
Before closing ceremonies, the four of us went for a hike on a single-file path through the woods near my troop’s campsite. Five minutes along I saw the bright flash of a silver quarter lying under a thicket beside the path. When I bent to pick it up I saw several other quarters and some nickels and dimes as well. I called to the others and together we spent the next two or three minutes harvesting coins. Four, five, maybe six dollars altogether – real money back when a nickel would buy a pack of five baseball cards with a bright pink slab of bubble gum included.
Over the next ten or fifteen years, this incident transformed into a recurring night dream of mine. But in the dream we four hikers quickly realize that we’ve happened upon a vein of solid silver coinage, about eighteen inches wide, circular, starting to widen as it descends into the soil. Soon quarters, dimes, nickels – no copper pennies – are spilling from all of our pockets and overwhelming our cupped hands. One brother runs back to the car, a sky blue 1962 Ford Falcon station wagon, to fetch the gunny sacks we always (in the dream) keep in the back.
This ecstatic fantasy consistently petered out with the four of us struggling to carry yet one more bulging brown gunny sack back to the station wagon, which is already sagging under its new weight.
I haven’t had this dream for decades and have no idea why it has just now come back to me, sixty years later, while I’m innocently sitting at my kitchen table, wide-awake on a drizzly gray afternoon in Oakland, California…
madmen,
May I be so bold as to offer my interpretation. I think your dream of a sack of 90% silver quarters
is transforming to a mine full of these
Let’s see if that same dream continues for the next year or two, or transforms into how I’m interpreting it for you!
EZ
That does it, Madmen - with dreams like that we need neither assays nor metallurgy!
I’ll be happy when the day comes we’re getting dividends, although I think there are other priorities, like paying back MC his $3 Million+ and expansion. May be awhile, depending on what kind of numbers we’re getting. Would be nice if we hit a nice, big nugget that would pay off MC immediately. I bet HE has been dreaming of that!
That is one sure fire way to get a return on this investment!
Wonder if it makes sense after MC is made whole to issue a small dividend out early on. That would prime the pump a bit. Then MDMN would receive its prorata share of the cash dividend via its ownership in AUMC shares. It could then pay off its liability without selling shares.
Just thinking out loud and that last part.
I think good things are a brewin and good times to be enjoyed ahead. I think the ride will start to get more enjoyable from here on out. Ecstatic about our new board members and specifically highlighting their skillsets!
Well, I’m no investment advisor, but it seems to me MDMN is a good value from here. No, they haven’t drilled 1,000 holes to prove out what they have in order to get a loan or attract a JV, but the prospect of actually PRODUCING without having to do so is something to consider. Once the production starts, even if most of the moneys are going to pay MC back, PROOF will be in the books - and it seems the share price should react accordingly. I’m thinking that will happen this year.
I really don’t want to wait another 10 years and I believe most here are on the same page. With Gold on a uptrend Maurizio needs to take advantage of this environment and get something going because blasting here and there isn’t going to cut it.
Hulkster, I can definitely AGREE with that, and I think you’re right about the sentiment of others. I don’t have any special knowledge, but I believe MC has the exact SAME same sentiment, as he has a LOAD of money in this and wants to PROFIT. As I recall, he and his circle of family/friends are in at between 6-8 cents per share of MDMN. Having dealt with many very wealthy, self-made men (as clients and friends), my bet is he is running the numbers and other calculus on this thing EVERY day of the week, and all day long. Of course, he wants to maximize income, but from afar he’s doing the same thing these types of people do - figure out ways to cut expenses. This quasi-partnership he’s building with the local university smacks of that exact thought process. Can you imagine him getting all sorts of services for free (or a reduced price) of graduate students who want to cut their teeth under the guidance of a professor on how you design a production camp and on and on? Then, when he gets in front of the regulatory people maybe they’re more sympathetic toward his operation since he has done his “civic duty” working with the local university? These are the types of moves self-made men make (I could tell you stories here) - and I do not think for one minute he is delaying this thing any longer than he must. I could be all wrong here, just my opinion … from afar, very afar.
