I agree. But it appears to have been by definition not via sound industry mechanisms - it was because JJ said it was so based on his vision of the future (in addition, one must grant it was before the depths of the current market - and originally in 2012 for Mr. U. it was barely after the market high)
If this is how it went down, it was clever of Auryn to use their shares as an ‘inflated’ substitute currency against the high $USD ($180M) original asking price - 20% AMC for a $45M reduction from the $180M (plus the additional NUOCO properties were included), probably using the “long term exposure to ADL/LDM production” via AMC shares as a motivator - a realization of the Medinah golden-ATM oft-repeated dream
I hate to give away my quiz answers, but one has to think the way they approached the Gordon immediately that from the beginning they had early & easy high grade gold production in mind as a way to fund this thing and most likely they had a decent idea of what the Merlin 1 vein was going to be, although it probably exceeded what they even thought it may be.
From this they figured there was a decent enough chance they could make it all work that they would risk up to $10M in exploration to come up with the best plan and make it happen. As Merlin / Fortuna unfolded, it became a slam dunk [keeping in mind almost 7% of slam dunks are missed: 
http://bit.ly/1VJ9KtJ ].
if you think this is bad, you should go back to the Partner A contract terms:
http://www.medinah-minerals.com/?p=2730
$74M for 30% of the claims, and even better:
Additional funding, after exploration and qualification of “proven reserves” to full-scale production of up to $500,000,000 (five-hundred million) dollars.