Gold Hits RECORD Highs (Uncut) 02-07-2025

Gold Hits RECORD Highs – Why Right Now is the Moment We’ve Been Waiting For!

Welcome to the J. Martin show where we dissect the greatest minds in geopolitics and finance coming to you from our Indonesian studio today. Happy to be here. Happy to have a returning guest on to discuss the silver and the gold market.

His name is Sean Koon Koon, and I’ve been having Sean on the show for about three years. I always like to get his take when the market starts running or prices start increasing because he’s been building companies in the gold and silver sector for over 20 years. And so moderating his emotional response to a rising gold price and focusing on building value is something he’s become very, very good at.

I wanted to gauge his expectations for the direction the market might be heading and why and what we can expect to see from an M&A standpoint, from a capital allocation standpoint, all of this stuff. In addition, his company, Dolly Barton silver recently put out some more high grade results. This time gold results from their home state property directly following up some high grade silver results.

They put out in January. So I’m looking forward to getting caught up with Sean. Here is Sean Koon Koon on the J. Martin show.

Enjoy. All right, here I am back with Sean Koon Koon. Sean, it’s great to see you, man.

Jay, happy to be on. So is this the moment that we’ve all been waiting for for the last 14 years? Sean, is it happening right now? I do not want to jinx it, but it sure feels that way. Mm hmm.

Yeah. How do you after, you know, you’ve been building companies in this business for over a decade, much longer than that, uh, when you see sentiment begin to froth up like this on the heels of legitimate news, gold’s hitting all time high as it’s ripping. And there’s a lot of sort of like tangible reasons why, but you got to moderate your emotion, right? And stay focused on, on building your company regardless of what the market does.

So how do you moderate in these moments? That’s a good question. Um, we’ve had so many false starts. Like if, like I, and you know, I’ve been doing this for two decades.

And if I look at the last decade, um, it’s been, we’ve had more down days than up days in the sector. Right. Um, and you know, you don’t want to get trapped into some of these investments that catch a bid today and that bid could go away and you’re left holding the bag.

Right. And, you know, there’s, there’s many different lenses that I look at this industry through, obviously, you know, as the CEO, as an executive, as a director, as a company, but I also, I’m an investor and, um, I like to speculate. I like to, you know, and I get excited.

It’s hard not to, when you buy something on a Monday and it’s doubled on a Tuesday, and that’s the type of environment we’re in. Um, you know, we saw a company go up. I think it was last week, Discovery Silver, um, Tony McCooch.

Um, they just closed a $247 million, uh, financing. Um, the stock is up, uh, 70% in the last two weeks. And we’re not talking about a little nano cap.

We’re talking about a company that was measured at, you know, over half a billion dollar valuation. Um, we’re seeing moves that we haven’t seen, uh, in a long time. And, you know, the fundamentals, like I focus in Canada, um, you know, we’ve got $4,100 gold in Canadian dollar terms.

Um, I, for a long time, I was out there going, oh, you know, the silver price hasn’t taken out a tie and the silver price hasn’t taken out a tie. It is starting to now in Aussie dollars, uh, getting very, very close to Canadian dollar terms. So then it’s, it’s happening, Jay.

And, um, the volumes are coming in, you know, at Dolly Varden today, you know, we normally trade about 600,000 shares a day. We traded twice that today. So the volumes are picking up.

Um, it’s, it’s really, really encouraging to see, but I guess because I’ve spent the last 10 years in what I would describe as a bear market, um, I, you know, it’s easy to, to, to, to sort of approach it as if, you know, this could end tomorrow and, and the other thing that I’m really sensitive to is, you know, as we approach the Chinese new year, um, that has typically been a time where, uh, I have seen in past years where things do quiet down on the gold side, um, where, you know, and so, um, I am sensitive to that. I’m also sensitive to the PDAC curse where, you know, things are really good leading into March 1st. Um, you know, and so, you know, you know, cautious, but it’s hard not to get excited when you see the venture exchange up 8% year to date and, uh, you know, trading above some critical, uh, moving the averages, the 50, the hundred, the 200, um, and it looks like, you know, it looks like we want to get to a place here where, um, you know, it looks like we want to go after two year highs and, uh, break, uh, break a long-term consolidation that we’ve seen there on the venture exchange, but what’s so encouraging is the venture exchange used to be measured in the thousands of points, you know, 1,000, 2,000 got up to over 3,000 points in, uh, both 2011 and 2007.

And, uh, here we are, you know, sub a thousand points. Yeah. Yeah.

Which we’ve been for the last 12, 12 ish years. Right. We’re climbing up to eight towards 800 now towards.

Okay. Um, I appreciate that and I appreciate the moderation to like, you know, position accordingly, but, but be smart about this. Right.

Um, last we spoke was January and you guys at Dolly had just put out some phenomenal silver results from your Wolf projects and a couple of days ago, you followed that up with new results from Homestake. These are gold focused. So walk me through, I mean, it seems to me that Dolly, since we met Dolly’s really evolving into a true polymetallic at this point, like with confidence, would you agree is that the direction? Yeah.

So what we deliberately did a few years ago is Dolly was very unique in the golden triangle that it was silver centric. It was 99% all silver, whereas a lot of the other great deposits in the neighborhood were silver and gold. And so what we did deliberately is we acquired a gold deposit, uh, the Homestake deposit, and that brought in this big gold element into the company.

What’s happened up at Homestake is it’s evolving into a silver gold deposit and a gold deposit. So, um, you know, there was, uh, some present really good presentations done at the Roundup conference. Um, just, uh, just in and around, uh, VRIC, um, you know, more of a technical conference and there was a presentation done by Michael Gray, who is, uh, an analyst with Agentsys who was at Macquarie for years, uh, very well respected, um, ambassador to the industry, Michael Gray and Michael talked about, um, you know, he, he talked about a term gram meter interval.

Um, it’s taking, you know, we put out a lot of information that’s technical, right. And, you know, for you, for your audience, for any of the listeners, if you take a company’s grams per ton, their gold grams per ton, and you multiply it by the meters they drill, it gives you a gram meter interval. And Michael talked about money flowing to names where you’re hitting better than a hundred gram, a hundred gram meter intervals.

And so if you take Dolly’s last press release, which was, we hit over 20 grams of gold and we hit it over eight meters that equates to, it was 168 gram meter interval that’s so going back to what Michael Gray talked about getting better than a hundred is what is attracting two things. It’s attracting corporates and it’s attracting capital. Interesting.

Okay. You know, I actually just met Michael at the VRIC. Um, I hadn’t met him until January.

It was great to have to meet that guy. Um, okay. And that’s a fascinating, uh, actually I didn’t just say about Michael, he’s a, he’s a phenomenal guy and he has been really early on some big names in the industry that have had a lot of success.

I, I won’t go through the long list, but I’ve just found him and he’s been there when companies turn from pennies to dollars and, um, he’s somebody that I have a lot of respect for and, uh, you know, it’s something to pay attention to. Uh, but there was a lot of good information that, that I came across from, you know, we had three really good conferences. I think, you know, yours being not just saying this cause I’m talking to you right now, but you know, yours was the, the, the highlight event in, uh, you know, I, I, I would say, you know, in the, in the whole year, there’s probably like three go-to events that you have to beat it at.

And, and I think yours is one of them and definitely the premier event in Vancouver, um, but there was just such, you know, when you get that concentration of all the industry experts on the technical side, but also the financing side and the industry comes together, great things happen, you know, capital deals, M and a, and, uh, it was just a, it was an incredible time to come together as an industry at a point where you’ve got record high metal prices. And we’re starting now to see that trickle down into, um, and we’re into the industry, but we’re also seeing some welcome political change, um, and new initiatives and some policies that were brought in that are being rolled back like the caps, the capital gains and some, some things where you’re going. Okay.

Um, we’re giving investors a real opportunity here and an incentive to come back to markets. Yeah. There’s a few catalysts for sure.

Uh, all seeming to convalesce at once here. Um, and so, yeah, quick highlight of the results you put out from home state. Thanks for running through that 21 grams per ton over eight meters with a highlight of 91 grams per ton over a half meter, uh, section there, right? Another whole 35 grams per ton over 2.3 meters with a broader zone, a 3.4, uh, over 30 meters.

So, and just for, for context, I know, I know I mentioned this often on my channel, but you know, high grade in gold is typically eight grams per ton or above an average is five to eight, just to put why I call these high grade in context. Um, what’s next, Sean, because I know you’re sitting on a lot of cash, I think 34 million in the bank right now. And so you got some options with what you might do.

Um, you know, you’ve been putting out consistent results, the high grade silver in January, high grade gold this week. What’s next in terms of news flow or activity within the company? What are you focused on? Yeah. So we just, so, um, the announcement that we put out on Monday, um, marks the, um, the final assays from the 2024 program.

So this is now a time where our team sits down, they look at all the results, they look at all the historic work and some of the things that we’re learning. Um, so you’ve got two main centers of gravity, uh, on the project, you’ve got the home stake and then you’ve got the dolly, but there’s many, many other targets within around that. So you’ve got like moose and chance and red point.

And, um, what’s the way I want you to think about this, Jay, is there’s a series of, there’s a, there’s a 50 million ounce silver deposit on the property Torbritt, and there’s a million ounce gold deposit on the property home stake. So you got Torbritt and you got home state. What I’m encouraged by is we’ve got this gold target called red point.

And what we’ve learned Jay is we’ve been real, we’ve been drilling red point incorrectly. We’ve been drilling it the wrong way. Now, how did we learn that? We did, we did what’s called oriented core.

And what oriented core allows us to do is to really understand the structures. So one of my geos came up to me and said, um, Amanda Bennett, and she, she had the breakthrough at Wolf that led to the big discovery that led to our share price, our market cap, you know, exploding to the upside. Amanda came to me and she goes, I’ve got, I’ve got bad news and good news.

And I said, okay, hit me. She goes, bad news is we’ve been drilling red point the wrong way. And I said, what’s the good news? And she goes with good news is we’ve been fantastic.

So we’re going to drill it the right way in 2025. And what’s encouraging to me is even though we were drilling it the wrong way, we were coming up with some really good hits and what, and, and just the story about the golden triangle. So I’ve got a guy on the board, uh, Rob cloud, friend, partners, what really well known.

He actually just received an award recently at the, uh, at the roundup conference for his service in the industry. Um, and, uh, so Rob’s uncle Don, um, had the Bruce Jack deposit. I think they had it in a company called Canmore and, and back then what they thought it was, was a quarter million ounce deposit.

And when, um, silver standard got it and then it was then, uh, spun out to Pretium Bob quarter maintenance team, turn the rigs around and they hit the Valley of the Kings. And I can’t remember the exact endowment at Jack today, but it’s like, I don’t know, 13 million ounces. It’s producing 300,000 ounces a year.

Uh, I think the, the average head grade is like 10 grams per ton. Uh, resource grades of 15. Like it’s, it’s, it’s a, it’s a monster.

It’s new, new months producing there. My point is the golden triangle is full of a history of projects that once the teams got into drilling the deposits the right way has led to some pretty important breakthroughs. Uh, you, you look just at, at our project alone, the same geologist, Amanda Bennett drilling underneath the sediment cap, what that’s done for the silver mineralization at Wolf, um, is huge.

So this, so, you know, look, I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but when you talk about what’s next for Dolly, let’s work backwards. May 15th, I expect to have our, our drill rigs turning, uh, multiple drill rigs, at least three, you know, maybe four up to five, um, minimum three on May 15th, May 1st opening camp, um, call it April 1st, putting out our plans, our detailed plans for drilling. And, you know, we’ll really take the next 60 days as an opportunity to reinterpret and to, you know, really come out, let the market know what we’ve learned, um, outside of the drilling that we’ve put out.

So we drilled about 32,000 meters. There’s a lot of great exploration work we did. And we, so I anticipate getting a lot of information out to market, um, ahead of the new drilling and ahead of the new results.

And I think what’s on everyone’s mind, Jay, is, um, when’s this company going to put out, uh, a new resource estimate and, uh, and look, um, we’re, we will put out a new resource estimate after this year’s drilling, like, you know, we will drill in 2025, we will hit it hard. We’ve been hitting it really, really hard. And, um, and, and look, not all resource estimates are created equal.

Not all economic studies are created equal. And, you know, there really isn’t a standard for this stuff. Like, you know, it’s really based upon the author, right? There’s parameters, right? But like you, you get a lot of companies that put out PEAs that aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on.

Uh, they’re just not real world. And what we try to do at Dolly Varden is if we’re going to put out a resource estimate, but we’re going to put out a PEA, um, it, as that project moves through PFS and do a feasibility study, we don’t want the numbers to change. We don’t want the shock and awe of, you know, we want to really, we want to come up with a PEA plus something that we can feel very confident in that is real world, that we can stand behind.

That isn’t going to change over time. Yeah. And, you know, I was going to ask a question sort of related to that, but thanks for the clarity.

It must be somewhat tempting to hunt down that resource estimate today based off the results you’ve generated since your last resource estimate, you got a big 2025 coming up and outlined, you know, drill plans done by April 1st. Uh, camps open May 1st. And by the 15th of May, we’re speaking in February today, you want to have three plus drills running.

But are you like, have you been getting pressure from shareholders or have you been tempted to expedite their resource estimate or you’re like, no, here’s why I know exactly what the vision is. Well, look, it’s, it’s interesting. Um, when we talk about shareholders, um, every shareholder wants something different, right? And so you really have to play for, you know, the 80 or 90% of shareholders, because you’re going to have fringe shareholders on the edges that want very different things, you know, shareholders want to own the stock for an hour and shareholders that are willing to own the stock for two decades.

Right. And, and, but I’ve really got to play to the 80 or 90%. Um, and I’ve also got to do what I know is right for the company based upon my board, based upon my advisors, based upon my, my support staff.

And, um, and so, you know, for me, the reality is the, I want to advance this project, right? I want to, Dolly Varden Silver has a great history as a mine. Okay. Dolly Varden was the richest silver mine in the British empire.

It was Canada’s third largest silver producer. I think what could, what was a great mine can once again be great mine. And so my goal here is to advance this project and get it back into production.

Now we may not be the company that is developing and advancing and producing at the site. There may be a larger company that decides to take us over. Um, so ultimately the reality is if we get acquired, the acquiring company is doing their own internal estimates.

Right. And so, you know, all of our data is in great form. Um, it’s, you know, we’ve got an incredible data room.

Um, we’ve got corporate shareholders, you know, we have signed CAs. So, you know, the reality, Jay is the sophisticated technical investor and corporate knows exactly what we have today. Right.

Everything we drilled, we publish and we put up there. Right. And, and the reality is, you know, depending on the type of mine, like you take, you take a, you take a, you take a look at like high grade underground mines.

Right. Um, you often don’t have big reserves. Right.

You, you know, the classic underground mine, like if you look at a place like Red Lake, Ontario, which hosts some of the richest, best Canadian gold mines, um, those mines may had never had more than a five or six year reserve, but they would go on to produce for decades. So, you know, you, you know, I think that sophisticated investors aren’t going to look at just what you’ve drilled out on a resource estimate, they’re going to realize that, you know, the gold and silver did not fall from the sky. It came from deep within the earth’s crust.

And there’s a good chance that these systems continue on for, you know, and what excited me and attracted me to Dolly Barton originally is that the project had only been drill tested to depth of 300 meters. Where projects that I cut my teeth on decades ago were down a mile below surface. Right, right, right, right, right.

So, um, you, you mentioned the increase in volume you’re seeing at Dolly and a lot of companies are seeing that right now. My last question for you, Sean, is like when share prices trend up, companies begin using them as currency to expand, right? It’s like great time to look for new opportunities. And do you expect an increase in, in M&A acquisitions among your peers, yourself? Like walk me through the expectation there.

Yeah, like, uh, it was interesting. Um, I was listening actually just yesterday to Ross Beattie. Um, he gave a great fireside chat at your conference and, uh, he talked about, um, building companies, sorry.

Oh, with, uh, with Trevor. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I, yeah, it was a great talk and I, I just listened to it yesterday and he talked about the different companies he’s built in his career, whether it was Pan American, uh, Lumina, uh, most recently Equinox, and you know, if you want to build, and if you want to build for this cycle, M&A has to be a part of your plan.

And so, um, yeah, it’s something that, you know, we at Dolly have used to, you know, we bought Homestake, we bought a big bulk and it’s something that, um, you know, we’re going to continue to, uh, to try to leverage. Okay. I love it.

Um, lots to look forward to in the near term. You got events coming up, uh, April and May with a big drill campaign. You’re cashed up 30 million in the treasury right now.

Um, Sean, I just got to say, it’s, it’s always an honor speaking with you because I think I’ve been covering Dolly and we’ve been chatting for two and a half, three years at this point. Um, and every time you come back on, you’ve got material news that’s matured the company from the previous time that we spoke, as you know, that’s rare in this business, so I appreciate it. And, uh, it’s always a, it’s always a pleasure to chat with you.

So I appreciate your time. Congrats on a more fantastic results. And I look forward to the next time.

Thanks. Thanks for having me on Jay. Of course.