China's Gold Reserves Doubled While the US Stopped Mining It | Bob Quartermain

Bob Quartermain says the world's great gold deposits are getting harder to find, and the price will have to rise to make up for it.

Speaking with Kitco News at the Rule Symposium 2026, the Dakota Gold CEO and newly named Order of Canada member said the remaining deposits are deeper, lower-grade, and far costlier to find. "Those elephants at depth are rare, and they cost hundreds of millions of dollars to find," he said. "We're just gonna have to see a higher gold price to achieve the amount of production that we're currently seeing now."

Quartermain called the recent pullback "a breather in the bull market," pointing to central bank demand as the structural break from the speculative 2011 run. He noted gold has now passed US Treasuries as a reserve asset and China's holdings have grown from 33 million ounces to over 75 million, and explained why US gold output has fallen from over 10 million ounces a year to four or five since the Homestake mine closed.

Recorded July 08, 2026.

Special thanks to our sponsor, Aris Mining, for making this coverage possible. To learn more, visit: https://www.aris-mining.com/

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00:00 - Welcome and Intro
01:37 - Gold Cycle: 1980, 2011 and Now
03:02 - Central Banks and Gold vs Treasuries
04:52 - Hemlo: Full Circle 40 Years Later
08:09 - Why Majors Miss the Big Finds
09:56 - Building Brucejack, Selling to Newcrest
12:24 - Why the Gold M&A Wave Is Just Starting
13:56 - Silver's AI and Data Center Demand
17:20 - Gold Supply Crunch and Jurisdiction Risk
20:44 - Reviving the Historic Homestake Mine
25:40 - How to Spot a World-Class Deposit
28:30 - Advice to Young Geologists

#Gold #Mining #DakotaGold #KitcoNews
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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Kitco news on-site coverage of the Rule Symposium Natural Resource Investing is presented by Paris Mining.

SPEAKER_02 0:12

Welcome back to the show. I'm Jeremy Saffron live from the Rules Symposium at the beautiful Boca Raton Resort here in Florida where the weather is quite, quite hot. Now my next guest is simply one of the great mine builders of his generation. He helped discover Hamlow Gold Camp in Ontario as a young geologist. He built silver standard into a powerhouse. Thank you, Jeremy. Wonderful to be here.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

Well, it's a great honor, as one could imagine. You know, I do the work that I do because I love it. It's been great being in the resource industry all these years. And I do the philanthropic work that's important to me. And you know, it and it represents my success represents the support of many individuals, you know, family, friend, and business associates. And so when I look in totality, yes, it's privilege, but it was very humbling when I was uh told about the order, and so I just with a great sense of pride as a proud Canadian that I I get to wear this honor here today.

SPEAKER_02 1:30

You just give you give so much back to Bob. I mean, the fact of the matter is not only have you built those mines that I said in the preamble, but as just a human, as a Canadian, I mean, people, everybody at this show that knows Bob speaks positively about you. So now we got to turn this into harder questions, I feel like, because I gave you a couple easy ones there. But you know, let's talk a little bit about this cycle because you built gold, you know, you've financed as well these companies through all these gold cycles, the the 1980 top, the 2011 run. You know, after the wild year that we just had, how does this moment actually compare to the ones that you've lived through?

SPEAKER_01 2:04

Right. I think we're part of that long-term trajectory of a solid bull goal run in that rate, precious metals. You know, I started in the business back in 1976, so I've been doing it almost 50 years now. And back then, you know, gold was $140 an ounce, the Dow was around a thousand. So we've seen a great appreciation uh in gold. So when you look at it long amplitude, that yes, uh starting in the fall, uh we certainly had a lot of attention coming into the space, driving it up. When you look at other investment uh areas where uh there's such size, let's say, with the Magnificent 7 perhaps, you know, gold's a very small play with respect to that, right, in its overall size and capacity. And so we saw people getting interest, the commodity, we drove the price up, now it's correcting back. But if you look at either gold or let's say silver prices, you know, go back five years. Silver for a number of years traded around $20 an ounce. You know, now it's at 60 in the last few years. It's come off its high of 120. But I'm very long-term uh investor in this market, both in the physical commodities as well as in the equities, and believe that'll continue to uh serve me well.

SPEAKER_02 3:13

Now you answered it there, but I mean I gotta go to the macro picture right now because just today gold's selling off a little bit, but oil has spiked on on Iran news and and the markets are now pricing in a Fed rate hike. Some banks have trimmed their targets, though plenty have stayed bullish and central banks continue to pick up gold. From where you sit with all of your experience, is this a real turn in the cycle, or is it just kind of a breather inside the bull market, like you said?

SPEAKER_01 3:37

No, I think it's a breather in the bull market. And one of the things that I think is different this time than let's say in the 2011 run-up when we had gold moving, that was largely driven by speculation. You know, the retail investors within it, perhaps going in the ETFs. What we've seen is that systemic change now when you look at global reserves, monetary reserves, you know, gold now has surpassed U.S. treasuries. Now it hasn't surpassed, you know, US dollars if you look at all types of dollar investments. But you know, gold represents what 23 to 25 percent based on the World Gold Council of central banks' holdings. So you know that's different. We're finding central banks continuing to buy. Again, when we started the Bruce Jack project back in 2010, China then had around 33 million ounces of gold in reserves. It's now over 75 million. And it continues to buy, as do other central banks. And so I think that's the shift with central bank buying coming in. And also some investment fund managers are coming back, realizing for uh looking at um, you know, the world politics and way things are going on, if they want kind of insurance or just be able to park some of their assets securely, we're gonna see it in gold. So, yes, we see these daily volatilities due to the news cycle, but long term I think we continue to see that evolution of gold trending higher.

SPEAKER_02 4:56

Yeah, yeah, it's a good way of looking at it. I mean, you know, we'll have a technical analyst on it. I always remind people this is short-term trading, but we're looking at the longer picture. And I guess that brings me full circle to Hemlo. And it's a story that I promise I had to tell. I mean, you discovered the camp as a young geologist now, decades later, you're helping steer that company uh that just basically bought, I think, that mine from Barwick, yeah. And um, what is it like to come full circle 40 years later?

SPEAKER_01 5:20

Well, it's great. You know, I was there at the start, as you point out. I mean, it was David Bell who kind of did the discovery of the mine itself, and of course the David Bell mine's uh uh named after him. But it was my first experience working at a expiration to develop a project which helped me through my career because then I knew what a mine looked like. You're right. Here's how you explore this is what it did. But to be able to go back with a young team, because when I think when I worked there in the 80s, you know, Dr. Kiev, you know, the chairman of a previous chairman of tech, but you know, he and his father started tech, when I was there, you know, they were in their 40s, right, running, you know, tech as a mining company, and now I happen to be aligned up with uh, you know, a young professional group, uh, you know, between the CEO and COO and chair, you know, John Odd, Jason Kozak, and uh John Case. And this young group who were enthused about being able to develop a Canadian mine where the resources and assets from the mine will stay in Canada, right? When Barrick owned it, of course, uh it was very small in their portfolio, and a lot of the cash flow generated went from it. So the opportunity came to us because it's been undercapitalized, it hasn't been explored. And what I bring is the fact that when I worked there, gold prices were, you know, a few hundred bucks an ounce or less, and we were mining eight and ten gram material. Right. We can now mine, you know, two gram to three gram material. So it opens lots of exploration opportunities that I can remember, yes, we drilled that hole, but we didn't go mine it because it was too low grade. Now it's ore.

SPEAKER_02 6:46

You know, this is interesting because I mean you talked a little bit about and you keep saying the the younger generation, I mean, you're an exceptional mentor. I've been lucky, I've talked to you, and you've mentored me through the years. Um, you know, Hemlo just lifted its resource by about a third, and you personally flagged that new zone. Uh what are you and the team seeing that the major kind of didn't? I mean, give a little into that.

SPEAKER_01 7:06

Well, I would think it was the fact that Hemlo was a small component of Barrick, right? Over the last five years, you know, Hemlo averaged maybe somewhere around 150,000 ounces a year. To a mining company that's producing 4 million to 5 million, right? So it doesn't get the attention that you're going to be getting in the um, let's say the Carlin trend and some of the other assets. So as a result of that, that creates the opportunity. It's undercapitalized, they're not getting the money to be able to go in and drill. And to your point, what they've uh named in the press release, which is basically the west zone that we drilled, it was lower grade when I was working there in '82 and '83. But it currently uh the data still there was never mined, and so we're going back and drilling it off, and I think it'll become part of our mind pan. But more importantly, I was up at site a few weeks ago and being down at 1500 meters underground, seeing what it looks like from the drill core and seeing these zones which are wider, more consistent, because cut changing the cutoff grade just allows them to fill out, and uh that's what's exciting, is we can see lengths of these, and it's still open at depth. So that's the great aspect that we're gonna be here many, many more years mining at Hemlo, and it's just really great to be part of it. The geology hasn't changed in 40 years. The opportunity is still there.

SPEAKER_02 8:20

You know, there is a little bit of a pattern here as well. I mean, the the big fines so often come from small, hungry teams like you're talking about, not the giants. I mean, you know, why do the majors kind of keep missing uh what somebody like you sees?

SPEAKER_01 8:33

Well, I think one of it is we go back to the industry, you know, if you go back, you know, twenty-five years or more ago, when mining companies are really stressed with metal prices, they cut back on expiration teams, right? And so that's when you would see the Vancouver uh junior uh groups come up, where often it was ex-mining individuals getting together, so we can be open and be much more efficient with the capital. Right? If you're a large company, you've got a bureaucracy that you have to look through, decisions have to be made, whereas if you're a small group like we were at Silver Standard with uh, you know, uh Joe Opsnick and Ken Van Gaunt and myself, when we look at assets and the team we had around, we can make decisions really quickly. We're not getting the results we're getting here that we think we need in order to develop a project into a mine. So we would pivot and turn to another opportunity. So I think that's what you see is that the large majors uh still have their expiration groups, but they're more about assessing what are the juniors doing and using that model, which is what tech was doing back in the 80s, funding the juniors, having the juniors speed up into tech and being able to, you know, turn it into the powerhouse it is today. And that's a model, you know, arguably we saw uh a few months ago well with the Nico Eagle with Rupert, you know, consolidating in Finland, letting the junior come in do the work and presenting the opportunities. So it's a way for the majors to uh adjust their expiration risk and being able to let teams who want to get out and do that work and access the capital markets to be able to do it. So it's certainly a pattern that's working well, uh, which ultimately leads, as you know, into MA activity.

SPEAKER_02 10:04

Absolutely. And I mean, we could talk about your career for a long time, but let's talk about it for a minute because there is a lesson here. I mean, with Pretum, you took obviously Bruce Jack from a geological concept to you know one of the largest mines in Canada. What did actually building that mine teach you that you kind of didn't know before?

SPEAKER_01 10:21

It taught you to uh put the right team together, right? And I've had the great fortune when we started with Silver Standard to work with uh, you know, individuals there that were able to come over to uh to Predium. But we had some experience building mines when we built the uh Proquitus Mine in Silver Standard, and I throughout my career, having worked at Hemlo, worked at Tarqua, worked at Menantiel, uh, you know, you were involved in that. But to actually take a concept and uh start with it and go all the way through, you need to put the right team together and bring in those with the expertise because originally our plan had been let's go off and drill it, and eventually perhaps a major may want to come in and take it over. Because of the complexity of the deposit, we weren't able to do it, so we had to build it. And you go from a team of four or five people in an office to where you suddenly have 2,000 people working construction uh in one of the highest snowfall areas in British Columbia putting in a hundred kilometer power line, that means lots of expertise and being able to bring people in and do it safely. And so it's all about team building and getting those right individuals to be able to get the outcome you want.

SPEAKER_02 11:25

Yeah, well said, man. I mean, you know, then you sold Bruce Jack to Newcrest for around three and a half billion dollars. That's the discipline that most people never master. So I have to ask you, I mean, how do you know when it's time to build and how do you know when it's time to sell?

SPEAKER_01 11:39

Well, in the case of uh selling often, a uh uh a larger mining company may come to you and say, listen, we like your asset, you know, here's a letter, here's a proposal. And, you know, I learned that uh, you know, from the namesake of the conference here, Rick Rule many years ago, you're here to do what's in the best interest of shareholders. And so if someone is able to come in and say, listen, we're willing to give your shareholders a premium to be able to took this ass in our portfolio, then it's something we have to look at. In our case, it just took a while for that to occur and we had to develop the mine. But many companies here do, they'll go through and develop an opportunity. And once you de-risk it, in the case of Bruce Jack, you know, we produced uh, you know, 300,000 ounces or so a year, and I think it's produced over two and a half million ounces today. So we showed it was a real mine, and that then allowed the major to be able to come in and make that opportunity. So again, it's that cycle of the juniors being able to find it and then having that opportunity that majors will come in and want to take over, and you know, I think it's good for the industry.

SPEAKER_02 12:36

Do you think MA is just beginning now? I mean, it feels like management teams have been more disciplined with their capital. They're they're kind of looking at things from a different perspective this cycle. Uh is it just beginning?

SPEAKER_01 12:46

Yes, I believe so. Well, we've seen, you know, Econox and Orla do their moves, so it's about being product up. As you get these companies which have two or three mines now becoming eight and ten mines, then we're going to continue to see portfolios move up. There's a lot of companies out there right now who have uh very attractive uh paper because they're operating, and the juniors continue to not get that attention. And so as good projects come along, you may find where majors will take, or you know, mid-tier companies will take toeholds in companies and then be able to continue to fund them and ultimately able to get those assets. But I think we're in a space with this gold price because you know, 20, 30 years ago, the mining companies when capital wasn't available got very disciplined. And you know, that's probably a little different in this cycle. Margins are good. Mining companies are making money, they're returning company, you know, money back to shareholders either way of dividends or through share buybacks, right? And we haven't seen that in this industry, as you well know, you've been in a long time, to what we're seeing, let's say, in the last four or five years. So that type of discipline is bringing other investors, institutional investors, because they can enjoy in uh the cash flow, but with the fact that most mining companies are operating with all and sustaining costs between that 1,000 and 2,000 range, at these current gold prices and even what may be projected, there's still good margin in the industry.

SPEAKER_02 14:05

Yeah, yeah, it's been fascinating to watch some of this cash. Uh I got to ask you about silver, because you you made your name in silver first. I mean, you built silver standards, so silver is in your blood. I know that. I mean, silver's run even harder than gold lately, then it corrected. And I got to ask you, as someone who knows that metal cold, I mean, is this the real move silver bulls are kind of waiting for? Is this a kind of time? I mean, silver's exciting right now.

SPEAKER_01 14:26

Well, true. I mean, I I can remember uh being with uh, you know, my good friend Ross Beatty, uh, as you, you know, you uh interviewed us a few months ago. You know, we remember when Silver was $4 announced thinking it was going to do the run to six. The fact it's at 60, um, you know, is I think a part of that trajectory along the way. As you point out, you know, silver's a smaller trade, right? If you look at the gold overall production, it's what, around $500 million, you know, silver 800 million ounces of production is around 30 billion, let's call it. Like that's sorry, gold would be 500 billion. So it's a much smaller trade in that regard. And uh because it's always in deficit, then they're it's volatile. And you'll find that those that uh want to play that volatility to a certain investment, but I think again, long-term silver is really um looks good when we get around to AI. You know, we have our cell phones, right? Cell phones have a certain amount of silver and gold in it. If you look at data centers, and uh, you know, people talk about megawatts of power, I think of it as a construction project, right? An acre of uh data centers is lots of concrete, it's lots of steel, but it's three to four hundred tons of copper, right? And powering that goes inside. And silver being the best electrical conductor is all through the server platform, right? Whether it's in the servers themselves connecting. So you can have hundreds of kilograms of silver, you know, in data farms and data centers. So going forward, we're going to continue to have that industrial use for silver, but it just doesn't have central bank buying or anything into it because again, it's a relatively small trade compared to others. So we'll see the volatility, but again, when I look and say, you know, it's it's it's come from uh, you know, in the last uh you know a couple of decades, it's come from five or six dollars to sixty. Uh the silver investors long term have been rewarded.

SPEAKER_02 16:11

Actually, you bring up a good point. I remember that interview we had you on the Legends panel with Ross Beattie, and it he kind of got a lot of comments from some of our viewers because he said, listen, silver's a little frothy here at almost $100. We needed to come down, and people thought, why? But here we go, we've established that $50 base, it seems like. Yes. And for the regular investor watching from here, I mean gold silver, which one has a better story and kind of why?

SPEAKER_01 16:35

Uh well uh uh the ring I have on here is electrum, so it's uh both uh silver and uh and gold in that regard. Uh you know, I have I have proportionate investments in both. When I look at kind of the silver and gold 15 to 1, I have physical silver, I have physical gold, I have the equities in that regard. So I think it depends on an investor's uh tolerance for volatility. I think if you're buying gold equities, you know, the long-term producers, but again, there's so very few primary silver producers that you can invest in, right? Because uh only 30% of silver production is from primary mines. Most of it's by way of byproduct. And so I think it's just good to have a balanced portfolio, is how we look at. Again, I'm not an investment advisor. I'm talking about my own personal investment here in the United States. So I think it's one thing that each has to has to look at. But I think long-term precious metals as an investment thesis uh is a uh is something that people should you like both.

SPEAKER_02 17:31

And I mean we could talk a little bit about the supply issue. I mean, the the the the biggest picture of all is is the metal itself here. I mean, exploration budget has been starved for about 15 years, as you know. You know, as a discoverer, what does that actually mean for the world's future gold supply, and I guess for the price?

SPEAKER_01 17:47

So they're harder to find, they're deeper, they're lower grade. If you go to the turn of the last century, you know, at surface mines are running 10 grams. The average gold mine nowadays is around maybe a gram. You do get some of those interesting intercepts like we've seen with uh Baric at their four-mile project, right? You're but discovery, but those are rare. Those elephants at depth are rare and they cost hundreds of millions of dollars to find. So, you know, I think there's been research to show that you're looking at a few hundred million dollars in order to be able to make a discovery. So you're right, it's expiration's going to be costlier, um, and it's also jurisdictional risk. You know, we've seen some things occur in Africa where individuals have assets and uh governments change their mining regulations or taxation regulations, disagreements can occur, and uh, you know, that's one of the challenges going forward is mines are located where we find them. And to what extent will governments, as they look for revenue sources, look at perhaps additional taxation, which also gets back to, you know, jurisdictional issues with respect to where projects are located. So there are a number of things to look at as an investor with respect to opportunities, but to your point, uh finding those large mines are gonna be much more challenging. I think it's you know lower grade, which means costs uh the price has to go up.

SPEAKER_02 19:08

Right.

SPEAKER_01 19:09

Because the costs are gonna continue, the input costs are gonna go up. So we're just gonna have to see a higher gold price to achieve the amount of production that we're currently seeing now.

SPEAKER_02 19:17

You know, let's stick on jurisdictions for a moment because you came uh on to build in America. I mean, make the kind of bigger case here. Why does building gold in the United States kind of matter more now than than for a long time that you've been in this industry? I mean, we've seen with the the headlines. I mean, the US government obviously is much more of a proponent for this, but uh you think that that's a long-term trend?

SPEAKER_01 19:37

I believe so. And it's about moving forward because of the fact that we do want to be sourcing uh commodities here uh in North America. You know, I came back to find Bruce Jack and work in Canada, now working, as you say, in South Dakota. And if you look at rare earths, we we see that in the news a lot because China is the largest rare earth uh production uh source for it. It you know, and those opportunities may exist here, so we have to be able to find, discover them, and being able to develop them and add them to our economy. When the Home Stake mine shut down in uh 2000, 2002, the US was producing somewhere over 10 million ounces of gold a year. You know, now it's down to four to five. And yet, you know, cell phones use gold. You know, there's a lot of gold in our daily activities, but what better way to source it than in the country itself that Domosolv, which is going to be able to use it. And you have security of uh rule of law, so you know what you're gonna be able to do. In our case in South Dakota, we're in private land in South Dakota, so we know what the parameters are around for developing opportunities, and I think that's why I like to be back in the United States. It's about a safer jurisdiction, we know how to function within it, we know what the rules are to be able to develop opportunities, and uh that's important where you're dealing with a world where uh you may not have those uh same rules all the time uh in other jurisdictions.

SPEAKER_02 20:54

Yeah. Uh you know, I I mean, full disclosure, I visited Richmond Hill. I mean, it's an incredible story, an incredible mine. Uh and I have to ask you, I mean, well, you're reviving Homestake, which produced something like 40 million ounces of gold over 145 years, I think, before it closed in 2002. What pulled you back into a place like that?

SPEAKER_01 21:13

Well, as you know, the uh the adage is the best place to look for uh a mine is in the head frame of a mine, as you know, many headframes in that district. But more importantly, when Homestake decided to start to shut the Homestake mine down, that started in 1996. They were doing expiration, their cutoff grade at the time was 0.2, or about six grams. So gold prices a little around $200, $250 an ounce, shutting the mine down. No expiration's been done for 30 years. Uh we came in with Dakota Gold, we started acquiring projects. We actually bought the Maitland project from uh Barrack. We took the option on Richmond Hill again from Barrack. It wasn't in their radar screen, and as you point out, we've come up and we've made a discovery in our Maitland project. We have 47 intersections which grade uh a little. Over 11 grams per ton, over four meters, and we're a few miles along strike from the Westledges, which produced six million ounces at 11 grams. So we're in the right the right jurisdiction and needs more drilling to go on. But again, Richmond Hill that you were able to visit, you know, it's only as we saw two miles north of Wharf's core uh the core mine, uh wharf, that's been operating for over 40 years, producing plus 100,000 ounces a year. We're in the right jurisdiction, the right rocks. The infrastructure is there. So why not go to a place where the infrastructure is existing, the regulators are familiar with mining, and you've got a uh uh a friendly state for mining, you have a county where mining is going on, and they're part of the jurisdictions that you need to go through with respect to being located on private land. So that's what attracted me to be able to go back is you could see an opportunity here, and that's what we're seeing with the evolution we have at Richmond Hill.

SPEAKER_02 22:52

Yeah, yeah, and I do want to talk about those recent drill results. Uh but before, I mean, with Richmond Hill, I mean, uh it's what you'd call a kind of simpler kind of mining, an open pit, no deep shafts. I mean, in in plain terms, where does the project kind of stand right now for you? And and you've got a big engineering study due by year end, I think. What when do you think we'll start producing that's right.

SPEAKER_01 23:11

So we've done uh extensive drilling over the last few years since we did our uh mineral resource uh first announcement in February of 2025. We've drilled uh yeah, many hundreds of thousands of feet. So we're incorporating that all now into a pre-feasibility study, and we'll have that out in the uh the fourth quarter of this year. That will inform the feasibility study, and with that, we'll start the permitting process. And it's defined uh because we're in private land in South Dakota. And we expect a could be an upwards of 18-month uh plus or minus uh permitting process to go through when you have construction. So our disclosures we're targeting uh late 2029 for um production. That's only three years away, which in this business is not that far away. And it's because we have a team down there. We brought in uh Jack Henris as our president and chief operating officer last year. And jock uh Jack is an experienced mine operator working for Barrack at Newmont. He lives in the district. He's brought in a great team around him, so I'm really enthused as a shareholder with the work we're doing and uh supporting Jack and being able to advance and put this project uh forward into production as he has done in the past.

SPEAKER_02 24:19

Yeah, yeah, it's been incredible to watch. I mean, uh again, one of those do-as-you-say kind of stories. Uh, you know, these recent drilling results, they did come back with some high grade hits inside and outside the pit area. So, I mean, without getting too technical and losing our audience, I mean, uh, what are those results kind of telling you about how big this could ultimately be?

SPEAKER_01 24:38

Right. So if you look at our IA with cash flow, which we did about this time last year, we announced it uh at this conference. There we came up with about 2.6 million ounces in our measured indicated category, running around uh, you know, 0.5 uh six grams of of gold per ton. So the result we put out earlier this uh week, you know, we had uh plus 20 meters of you know 30 gram material, very high grade, that's an outlier, but it's outside the area where we've been doing our work to date. But we have lots of intersections of you know, 15 and 20 meters of one to one and a half to two grams. So that'll all get taken and put into the new uh resource that will inform the pre-feasibility study we're doing. What it means is when we've completed that study based off the current framework, there's still expiration opportunities that we have on the property going forward. So it means that we're currently projecting a uh, you know, a mine life based off our production rate of around 153,000 ounces a year of you know, 17 years. So maybe additional opportunities there for shareholders uh down the road.

SPEAKER_02 25:43

And I mean being on the ground over there, you can tell the local South Dakotans really love having you there. I mean, it's a very mine-friendly jurisdiction, as you mentioned, private land. And that kind of brings me to the builder wisdom section of our interview because you've earned the right to hand out some some hard one wiz or hard-won wisdom, as you know. I mean, you've seen thousands of projects. So, in plain terms, uh how do you tell a genuine world-class deposit from a really good story that may never become a mine?

SPEAKER_01 26:10

Right. So, I have the benefit of when I worked for Tech Corporation at the start of my career, working underground as a mine geologist at the Lamac Gold Mine, and then went to David Bell and spent three years drilling it off and working. And then with the work we've done ourselves with uh Tarqua, Perquitas, Menantilus Baleo, it's certainly Bruce Jack. I've been able to look at a lot of data, so I have that benefit as a geologist. When I'm looking at an investment thesis with respect to, let's say, a junior mining company. I can look at the geology, I can look at the drill results, and I can formulate an opinion that will help me make a decision in and around something that I think is going to be able to develop. The other thing is buying people. You know, I think it's a theme that you'll find at this conference where there are many individuals here, a lot of them have had success throughout their careers. And so you want to make sure you've got a good geological team, uh, they get an understanding of the geology, and uh it's got good results in it, and enough drill spacing that can help you make an informed decision on, you know, what a resource might look like with respect to it, and that can then help make inform that investment decision.

SPEAKER_02 27:17

Well said. Uh that's one of the things I appreciate about Rick's conference here is, you know, it's vetted and it seems like there's no BS deals sitting at the table. Uh, you know, what's the mistake from past booms? I mean, we talked about the 2000s, uh, the 2010s, that you kind of see investors or even mining companies starting to repeat right now, if any.

SPEAKER_01 27:35

Well, I think there's good discipline in the resource industry because of what occurred in the past where companies got undercapitalized, you couldn't finance, perhaps you had to do rollback. I'm sure I have a few of those in my portfolio. And what we're seeing now is people being very uh focused on their cash. If they're raising capital, they want to make sure they're getting good results from it in that regard. So I think there's been a change of discipline in that. And then of course, social media is a great opportunity to be able to get your story out and be able to reach out to shareholders, right? So getting liquidity in your share price allows you to be able to access the capital markets to raise that capital. And I just say that I think there's just better uh deployment of shareholder assets, being partly that capital, into continuing to grow resources of many of the companies which are here. And it's certainly the way that we focus on, right? We look and say, what is it we're doing with the money that we've raised at Dakota Gold in order to enhance shareholder value? We continue to drill. Now we're doing engineering studies and we're doing them effectively and efficiently and uh preserving that capital knowing that we're here to get the best value for our shareholders for the money we're investing.

SPEAKER_02 28:41

You know what a career. And it is when you look around a room like this, I am seeing some younger generations walking around asking questions. I mean, you like to mentor. What would you kind of tell the 25-year-old version of yourself, that young geologist starting out in the business today?

SPEAKER_01 28:56

Two things. Focus on good geology and be willing to take risk. Right? When you think I've had a wonderful career with many individuals, uh, traveled the world, looked at many projects, uh, but you focus on the ones that have good geology and ultimately can say they're able to advance for it. And in the case of uh something like Bruce Jack, when you have a good project, you know, stick with your convictions, right? We said it would be a mine, uh, certainly there because of the variability. Uh there were commentaries around that, and here it's producing, yeah, it's produced a few million of ounces, and so I think that's for the for the young me again, geology, but take risk, and it's very rewarding to be in this business.

SPEAKER_02 29:36

Now, last one, Bob, I mean, it's it's for you, not the company. I mean, you've now got the Order of Canada, you know, you've built these world-class mines as we've talked about, you've got a major discovery to your name. I mean, what is what is the thing that you still want to do in this business?

SPEAKER_01 29:49

Well, continue to explore and do discovery. I mean, when you get a drill hole like we did this week, you know, along it, because you know the value that's going to create, you know, it's going to create jobs, it's going to help local communities. You know, the case up at Hemlo, you know, with the work we're doing up there, we're engaged with our First Nation partners, and we're going to be able to keep and reinvest money in the local communities. So that's what I like is discovery. You can see that longer value that will come from that from a mine, and uh that's what can keeps me in this industry and keeps me focused on Dakota Gold and the work doing with Hemley.

SPEAKER_02 30:21

And you'll keep protecting the Wildcats.

SPEAKER_01 30:22

And that's we will keep protecting the Wildcat for sure. Bob Quartermain, appreciate your time as always. Thank you, Jeremy. Appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02 30:28

All right, that was Bob Quartermain, mine builder, discoverer, and now member of the Order of Canada. Here's what stays with me talking to him. Now, the people who actually find a build the gold think in decades, not in headlines. And when someone who's done it for 40 years tells you that the supply isn't there and that the great discoveries are getting rarer, that's worth more than any price forecast. Congratulations again, Bob. What richly deserved. All right, from the Rule Symposium here in Boca Ratan, we're gonna be coming at you all week long with Kitco News and more great guests coming up. Stay with us.