Please let me know where I could be wrong about my assumptions.

You're not "wrong" in your assumptions, but you neglect 2 important bits of finance, and the major one that's the first thing you learn even if you don't take a finance course.

1) Time value of money. You can't just say 50B in 20 years is worth 50B today...It's intuitive. I'll give you $100 today, or $100 in 10 years. There would be little reason not to take it now.

2) Opportunity Cost and risk. Related to the above, but what else could you be putting your money into? What's the risk of doing so? So many mines have been mismanaged and have gone over budget and have cost more. The bigger the mine, the bigger the room for errors as well. Where else could they put their money? They do have a lot of opportunities and perhaps they want to start producing earlier. They can still get 75% backing in and spend the "buyout money" that would have been for us elsewhere on perhaps a nearer term copper producing asset. It might be more expensive to buy us out later, but the risk might be worthwhile at that point.

i) nobody will be left behind (to me this implies that it will be above the all time high of $2.75)

ii) apparently ES scoffed when vette questioned him about the $3.50 liquidity being discussed on the board ( although i do realized this could be taken two way )

Of course that's the goal, but not a guarantee. Given you were the CEO, and Teck wanted to pay $2.75 - would you say no? You're turning down roughly a billion dollars. It was $2.75 then, and perhaps (not saying we are, playing devils advocate) we were overvalued then. Or perhaps it's because the market was expecting a BFS at that point and that's what it would have been with a BFS. We've had plenty of promises fizzle in terms of deadlines, and even numbers. Doesn't seem so far fetched to think price would be any different.

For the second point, he may have scoffed (interpretation aside) but that was a different time. I think largely "pounds in the ground" will have the greatest effect, but ignoring the surrounding market is naive. I come more from a psych background and the big thing (at least in the media) is "Nature versus Nurture". Our intrinsic value is based on nature, but the realization of that is based on nurture, i.e. the rest of the market place. This makes intuitive sense as well. You might have the best genes and be a genius and be capable of becoming a fit bodybuilder ... but if you're born in sub-saharan Africa with poor parents, limited nutrition and education - you probably won't realize it, not because of any fault of your own but because of everything else. You'll still be better off than most of the kids in the same circumstances though, you just would have done even more in a place where you had those things.

To come back to Schaft Creek and the mining sector in general, especially the juniors - they're starved. The market place is terrible. The enivornment is garbage. This is the time to make money, but for buyers - not sellers. It was a different time when that comment was made. Producing assets are being valued at ridiculosly small P/E's. Juniors are being valued at major discounts to NPVs. No one is valued fairly.

Not trying to be negative...there's a lot of positives and I'm still invested (overinvested) but it's hard to get to anywhere near 2B when Teck can get 75% for so little. We're also adding more to the sharecount day by day, not lowering it.