Written for another board, after someone posted that bringing your own geologist is a silly thing to require of someone buying only a few shares of stock. Of course, I never said that.

You bring your own geologist when you are going to make a substantial investment in the private placement, not if you are going to make a small investment of money you can afford to lose. And you don't pick a geologist out of the phone book. You bring someone whose work you have known for years, and who has proven trustworthy.

The man I would bring has a major earth sciences division of a university named after him, and made a discovery of major proportions to earn his wealth. And, by the way, the discovery he made was in ground that had been rejected, after much work, by major exploration companies. The criticism currently directed at Jim Briscoe could have been directed at him. He was not rich, but he had a theory, stuck to it, raised money, drilled, and got rich.

Please understand that citing this example is not meant to encourage anyone to invest funds they cannot afford to lose. Jim Briscoe would be the first to say, and he has said it in his latest report, that he has a hypothesis only, and that drilling may or may not support or confirm it. All mineral exploration is extremely risky.

In the case of Hay Mountain, I believe that wealthy investors with a Texas/Oklahoma wildcatter approach to exploration might find funding drilling to be a reasonable risk, and a lot of fun, too. They would be thinking: maybe this is another Santa Rita No. 1, and they might be right.

May 28, 1923, 6 am. West Texas: In the middle of what seemed to be nowhere, Santa Rita No. 1 announced herself. The story is fascinating and inspiring. It's told here: [i]The Pipeliners[/i], by Frank Magnan, Guynes Press, El Paso, Texas, 1977 — the story of a business in natural gas. "Behind every corporation are, after all, the people who built the organization, not the faceless shell that many Americans imagine corporations to be, but a structure of people with hearts, muscles, minds, and vision."

http://www.texasbob.com/travel/tbt_santarita.html

The story of Santa Rita No. 1, and that of the Hemlo gold discovery, shed light on the kind of thinking and pure luck it takes to make a major mineral discovery. These are only two of hundreds of such stories, big and small, each eliciting amazement at the improbabilities encountered.

To completely rejects Briscoe's idea that there might be a Bisbee equivalent at Hay Mountain is, in my opinion, to fail to properly assess the situation. Contributing to such failure, for example would be to ignore the story of Kenyon Richard and Harold Courtright, and Jim Briscoe's work with them. Look them up in the Mining Hall of Fame.