Categories: Base Metals / Precious Metals
Topics: General Base Metals / General Precious Metals

Quartz Mountain Resources (TSX-V: QZM)(OTC: QZMRF) Chairman Bob Dickinson on Advancing Multiple High-Grade Polymetallic Porphyry Exploration Projects in British Columbia, Canada

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is frankly someone who doesn't need much of an introduction if you've been in the resource space for any amount of time. I'm talking of course of Mr. Bob Dickinson who, as all of you know, is in the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame and is the cofounder and chairman of the Hunter Dickinson Group. He also oversees the team at Quartz Mountain Resources (TSX-V: QZM)(OTC: QZMRF). 

It’s a pleasure to have you on, Bob. We chatted a bit off-air about the excitement around Quartz Mountain in 2025 in general. How are you today, sir?

Bob Dickinson: Gerardo, thank you for the very overwhelming introduction. I appreciate that. It's been an exciting ride for sure here, and so thank you for that very warm welcome. I appreciate it.

I am very excited to tell the Quartz Mountain story. We've just completed a C$4.2 million financing allowing us to be fully funded to start the attack on our first project called Maestro up in British Columbia. I'm certain we will be able to announce imminently that drilling has commenced there.

I'm a geologist. That's what I live and dream for is drilling holes and finding major mineral deposits that other people haven't been able to find. That's the thrill of an exploration geologist like myself.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, listen, with your history of success, with the amount of discoveries you and your group have led, it would be very justifiable for you to say, you know what, I'm going to sit back and enjoy this US$3,000 gold price and this new record-high copper price and really just watch from a distance.

Yet, instead, you're going a hundred miles an hour towards getting this drilling program going at Quartz Mountain. Why are you so excited, and what attracted you to the project so much? 

You and I had a conversation off-air a couple weeks back, and the enthusiasm just jumped off the phone to me. Why are you so excited about this property, and can you tell us the story behind how it came about?

Bob Dickinson: Sure, Gerardo. First of all, I'm 76 years old and I've never been so excited and working so hard 24/7 to make something happen. I've been working hard all my life, and it's kind of a joke around our HDI [Hunter Dickinson Inc.] offices, which started when I was about 50. 

I talked to ​Ron Thiessen, my principal partner, and I said, ‘Ron, I think I’m going to retire.’ And about every three or four years after that, I've been bringing up that same thing. And everyone now just looks at me and says, ‘Bob, you're a serial mine-finding addict!’ So I guess that's my lot in life. 

I'm the chairman of Northern Dynasty. I'm on the board of Taseko. I'm the executive chairman of a company called Amarc, which is also exploring in BC and has just made a huge copper-gold discovery in partnership with Freeport. 

So we're riding quite high here at HDI. We’re pretty excited all around even with the downturn and the uncertainty in the market today and in the last while. But we're excited about all of the things we're doing. And, I think, especially, Quartz Mountain because we're just commencing a project that has been crafted where myself and a strategic partner out of the Middle East have funded it in the three to four million dollar range. 

We took control of Quartz Mountain within the HDI group. Then, it was me that went out and looked for assets in the province of BC, which I'm very familiar with in terms of the geology, the government, the taxation, etc. We decided on Quartz Mountain as a company to go forward with.

And then, I was able to find two very good projects that needed to have discoveries on them to get rid of the high-risk greenfields type exploration. So I and the Sutton Group, which is the strategic partner out of the Middle East, both financed the drilling and discovery of a really exciting and very high-grade gold-silver lode project at Maestro in the center of British Columbia near the town of Houston. 

We had two holes there, which we drilled based on historical information that was in the archives. And we came up with a real winner. We had a 104-meter intercept of excellent gold and silver. Startling, really. One of the best intercepts of that metal pulled in BC for last year.

Gerardo Del Real: And you're being humble, by the way. It was 102 meters of 2.22 grams per tonne (g/t) gold with 104 g/t silver and 36 meters of 5.73 g/t gold with 87 grams per tonne silver. You said that in a very understated way… and I want to overemphasize it because those are phenomenal results that most companies don't get to get, if you know what I mean.

Bob Dickinson: I do. It is totally rare. And maybe I understated it. I'm that way, I believe. But it was a grand slam home run right out of the ballpark and a major discovery, which now needs to be fully delineated. 

And how big is it? The information we have from geophysics over top of these drill holes where we've made the discovery shows that the structure that it's in to be over a kilometer long and sort of northeast trending. So when we start drilling, we'll be cross-cutting that trend with many holes. 

And so it should be there, and we'll get going on that right away. And the major risk in exploration is the actual discovery. So that's over with. We have derisked based on my funding, and the Sutton Group's funding, we have derisked the Maestro asset dramatically. And now we're delineating. 

And so how big will it be? How rich will it be? What's the geometry? Those kinds of things are coming imminently as we start to drill. And as I mentioned already, we're fully funded to do that.

And to just sort of complete the start-up story, after we drilled the two holes at Maestro and had this huge hit, we could have gone on. But we had another project called Jake, which was about 160 miles north of Maestro. 

Jake is a totally different beast. It's a porphyry copper-gold-molybdenum property with bulk tonnage. And this is the kind of asset that Hunter Dickinson Inc. and myself have had a lot of experience finding in BC. They're called porphyry copper deposits, and they're really in demand by both the gold guys, the Nemonts of the world, and the Anglo Americans of the world for their copper. 

It’s really the most prized type of deposit in the world, and they occur here in BC in a big way. So we have just found another one of those with our Amarc company so we're, again, on a roll here. But just to mention, historically, we also were involved in most of the porphyry copper-gold discoveries in BC. Again, we know BC and we can really operate here efficiently.

Gerardo Del Real: I love when management has skin in the game. And I have to say, when I look at Quartz and I see that you own over 50% of the shares, that's a whole lot of skin in the game. It aligns beautifully with newer shareholders as it relates to them having the confidence that, obviously, the capital is being deployed in a way that maximizes potential value. 

Bob Dickinson: Absolutely. This is serious. We are serious here. We're going to do everything we possibly can to make this a great success story. And because of all of the insider trading rules nowadays, people think I'm a big market player or something. I'm not. I like to invest heavily at the beginning of a saga. 

I'm generally with Ron Thiessen and my other partners. We're sort of the last people out because what we're trying to do here is find a major ore body. We're not interested in anything small. We want really sizable, important, high-grade deposits. There's no sense in diddling around with small stuff. So we're looking for big elephants.

Also, because we're directors, and because we have our heart and soul into these projects, we're really the last people out. I mean, we're not going to be building a mine. We are going to find a mine and make a mine. And then, we're going to transact it. 

Our shareholders are going to get a payment for the risk they've taken for us to go out and make those kinds of finds, which we've already done… and in the months, and in the time ahead, have a major transaction, and get a payout. That's really the whole strategy of both the Maestro property and the Jake property. And they both have the qualities that major mining companies are looking for. As we grow them with delineation drilling at both projects, then we’ll have a high probability of a major transaction. 

This company is all about discovery and then working as rapidly and as efficiently as it can towards that transaction. And we've done it before. We've had many transactions around the world and especially in BC and especially on these types of deposits.

Gerardo Del Real: You have record high gold prices, you have record high copper prices. I suspect record high silver prices are in the cards for 2025. You already have several discoveries here. We're going to find out what the scale of those discoveries are going to be in 2025. 

Bob, it has been an absolute pleasure. I'm looking forward to chatting more frequently, especially as drilling kicks off. I suspect there will be lots to chat about. Thank you so much for your time. Is there anything else you'd like to add?

Bob Dickinson: I have a tip for your listeners, which is kind of interesting. A lot of people are trying to determine silver-equivalent or gold-equivalent. It's a big thing in all of the news releases for junior mining companies to put in if a project has a gold value and a silver value and perhaps a copper value. They try to make it into an equivalent so that it's sort of comparable with other projects they're looking at. 

Right at this moment, gold is at about US$3,100 an ounce, and there are 31 grams in one ounce of gold. So each gram of gold is worth $100 a tonne. And so that's pretty easy. Before, you had to do a lot of arithmetic to get to a gold equivalent. Silver is a bit over US$31 an ounce. Again, 31 grams per one ounce of silver. So it’s $1 per gram of silver in the ground. 

When you look at our tables and in our Power Points, you can actually just look at the silver number and multiply it by one, and that's the value, the gross. And it's not quite the right way to do it, obviously. It's the gross metal value per tonne. 

You can just go down the column, US$1,500, US$1,700, US$1,800 per tonne for each of these various intersections. Anyways, it's just a nifty new thing that just occurred where you can easily do a gold equivalent or a silver equivalent. So that's my tip for the day.

Gerardo Del Real: I love it. I think that's a perfect way to end this conversation, and I appreciate the tip. I’m really excited about a discovery year for Quartz Mountain. Thank you again for your time, sir. It's appreciated.

Bob Dickinson: Thank you, Gerardo. 

Gerardo Del Real: Let's do it again soon.

Bob Dickinson: You bet. Thank you.