Bloor Street Capital sat down with Eric Sprott in the fall of 2024. The tape still matters. Gold was near $2,600 then. The Nasdaq-AI comparison was already loud. Sprott was still doing what he has done since 2000. Own the metal. Own the names nobody covers. Press the ones that work. Live with a pile of losers.
He did not start as a gold man. He started as a CPA, then a research analyst. In 1980 he left a firm that would not do underwritings and built what became Sprott Securities. The edge, he said, was small companies. Banks already had twenty analysts. A name with no coverage was a gift. “If you’re sitting here looking at a great opportunity, nobody follows this.” That is still the junior-mining pitch in one sentence.
He used a hard phrase. Steal value. Buy a dollar that should be ten. You did not cheat the seller. You took the mispricing. In Canadian resources that mispricing is common because the payoff is lumpy and the wait is long. Most people will not sit still for a 43-101, a permit, and a mill. Sprott will.
Gold was a survival trade that never ended
The internet bubble made him a money manager as much as a banker. Two-and-twenty looked better than brokerage. Then Nasdaq looked like a crash. He went long gold and silver and short the tape. He said 2002 was “crazy profitable.” Most of those IPO names died. Gold bottomed near $252 in 2000 and ran into 2011.
He bought gold in 2000 because he asked a survival question. What lives through a bear market? Twenty-four years later, on that interview, he said he was still answering it the same way. Central banks had flipped from sellers to buyers. Mine supply barely grew. Silver output looked like it was falling. Every fiat currency was weak against the others. If the equity bubble tipped, the bid for metal would get louder, not softer. Computers already noticed, he said. People were late.
He compared Nvidia-era math to “eyeballs” in 1999. Forty times sales, in his view, was a number that usually went to two. He was not short Nvidia. He was not long it. He was pointing at the shape of the risk. Day-one options. Buybacks instead of IPOs. Liquidity staying in the casino. When the credit market finally prices the debt, he said, that is how the movie ends. Not a slogan. A buyer strike in bonds.
The majors sleep. The grade does not
Sprott was blunt about Newmont and Barrick on that tape. Big producers had not given investors the leverage they wanted. He said Barrick’s output had fallen from about eight million ounces around 2000 toward four. Acquisitions were mistimed. Finding new ounces at that scale is hard and drill dollars are ugly. So the seniors wait to buy. Then they wait too long.
Kirkland Lake was the exhibit. Sprott was chairman. Fosterville in Australia looked obvious to him once the grade showed. The stock, in his telling, sat near $10 to $12. No major knocked. Production hit. The stock went toward $70. He said that position made him more than a billion dollars. He also said that when Kirkland was later bought, he was no longer chair, and the deal came with no premium. He found that odd. The data had been on the table.
He named Freegold Ventures the same way. His partner walked in with a visit from Paradigm days. Six million ounces. A $6 million market. A dollar an ounce. Sprott’s reply was to buy a quarter of the company. President Kristina Walcott later told a Beaver Creek room that he bought at six cents when the stock had already become a multi-bagger. By 2024 he was talking 23 to 30 million ounces in Alaska, next to Kinross’s Fort Knox, a road, Fairbanks 25 minutes away, a state that likes mines — and a stock still priced like the ounces were scrap. He would rather let that run than invite a sleepy major.
Jaguar was the grade lesson in miniature. Mine 3.4 grams. Find more ounces a stone’s throw away. Same crew. Same decline. Fifty percent more metal with almost no extra plant. At $2,600 gold he called an extra 15,000 ounces a $40 million swing on a name that had been valued near $120 million Canadian. That is how he thinks. Not a slogan. A back-of-the-envelope that has to clear in one sitting.
More losers than winners. Then press
Since 2017 the Sprott family office, he said, had put more than a billion dollars into more than 175 mining companies. He also said he probably had more losses than gains on the day of the interview. He rarely sells. He waits for the metal to reprice the whole book.
The rule is the opposite of diversification theater. When a name is working he goes deeper. Positions of 20, 30, 45, even 50 percent. Two new tickets that week on names he already owned at 13 or 15 percent. Small cheques to keep a team alive. Five- and ten-million tickets when the thesis tightened. “You keep pressing the bet.” He said he does the same thing in a casino when he is playing with the house’s money.
Pure Gold Mining was the scar. Red Lake. Looks like the famous camp. Good holes. Money raised. Mining did not work. He could not explain the underground failure because he is an accountant, not a mine planner. Paper value once near $100 million. Cash in, maybe $30 million to $40 million. Bankruptcy. The lesson was ugly and honest. You can read a drill log. You cannot smell a weak plan behind a raise. You trust geologists and engineers. Sometimes they are wrong. He recovered because Kirkland had already paid for the mistake. Find a winner. Then the loser is tuition.
Care-and-maintenance mines made him sit up. A pit parked at $1,500 gold at $2,600 gold is a file, not a eulogy. That clock has only gotten louder since the interview. The commodity he was betting on has done more of the work he expected. The method does not change when the number on the screen does.
What he looks for
Three filters, stripped of romance. One, why is this cheap. Two, what could it be worth if the ounces or the grade are real. Three, can you live with the decade it takes to permit and build. Canadians, he said, have an edge because they already live in a resource market. The hunt payoff is outsized. You do not need to be a geologist if you can turn a intercept into dollars per tonne before the meeting ends.
Patience is not a virtue poster. It is the mine cycle. Stake. Discover. Resource. Permit. Build. Ten years if you are lucky. Most accounts cannot sit that long. Sprott can. That is why he told a 30-year-old, on that tape, to learn the precious-metals book rather than chase the new toy. It will not work every year. He can stand a down year. Most people pick a guru and then fire the guru in month fourteen.
He called himself irresponsible by ordinary portfolio rules. About 90 percent in gold and silver. A small short book, maybe 5 percent, that had already lost money. He had been early calling General Motors, Fannie, Freddie, and Citigroup dead men walking in 2007 and 2008. They went to a dollar. Then they got bailed out. He has watched three money floods: Nasdaq, 2008, COVID. He thought the fourth bubble was bigger because the tools were stranger and the retail risk was higher.
None of that is a buy list. It is a temperament. Look where nobody has a model. Do the arithmetic in the room. Size up when the story tightens. Do not need the senior producer to validate you. Accept that Red Lake can fail and Fosterville can pay for a life. The metal is the backstop. The mispriced ounce is the work.
The interview is two years old as of this writing. The method is not. Coverage is still thin on half the board. Grade still beats a slide deck. And the investor who cannot stand a loser will never hold a Kirkland long enough to cash it.
Disclaimer
Based on a Bloor Street Capital interview with Eric Sprott recorded in the fall of 2024. Prices, ounce counts, and ownership levels are as Sprott described them then and may have changed. Company names include Kirkland Lake Gold, Pure Gold Mining, Freegold Ventures, Jaguar, Newmont, Barrick, and Kinross as discussed on the tape. This is historical commentary, not investment advice, and not a recommendation to buy or sell any security.