In Bill the Quill’s ‘The Merchant of Venice’, the beautiful Portia was being chased by a whole gang of suitors, one of which being the Prince of Morocco. Due to the way these things are (dead fathers’ wishes and plot twists and stuff), at one point there are three boxes in front of the prince dude, one of which containing a portrait of Portia. If he picks correctly he wins her as his bride. The boxes are made of gold, silver and lead respectively and princedude picks the gold one. Inside? No picture of Portia (EpicFail) but a picture of death with the little ditty:
All that glisters is not gold
Often have you heard that told
Many a man his life hath sold
But my outside to behold
Gilded tombs do worms enfold
Portia and her decorative box (pardon the expression) came to mind when I read that Exeter Resources (XRC.v) (XRA) announced this morning it has an estimated 19.6m oz of Gold (plus silver and copper) at its Caspiche resource up in the wilds of Chile. We don’t have a freakin’ clue about how many of those ounces are economically recoverable (just check on the travails of Caspiche’s near neighbours Kinross and the headaches they have trying to work out an economic plan) but we all like big numbers, don’t we?