Eric Sprott's SHOCKING Portfolio - 2025 Yearly Wrap-Up

Craig Hemke (00:00)
Well, greetings everybody from Sprott Money at SprottMoney.com. We have reached the end of 2025. What the heck? Where did this time go? It is December the 18th. mean, we've only got seven or eight trading days left in the year. So let's wrap it up. And who better to wrap it up with than the Sprott behind Sprott Money, Eric Sprott himself, my old friend. Good to see you, Eric.

Eric Sprott (00:25)
Greg, great to be here. And as you're saying, know, 25 was a great year. I'd like it just to keep going, okay? Imagine if we could do 25 and 26. Whoa, baby. We already got the best group in the world. Imagine if you could keep that running for a while.

Craig Hemke (00:36)
Well, that's good.

You're leading me right into my very first question. But before we get there, we got to let everybody know about Sprott Money, right? There's still time to shoot. We still got a week to Christmas. And as I keep reminding everybody, give the gift that keeps on giving the whole year, Clark. ⁓ Nobody needs another iPhone or a toy. Buy your friends, your kids, your grandkids some physical silver and gold too.

Sound money, start teaching them early. Go to SprottMoney.com, the holiday gift guides right there, access it through the homepage. You'll find great sales and still get it delivered to you before Christmas. So SprottMoney.com for all your holiday shopping needs. All right, brother, here's where I want to start with you. Here's where we're going to start with you. As we left last year, we were doing a wrap up call last December, probably about the same day.

Eric Sprott (01:35)
Yeah

Craig Hemke (01:36)
We'd had a great year. Gold was up like 27%. And as I'm writing my annual forecast, which I usually do right around New Year's Eve, I'm thinking, well, in the past, gold goes up 25%. There's three or four years like that this century. The next year is usually has been down or maybe up, you know, just one or 2%. Eric, we're up 65%. So what the heck is, are we,

Are our powers kind of front running? Are we taking some gains from next year and plowing them into this year? Is it a culmination of all the stuff you and I have talked about for a decade? What do you think here at the end of 2025?

Eric Sprott (02:19)
Well, I think your last comment's the most appropriate comment. When I think of gold and silver, I think that when gold in 2024 broke through 2000 for the third or fourth time, forget which it was, I think they lost control of the gold market. And when I say they, I'm referring to the banks that were forever short. You get the data every week, know, big short position. Who owns it? Well, it's mostly the commercials, which are the banks. And they are always

The only shorter there was the banks. Imagine if the banks weren't short. Where the hell would the price of gold be? And then I think they finally realized, okay, look, we can't hold this thing back. the next thing you know, gold goes from 2000 to 4000. Now I think the same thing happened to silver. I don't know what the magic number was, whether it was 35 or 40 or some number like that. And of course, they've lost control of it. And I think everybody knows they've lost control of it. When you watch the day-to-day data,

of silver, you know that they can't possibly supply the demand. But we've known that for five years, but because they had inventories to work with, they were able to supply, and of course with the paper supply that they had, they were able to meet that physical demand through the inventories and were able to meet the demand in the COMEX through paper shorting. And I think now they realize, okay, well, that's games over because now we can't supply the physical anymore. We know that.

You look at the stress points that we've had at the LBMA and the COMEX and the demand, like some of the demand statistics that we can look at during the year, the latest one being in October, when India about 55 million ounces silver in a month, 55. I always annualize these things. That's 660 million ounces if you did it every month. We only mine 800. How can a country buy 55?

Craig Hemke (04:01)
Right.

Eric Sprott (04:13)
You'd think it was literally impossible. And we have the same sort of thing going on in the COMEX where maybe this month we'll do between 50 and 60 million ounces of deliveries in a month. Well, I know it doesn't happen every month, but, it was for 12 months, it would essentially take all the mine supply, give or take 10%. So you see these huge demands. And of course, we also have retail people buying it in large quantities, too. ⁓

tech guy, David Blackwood, and he's buying millions of ounces of silver. Guys like you and I might buy a lot too and recommend a lot of people buy it. ⁓ We haven't left. We're still there to participate and recommend it to people. Of course, we have that audience now and we have a new audience.

Craig Hemke (04:46)
⁓ Bateman, right? Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

you

Eric Sprott (05:12)
where when the gentleman at Morgan Stanley suggested the new model portfolio 60, 20, 20, 20 being precious metals, wow, my God, blow the lid off. That just blows the lid off. And you imagine if they really wanted to go to 20 where the prices of gold and silver would have to be, we wouldn't even recognize the number. Like it could be like $1,000 for silver to get to 20 % silver.

Craig Hemke (05:22)
Right. Right.

Right. Right.

Eric Sprott (05:41)
And who knows what for gold? I don't know what the number would be, but it'd be multiples of 10,000 for sure. And then you have other people's, imagine trying to get from 1 % to 2%. We only produce 1 % more gold in a year. So fine, you go from 1 to 101. How do you go from 1 to 2? The price has to change. The price of the underlying thing, the price of the commodity.

Craig Hemke (06:06)
Right. Period.

Eric Sprott (06:11)
the price of

the shares, that's the only way that can go up. ⁓ And then we're going to have in 26 sort of a crowding out thing that I'm sure happening now. I saw my first reporting on it recently when someone was talking about the strength of the Canadian dollar. Why is the Canadian dollar strong? It's because of gold and silver. Because if you want to buy gold and silver stocks, where do you go, my friend? Where do you go?

Craig Hemke (06:37)
Where do you go?

Eric Sprott (06:40)
Where does the

world go? And if the world's buying gold and silver stocks and the weighting of the stocks keep going up in the indices and you're a Canadian institution, how do you keep your weighting up when the shares are going offshore all the time? You can't. It's what I call the Nortel effect, where Nortel got to 30 % of the index because everyone in the world was buying Nortel and the Canadian institution, couldn't, we can't own 30 % if the world owns 30%.

You know what I mean? So we're going to have that effect here, where everyone buying these stocks, a lot of them have to come to Canada to buy them. And it strengthens the dollar remarkably. And of course, it gives a floor to the valuations of the stock. And then of course, it's going to give a lift to the valuation of the stocks if in fact, the institutional clients get on board. And you sort of sense that it's happening. We see it in the underwritings that take place. Who's buying them?

Craig Hemke (07:11)
Right, I mean, yeah.

Yeah.

Eric Sprott (07:39)
Why are they buying them? How big are they buying them? And believe me, they're buying them way bigger than they were a year ago. They wouldn't even be buying them a year ago. Now some guy comes in and wants 50 million of this issue, right? Out of nowhere. One institution. So it's happening.

Craig Hemke (07:50)
Right.

There's just so much cash. You know, I, I've referenced lots of times this year about what the five biggest U S stocks are 20 trillion in market cap. The GDX ETF is 20 billion. I mean, what's that? A 10th of a basis point. ⁓ So I, you know, personally, we, for the people know we're going to try to get to some of the questions that were solicited on.

Eric Sprott (08:03)
crazy.

Yeah. It's ridiculous. Yeah. Nothing.

Craig Hemke (08:18)
Twitter and on YouTube. And one of them was kind of an allocation question going forward. Here we are at end of the year. I've always been overweighted in gold ⁓ as a, you know, net worth financial hedge against the madness thing. But silver's gone up so much this year. I'm even mine now probably 50-50. What's your allocation as we head to next year?

Eric Sprott (08:41)
Well, you know, I would have said, like it was last year, I probably would have said I'm 40, 60 silver gold. And I don't even look at it that way, like I haven't done the calculation, but I know I got to be 50, 50. And maybe I'm even going 60, 40 here, 60 % silver, 40 % gold. And in the market of shares, recently, I have very, very much focused on buying silver shares to the detriment of gold. And I find it so ironic.

This broker would phone me up with a great gold idea and I said, no, can't buy that. Well, why not? It's gold. What? You're not buying it because it's gold? And I said that. I said, I want to buy silver, which is the whole story. Which is a whole story we'll have to talk about. Okay. Cause that is the story. So I'm and now in my portfolio, I mean, I'm really leaning in on silver stocks and I hope

Craig Hemke (09:20)
I put Eric Sprott on the phone. Who is it?

Eric Sprott (09:37)
my silver stocks go through more than 50-50. They're very tough to buy, right? There's only like 13 major silver mining stocks and most of the silver mining stocks aren't even primarily silver miners.

Craig Hemke (09:42)
Well, there's not very many. Yeah.

Right,

right. You've talked about that for as long as I've known you.

Eric Sprott (09:53)
Yeah, which again tell you the problem with silver, the physical supply of silver. Just because the silver price goes up doesn't mean a copper miner is going to increase his copper production. You know, or lead zinc guy is going to increase his lead zinc production, which then causes silver production to go up. So we have a hell of a fine macro setup here for silver to explode. And I may as well go there now. You know, I've always been a great proponent.

Craig Hemke (10:08)
Mm-hmm.

Seems that way,

Eric Sprott (10:21)
and believer in Michael Oliver's work who does this momentum structural analysis. You've interviewed him, I'm sure. And that guy's been as right as rain. And we might be supporting each other because, you know, he says, oh, that guy, Eric Sprott, he read like Silver has built with 200 bucks. And I go, well, I read like that guy, Michael Oliver, we're probably reading from the same notebook, right? But I certainly, I go at it from the point of view that I've always believed that Silver was manipulated.

Craig Hemke (10:26)
Yeah, he's great guy.

I think he's going around in circles.

Eric Sprott (10:51)
big time for 50 years. Okay. And I don't need to justify, you know, 10 or 12 major banks have been short the whole market for that whole time. Why are those banks short the silver market? Okay. Is there a reason for that? No. You know, they're not hedging. know that nobody, nobody had just anymore. That was, there's an excuse 20 years ago. ⁓ so I can believe that the gold silver issue should go back to 15. Okay.

Craig Hemke (11:00)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. They're hedging!

Hahaha

Eric Sprott (11:20)
It's only mined at eight to one. It's in the earth's crescent like 10 or 11 to one. Why the hell should it have traded at 100 to one? And it's already down at what, 67, 68 to one? I think it's going right to 15, one to 15. Okay. So let's say if the gold price is 4,500, which is near, makes the calculation easy, silver should be at $300. That's where it should be. That's without a physical shortage, okay?

Now, we throw the physical shortage on top and the shortage of silver stocks to buy. it just the runway is so wide open that I can see nothing but clear sailing for silver. It might have times when it gets beat up. And I always find it hilarious watching silver trade in the COMEX. And you know, they have these 10 minute bursts to the downside. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. And a half an hour later, it's right back up there.

Craig Hemke (12:13)
Yeah,

Eric Sprott (12:19)
What is that guy trying to do? Is he setting off

stops or something or I don't know what they're doing, but they never, they never win that thing anymore when they're banging it down. They don't win those things. They lose every damn battle. I don't know. I don't know how it works out for them. You know, maybe they are setting off stops in their mind, you know, getting guys to stop out on, their longs, but it never seems to hold together. mean, if you did that for a living in the year in the investment business, I don't think it'd be in the investment business very long.

Craig Hemke (12:27)
Uh-uh.

Right. Well, I wanted to ask you about that because you mentioned gold breaking out to new all-time highs back in March of 2024, and it has since doubled, right? Silver broke out to new all-time highs back in October, and it's kept going up. The question back then was, well, it's just the same, just like 1980 and just like 2011, it goes to 48, and then it's going to go straight back down. The fact that it

Didn't go straight back down, Eric. Gotta be telling you something.

Eric Sprott (13:19)
No. Yeah, there's

no analogy there, right? We have done so differently this time. And of course, any student of Silver realizes what's happening here when you see the nomination for deliveries almost every day in the comics, physical delivery, new. Like I think yesterday overnight, there's probably something like...

70,000 new ounces demanded at 70 minutes 200 million dollars 200 million in a day Some guy comes in by 200 million of physical silver on a comex I don't know what happened in the LB me because you never seem to know what's going on over there But and of course we got the Shanghai Exchange and of course silver went up five percent two days ago went up one percent overnight tonight

Craig Hemke (13:47)
sure.

Right. Right.

Eric Sprott (14:06)
It's been a very important market that we took their inventories from like about a million kilograms down to 500,000 kilograms. It's inched back up here to, don't know whether number seven or 800,000, but I noticed it went down yesterday. But you know, the Chinese, and this is a point, have said that as of Jan 1st, we're not exporting any silver unless you get a permit. And they were big exporters, okay? So that could be 50 or 100 million ounces. It's not coming out of the market.

Craig Hemke (14:27)
Right, gold too.

Right.

I've got to jump in and segue in another question here because that was another one that we got. How much do you think China, Shanghai is now the price maker versus, you know, where it always had been the paper markets of London and New York is now China, the overnight trade that starts currently at what, eight o'clock Eastern every night. Is that the market? then London is just react London, New York is just reacting to that.

Eric Sprott (15:01)
Yeah.

Well, there's no doubt that, as you know, both London and New York, until a few years ago, hardly ever had a delivery. What's a delivery? They never delivered anything. Comex and the LBMA didn't have deliveries. Well, of course, Shanghai's always been, it's a delivery market. And of course, they're the largest ⁓ provider of silver and they're the largest consumer of silver, although the Indians are giving them a run for their money, okay?

Craig Hemke (15:10)
Right. Right. No, uh-uh.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Eric Sprott (15:31)
⁓ So yeah, I that's going to be the nexus of where things will be determined in the future for sure. And they're the biggest users of silver. You know, when it comes to like solid state batteries, it's all Chinese dominated. I know your president's trying to get some plants built over here. We'll see whether that works or not. But I mean, they have the facilities already. they are going to determine the price. Asia will determine the price for sure.

Craig Hemke (15:58)
Seems like it. Yeah.

So as we go into next year, again, how much, as I phrased it earlier, how much of next year's gains are being pulled forward to kind of front run into this year? I mean, I see a macro picture, Eric. You know, all these signs have been laid out all year long from the US government about ⁓ whether they're going to monetize the asset side of the balance sheet, right? Or

Trump's going to put a yes man in at the Fed that just does whatever he wants and cuts rates down to 1%. And Besson's talking about melding the operations of Fed and Treasury together. So they work hand in glove to keep long rates down. Now that's yield curve control. It seems like fundamentally there's a lot going for us. Another question is though, what's a risk to price at this point? Is it a stock market crash? I mean, what risks are there?

Eric Sprott (16:50)
Well,

I think that would be a big risk. Although when I listened to Michael Oliver, who's a student of markets, okay, he's more of a student of markets than I am. And he points out that in a number of those markets where it went down, it went right back up again. Some hardly even went down, but it always went right back up again. And we've had a time, we had a lull in the mining stocks here, I think it was in October, came right back up again, right? So I think that the fact that

Craig Hemke (16:52)
Yes

Yeah, he is.

Eric Sprott (17:20)
people realize you got a shift from paper to physical. That will provide a real buttress for the gold and silver if the market starts fading. So even yesterday when the market got beat up pretty good, gold and silver did okay. think silver was way down and came up and gold went up. Today we've got the markets doing very well and of course now gold's starting to run here. The silver which was down is almost back to break even.

So I think that people will see through this and hold in there. Because if they're trying to go from 1 to 2%, that's a lot of buying. ⁓ I like to think that maybe I already own 0.1 of 1%. I don't, by the way. And you ain't getting it.

Craig Hemke (18:02)
Right.

They're going to come for yours. Like the old Charlton Heston

line about they're going to take my gun out of my cold dead hands. Eric's got a

Eric Sprott (18:15)
But you know,

the people that own gold and silver stocks aren't sellers, okay? Forget about it.

Craig Hemke (18:21)
Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and

again, gosh, Eric, that point, that was one of the days that gold shot higher with that Morgan Stanley idea that the new allocation shouldn't be 60 40, like 60 % equities, 40 % fixed income. It should be 60, 20, 20 with 20 % in the precious metals. I, how much, just elaborate as to how much investment, investible assets that is, if that happens.

Eric Sprott (18:47)
I don't even know how much investable assets are there in the probably hundreds of trillions or something, right? So you're probably I'd say, well, okay, that's 40 trillion that has to go into hard assets. It's not just gold, not just silver, by the way. But that's a lot of money to go in something that probably has a market cap of two trillion today. I don't even know what the market cap is, but I know it's way the hell below the number it could be. Yeah, so.

Craig Hemke (18:49)
I just, right, it just...

Right.

So all right. So it sets us up, like you said, for what should be a pretty interesting 2026.

Eric Sprott (19:19)
Yeah, ⁓ I want to comment on, know, from 25 to 26, and we had these big gains. And Eric's thinking today is we've had big gains, but the stocks are way behind the prices in my mind. I mean, I think we got 30 % upside here with the prices doing nothing. Just report the earnings. Like, we've had these prices go up, and the stocks haven't followed. They haven't done as much as the- because it's not-

Craig Hemke (19:32)
You wanna hear?

Eric Sprott (19:47)
the percent, like you should never expect that gold goes up 25 % and the stocks go up 25%. No. If the gold goes up 25, stocks would probably go up, you know, two to five times that amount, i.e. 50 to 125%. We're not getting that. The last move in silver, we haven't even got it in the stocks yet.

Craig Hemke (19:59)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Well, let me ask you three things that you and I have discussed. I mean, we've been doing these for what? Since like 16 or 17. And ⁓ there's a couple of points that you always used to make. I mean, are we, is the sector getting enough attention yet that you don't get these rushes in before earnings and then everybody says, well, that's it for now. I'm going to sell and we'll wait and see if these prices hold. Cause that seems to still be the case. Are we still getting the naked predatory short selling? Are we at a point yet where that

Eric Sprott (20:15)
long time.

Craig Hemke (20:37)
has begun to dry up ⁓ because that would certainly impact things as well. And frankly, I've now forgot what the third thing is, so I'm going to have to try to remember.

Eric Sprott (20:45)
Well,

I think there's still ⁓ short selling and naked short selling going on in the junior miners because it's easy to do it. How do I know that? I own lots of junior miners. I look and see what the stocks do at the close, you know, and they get forever. Some guy comes in and knocks it down in the last five minutes. Like, what are we doing here? Like, why always at the close? OK, and I just

Craig Hemke (21:06)
Yeah. Yeah. Happened again this week. Yeah.

Eric Sprott (21:15)
I'm sure it's predatory selling. And particularly when you see something going down quickly, which we see a lot in the commodity trading, right? There's not a time when gold goes down slowly. When it goes down, it goes down fast. The silver goes down fast. Now they'll move it down two bucks in a day. You know, the first $2 move on silver, I'm was to the downside, not the upside. We had lots of those.

Craig Hemke (21:39)
Is there a point where there's so much attention on the sector though, and people stay invested, that that game of, hey, let's short the heck out of this $1 stock, and then they're gonna have to go to market and announce a private placement, and then they're gonna have to dilute, and where they're just pounding these things into nothing. Are we close to a point where they have to give up?

Eric Sprott (21:58)
yeah, no, happens all the time.

I can tell you and our listeners when I make an investment in a company that's doing an issue, I say to the banker, I don't want any hedge funds in this issue. I don't want this going to some guy who's just trying to cream something off of this stock who doesn't give a damn about anything else. Okay. I want it clean. I want to know who the other buyers are. Tell me it's me and two or three other guys will all pony up the money.

Craig Hemke (22:06)
it

which is what they do.

Right.

Eric Sprott (22:28)
And nobody else. We don't want the free riders in there. Okay. The guys are going to immediately sell the stock and keep the warrant. And then we got to eat the stock too. Right. And to the managements, the managements piss me off. Okay. There's so many managements that will sell a stock. They'd sell 10 % below the market. They lose as much market cap as the money they raised. In other words, the stock just went down 50 million and you raised 40 million. Well, thank you very much.

Craig Hemke (22:31)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Right.

Right.

Eric Sprott (22:58)
Who

wins in that? And you want me to buy it? I already own it. I'm already losing 10 % on it. You want me to be the buyer? It's a killer. The management's gotta get tough here. These guys want your shares. Buckle up, boys.

Craig Hemke (23:01)
Thank

Eric Sprott (23:15)
We're getting closer to it. Yeah, I did one recently where I think we did it right at the market. It just me and another guy, me and one other institution, okay? And we paid market price. Now, why are we buying at a market price? Because we like it. We want to own it. We don't want to trade it, you know? We're not there to skim something. Yeah.

Craig Hemke (23:31)
Right? You just want the shares. Right?

Right, right.

All right. I remembered the third question. Another thing you've taught me over the years. ⁓ Personally, I've had great gains the last two years on high margin companies, know, that were the all in sustaining costs are down like a 900 or a thousand, you know, like Lundin and some of these others, but you've always said, okay, but when the price is really cooking, the high margin ones do make even.

Eric Sprott (23:55)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Craig Hemke (24:06)
Can you just explain that again for people so they understand?

Eric Sprott (24:07)
Sure, sure.

Well, let's take a gold producer, okay? You got one gold producer, let's say his ASIC is a thousand and the price of gold is 3,000. He's making two. But the other guy's cost is 2,500. He's only making $500. Well, give him an extra 1,500. His profit just went from 500 to 2,000, quadrupled. The other guys went from 2,000 to 3,500, went up by 75%. Well, what do you want to make on your money? A quadruple?

Craig Hemke (24:23)
Mm-hmm.

There you go.

Eric Sprott (24:37)
or 75 % I think I'll take the quadruple so ⁓ maybe that takes me early to a stock that I'm buying now and I will go there okay

Craig Hemke (24:38)
Right. Yeah.

Let's

go, we gotta get into that anyway.

Eric Sprott (24:49)
Like I'm buying Highcroft big time here. I bought, I know 40 % of the company now. It's a property, a company with a property in Nevada, which we like Nevada. It's gold and silver. Their equivalency is 1.5 billion ounces of silver. I think on an equivalency basis, they might have more silver than any silver company. They're not mining it yet, okay? They're not mining it. But.

I'll guarantee you with the price of silver at 60 on its way to 100 or 200, which Michael Oliver suggesting might get there in the next few quarters. I'm emphasizing the word might get there next next few quarters. That's not far from here. Okay, guys. ⁓ That you know, high cross going back into production. Okay. Or someone's going to try to take them out for sure. I might be standing at the gate holding it closed, but you know, that's

Craig Hemke (25:24)
Right, yep.

Those are three months period.

Goodness gracious.

⁓

Well, let's do it. I just want to go back and do the math. You own 40 % of the company and they have how much potential silver in the ground?

Eric Sprott (25:52)
Yeah.

Well, they already have a billion five equivalent ounces of silver reserves billion fund. Okay. No, let me, let me go there. Here we go. Okay. So at $200, they'll only have 300 billion of metal value. They'll only have 300 billion of metal value and the market caps, 1 billion of metal value. One. Now, if it goes to 200, what would their profit be? Would you give them $200?

Craig Hemke (25:58)
That's 100 million.

Bah bah

Goodness.

Eric Sprott (26:22)
Oh, sorry, give them a, what are they gonna make? Let's say make 150. That's 75 % of 300. They'd make, what's that? 2.25 billion, it's 225 billion. They'd make 225, oh, I gotta tax it. They'd make 150 billion, make. They'll earn 150 billion. And the market cap's one. Well, what's the upside here, guys? Well, let me think. Would that be like 150 times, maybe? From here, from here?

Craig Hemke (26:45)
Yeah.

Safe

to say, you like this one.

Eric Sprott (26:52)
Hey, hey, hey,

in courtiers, in courtiers.

Craig Hemke (26:57)
Sounds like I can sense you're enthusiastic about that one, Eric. ⁓

Eric Sprott (27:02)
There's

a bunch of great silver deposits, by the way. So for example, Discovery has Cordero. That's a multi-

Craig Hemke (27:08)
Right. that, on,

hold on. Let me back. I got to stop you there. Jump in. Cause I had somebody ask me, see ask Eric if he's worried about discovery and Cordero and how long it's taking to permit or whatever. Okay.

Eric Sprott (27:12)
Yeah.

No, I'm not worried about it. I'm pretty certain

that if I was the Mexican government, I'd want Cordero in the production. Think of the money we'll be making with the taxes and the ⁓ royalties and whatever else these governments collect off of these guys. No, I'm pretty, and they've given out quite a few permits already. And of course, Cordero is a big complicated one, it's big, but I'm pretty certain they'll get it. There's a company, ⁓ owns them.

Craig Hemke (27:26)
You would think. Yeah.

Eric Sprott (27:48)
Matatis mine, Chesapeake Gold. That's another huge one. I don't know whether it's 20 or 30 million equivalent ounces of gold, and I probably could do it in silver too, but I just don't have in my mind the stock trades for nothing. Now there's been some dispute down there about the Mexican government wanting to take back some of the property. I don't know how that dispute's going to work out, so I can't move into it as much as I am with Highcroft. I like what's going on in Nevada.

Craig Hemke (27:51)
Yeah.

Eric Sprott (28:18)
They already have permits. They've already got the leach pad. They've already got all sorts of infrastructure. They got roads there and buildings there and repair depots and shit like that. they're going to, when they start up, they'll start up fast. They might be six months. So, yeah.

Craig Hemke (28:30)
just got to get past you. They just got to get past you at the gate with the lock and the... Back

on the one that you mentioned that was Chesapeake that you're a little worried about whether they'll get the approvals. Yeah. that's okay.

Eric Sprott (28:41)
Chespi.

Yeah, well, no, they have a property dispute. Part of the property that has the ore

bodies in dispute right now. And that's something I always feel a little bit confused with, right? You never know what's going to happen to things like that. They think they have a strong case of getting the property back. You know, we've seen some weird cases developed. had one in Emereta over in Spain, I guess it was, where it looked 100 % like they'd win the court case and they lost it. Stock fell 66 % in the day. I owned a lot.

Craig Hemke (28:56)
Right. ⁓

Eric Sprott (29:13)
Lost a lot of money that day. Actually probably made less. I didn't lose money that day. I'll just give you a tip. I probably lost 40 million on stock, but I didn't lose much money that day.

Craig Hemke (29:15)
Yeah.

⁓

That day.

Yeah, right. Put it, I just, one of those on the pile. ⁓ Back to Discovery. ⁓ Tony McCooch, still running that? Just so people know, I get a little background. If people have been watching, if they've watched you and I for years, I remember you telling me to buy Kirkland Lake when you were the chairman of the board and Tony was running that company and it was like $7 a share. And then it went to 40 something and then it got folded into AEM.

Eric Sprott (29:32)
Yeah, Tony McCutchey. ⁓

Yeah. Yeah.

Craig Hemke (29:52)
I can't even imagine. I'd have to do the math as to what kind of profits I have from those discussions back in like 2017. That's gotta be, having Tony run in Discovery's gotta be part of your confidence and yeah.

Eric Sprott (30:05)
It's very comforting, very comforting.

And of course the biggest thing he did and the great thing, which I fully supported at the time is when he bought the Timmons operations from Newmont and he committed one of the great thefts of the century as it turned out. He did. And by the way, I hope I'm having one of the great thefts of the century buying high-croft here.

Craig Hemke (30:15)
Yeah?

Well, never mind.

⁓ I would be curious to see.

Eric Sprott (30:31)
I

just took AMC theaters out of High Crop by the way. They had a block that I bought for me.

Craig Hemke (30:36)
Somebody asked if you

actually that was an obscure question. And one of the things you ever go to movies.

Eric Sprott (30:42)
Who's got time for movies?

Craig Hemke (30:43)
You

Okay. There's money. You know, when they make one, I've always thought I'd like like George Clooney to play me. You got anybody you'd like to play you?

Eric Sprott (30:46)
There's no movies on gold and silver, okay?

Yeah.

Richard Gere.

Craig Hemke (30:59)
⁓ nice okay we'll put that in the put that in the ⁓ in the casting okay ⁓ America's gold and silver is another one I think you own what do know there

Eric Sprott (31:07)
Yes, sir. Yeah, that's been

a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful experience of mine. You know, I bought a piece of ⁓ the Galena mine from America's silver because they needed the money. then Paul Ewan, who was running Carrara, Carrara Soul Carrara, I did very well by Paul. He did a great job there. And he'd been my advisor on Galena board just to keep me updated on what was going on down at the mine.

I should tell the listeners I know nothing about mining, okay? Or geology, luckily, okay? Anyway, he came along and said, you know, look it, Eric, would you vend in the Galena and I'm gonna go in and take over control of running USA Silver or America Silver. I said, sure, I'll ⁓ vend it in.

Craig Hemke (31:44)
You can do math though, you're good with math.

Eric Sprott (32:02)
And I've ended in for some money for some shares of USA. I own, I think, 20 % of USA, just under 20%. And of course, the price of silver has gone bananas. And it was a low, high cost producer, if you will. Although they have very high grades of Galena, but they have lower grades down in Mexico. And Paul is a guy who gets things done. And he gets them done efficiently in the mine, in the mine. I know nothing about mining. He knows everything about mining.

He's done mining all his life. So he's done a phenomenal job here, took over something called the Crescent Mine, which is a silver deposit beside Galena. They'll process the ore at Galena, so it'll be very efficient that way. They don't have to do it their own mill. So I think it's got lots of upside here. And I wouldn't be surprised that there is times in our lives between Paul and I that we might think of other good things that might go into America's gold and silver.

Craig Hemke (33:00)
Hmm.

Eric Sprott (33:00)
That

would be very positive. Yeah, let me think about that.

Craig Hemke (33:04)
Hmm, you might have a view suggestions. All right. A couple others that we've discussed in the past that I know you've held for a long time are Newfound and Freegold.

Eric Sprott (33:08)
Yeah, anyway, yeah, so I like that. I'm a big owner.

Yes.

Yeah, well, let me talk about Freegold first. They just came out with a very interesting announcement two days ago where the arsenic content in the ore was something like 7 % and they're using a new process put out by Dunney DPM, Dunney Precious Metals, something. And they designed something to get the bad stuff out of the ore and the content

Craig Hemke (33:37)
Good stock.

Eric Sprott (33:48)
of the bad stuff went from 70 % to 0.17%. And it turns it into a glass. So it's inert. It's some new process. And it had the effect of increasing the concentrate grade at FreeGold Ventures by 47%. That's a significant increase in concentrate. And now you've got less tons needing to ship to get a treat. And in fact, one thing it might do is it might

Craig Hemke (33:53)
Hmm, that seems efficient. ⁓

Eric Sprott (34:17)
let anyone not related to Kinross. Kinross has the Fort Knox operation that's five miles away, who should own this by the way, but they've been hesitant to buy it. But now anyone in the world can buy it because we can reduce the weight of the concentrate and make the concentrate more economic. So it can be shipped anywhere, China, Japan, wherever this could be, go down the trail in British Columbia. So that's really good. Now I want to talk about new found gold.

Craig Hemke (34:24)
you would think.

Hmm.

Eric Sprott (34:44)
I think there's a huge opportunity in Newfoundland. I own 19.9999%. I'm not allowed to buy another share, they'll put me in jail. It's a funny thing that happens in Canada, you You own 20%, you can't buy more. my God. my God, what a country.

Craig Hemke (34:52)
Hahaha!

You gotta buy some politicians up there,

You don't know the right people apparently, but go on with your 19.999%.

Eric Sprott (35:07)
Okay, well,

yeah, yeah, yeah. So anyway, ⁓ they have done some interesting drilling and ⁓ cutting. And the cutting one is where you cut a line on the surface of the ground and take out whatever's there and go assay it, okay, just to confirm what you have. And it's every seven and a half meters. You don't have a choice of where you're putting the cut, okay? You put it every seven and a half meters. In other words, there's no...

Craig Hemke (35:29)
Hmm.

Eric Sprott (35:37)
cheating going on here. Anyway, when they do this cutting, the grade, Eric's calculation of the grade, just the grade they reported, times the meters they reported, and I'm not cutting anything, okay, I multiply the numbers, and the grade at Keats was something like 40 grams per ton. And then, in another test of Keats, another time was 40 grams per ton, in a different part of Keats.

Then they do the iceberg. don't have the results at iceberg yet, but they'll be undoubtedly awesome. Then they do some drilling up at drop kick 11 kilometers away on the same strike. Then they come up with high, high, high grades. I don't even know what the average grade is. They're going to say it's probably 25 grams. Then they go back to Keats and they do what they call grade control drilling, where you have to drill every five meters. Okay. So there's no picking and choosing where you're putting the drill. That's the first one.

That came out to, in Eric's calculation, 45 grams. And this is now narrow drilling, okay? Now, when they did the assay, I'm gonna say they did the assay like 15 months ago, it shocked me when they said, well, we've assayed the average grade is two grams and we only have two million ounces. And I went, what the, how could it be two grams? These guys drill holes there, nothing but double digits across the board almost, okay?

Instead of taking a wide thing with nothing in it, you take a narrow thing with just a high grade, the grade's not going to be two. Eric says the grade's more like 20. OK? And if the grade's more like 20, we don't have 2 million ounces. We got 20 million ounces here. And that's before New Discoveries, which they announce New Discoveries all the time. And we got 110 kilometers of this thing on two belts that go 110 kilometers. I believed it before when I

Craig Hemke (37:18)
Yeah.

Eric Sprott (37:31)
first read about it and we had these very intelligent geoscientists say, it's going to be like Timmons. Timmons is 100 million ounce, no, 190 million ounces of ore. This could be the same. It's got all the orogenic stuff that they had in Timmons. And these are smart guys. They believe it. And it's now looking more and more like it's really there. So I can't buy it. I wish I could.

Craig Hemke (37:55)
All right.

In our final minutes, one last question. know, there's, again, there's so many stocks that are up two times, four times, six times, 10 times this year. ⁓ What's, I mean, you got one that's overlooked where you're like scratching your head going, how come no one's buying this one?

Eric Sprott (38:20)
Just a second, I got a stuck to send it. Well, there's lots that are overlooked. There's 190 of them in my portfolio.

Craig Hemke (38:28)
Well,

there's got to be a couple in there, right?

Eric Sprott (38:32)
There's a good deal.

Erdene Resources, for example, is overlooked. They're in Mongolia. ⁓ They're producing now. They got an open pit mine with four grams open pit. Four grams open pit. Most open pits are gram or less. Theirs is four. And I think the four is not going to be four. It'll probably be six when they mine it. Stepgold, also in ⁓ Mongolia. Yes, I own a fair amount of that. Not as much as Erdene. ⁓

Craig Hemke (38:35)
Yeah? Mm-hmm.

Do own step two, the other mongo in? Yeah.

Eric Sprott (39:02)
I own so many great stocks that are overlooked. Almost anything. I I own every Silver Junior there. You could say they're all overlooked because people are still thinking Silver's at 25 bucks or 30. Well, know, folks, it's double that price, okay? These stocks should all, they're all be multi-baggers. By the way, you know, I like this Don DuRet guy, okay? Did you interview Don DuRet? No, okay. But Don, I love what Don does because Don says, my price for Silver's 150.

Craig Hemke (39:13)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Right, right.

I'm not, but I know who he is. People can follow him on Twitter.

Eric Sprott (39:31)
This stock over here, Silver Junior, that's going to go up by 10 times. He's right. At 150, it's going up by 10 times. Giddy up, go. Quarters, 200. Quarters, two quarters, 200.

Craig Hemke (39:40)
Yeah.

Is that, is that the best opportunity you think as we round the corner into 26 is anything related to silver?

Eric Sprott (39:47)
with me.

Sure, exactly.

You've never seen anything change quite like that that has so many investment opportunities. Yes, we've seen the price of lead go up or the price of nickel go up. There are only four nickel companies you could buy, right? We have probably 100 silver companies that could benefit by this. Where the grade was too low or the deposit is too small. Well, know, a 30 million ounce deposit at $200, that's worth $6 billion. Now, $6 billion.

Craig Hemke (39:54)
Yeah.

Yeah. Right.

Eric Sprott (40:19)
and their stock's probably trading at 52 million.

Craig Hemke (40:21)
Right, right, right, right. ⁓ Well, this year has been fun. I know you've got to go, so we're going to call it a day here. ⁓ whoa. ⁓ OK. ⁓

Eric Sprott (40:24)
I want a few of them.

It has been fun.

Yeah, want to know. I can't call it a day yet. I haven't mentioned one thing. I got to mention the solid state batteries. OK. And and I

think that this solid state battery is going to be so dynamic for the price of silver. And we haven't even seen one percent of the impact in silver yet.

Craig Hemke (40:49)
Let's tie that back in then as a final point, because it gets back to what are the risks? again, yeah, I mean, if we knew for sure silver was going to be 200, I mean, we suspect that it's going that way, but you never know what can happen in the world. But craft, work that battery in, because that news has been bubbling up again, and everything else that from a fundamental, I mean, this isn't just, you know, we're chasing a dot on a screen and counting waves and all this, you know, mumbo jumbo.

Eric Sprott (41:00)
Yeah. ⁓

Yeah, OK. OK.

Yeah.

Craig Hemke (41:18)
fundamental

reasons why silver is going to keep going.

Eric Sprott (41:21)
Yeah, well, guy, Samsung develops a battery that charges in nine minutes. Can anybody figure out why that's a good thing? It goes 900 kilometers. Can anyone figure out why that's a world change? ⁓ and they, they use a kilogram of silver in this solid state battery, by the way, they use manganese too, which I'm a big owner of not the metal, but the companies. and

Craig Hemke (41:29)
Right.

Eric Sprott (41:47)
They say if that could capture 20 % of the electric vehicle market, it would consume all of the silver produced in a year. Yeah. Yeah. One thing. Yeah. Right. No. Is it any wonder that these ⁓ Asian countries keep buying these materials? So I think that's a big, big change that's coming.

Craig Hemke (41:56)
Goodness gracious. And that's just that. That's just that battery. That's not solar panels and electronic.

Right, right, right.

Eric Sprott (42:17)
They're going to be starting to produce these things, I think, for consumption of 28 vehicles. So that's 27 production, which means maybe buying the metal in 26 to make sure you got enough. And oh, was there a shortage? Yes, there is. Well, you're screwed already, OK? So you better find a way, Mr. Samsung.

Craig Hemke (42:31)
Mm-hmm.

Well, and that's another thing you wait on, right? At some point, Mr. Samsung say, you know, I think I'll just buy that mine. ⁓ Right. I don't want to jack around with I got to have silver. It's one of a thousand things I got to have to make my product and I got to have all thousand. I don't need nine hundred ninety nine.

Eric Sprott (42:43)
Maybe I should buy that high-croft.

And I can buy this for a sense on the today. Yeah.

Craig Hemke (42:56)
Right. Today. No,

again, it's such a compelling story. when you mentioned too, the banks that have always set the price by making the market and hedging, Eric, if they are suddenly reluctant because they know that the silver just isn't there to keep feeding it in the physical market, and we've got to find sellers of existing silver to meet the buyers.

Eric Sprott (43:21)
Yeah. Well, it's funny. I always say the banks where the guy's only selling, well, what happens when the banks become the buyers? Who the hell are they going to buy it from? You know, to cover their short. Anyway, all looks good, Craig. Looks wonderful.

Craig Hemke (43:31)
Yeah, then what's left?

brother I well I know

I know you're a busy guy I hope we can do this again soon I know

Eric Sprott (43:43)
or hey, call me in a couple of quarters for sure.

Craig Hemke (43:48)
Those are three month periods for those of you at home that don't know how the calendar works. ⁓ Yes, sir. Well, Merry Christmas. I hope you and your family. ⁓

Eric Sprott (43:56)
Okay, Merry Christmas to you and all the people listening and all the people

listening have an interest in a gold and silver already. Just make sure you press it hard. I never did answer the question. own, well, let's see, I probably own 97 % of all my assets in gold and silver, okay? I sleep well at night. My gold, silver, physical position is probably only a small part of that. ⁓ And I am about 50-50, but I like silver. I'd like silver to be like 70-30.

by the end of next year. And I won't have bought or sold any.

Craig Hemke (44:29)
Right.

I'm like, I know what my portfolios have done this year. And then I, I go add a few commas and zeros and I can imagine what yours have done. ⁓ and you're still fully invested. the hammer down. We're not messing around. Let's do it. Well, Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas everybody. there's been a lot.

Eric Sprott (44:34)
you

Yeah. Yeah.

I got her. You got her. there's I used to give these these coins away. I don't know. These fraud coins.

I give a lot of them away. OK. And I remember I remember a guy gave me one way back when I thought that's impressive. I'm to start doing that. And of course, when he was given away as five bucks now, it's 60 bucks or 64 bucks. So there was something now.

Craig Hemke (44:54)
Do you still?

Right? Right?

I have my TF Metals Report site. do contests for the... I lost you. You got to move over to the right. There you are. I do contests every once in a while, know, or like predict where the markets are going to end up at the end of the week, you know? And I'd always give away... I have my own silver rounds. And I always give away one as a prize. And I went to do one like a week ago and I went, wait a second. This is 60 bucks now.

Eric Sprott (45:14)
sorry, sorry.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Craig Hemke (45:32)
It's not 20. So, yeah, somebody won and I had to ship it off. But yeah, we got to have a little more sticky fingers on some of that stuff at this point. Well, and that's for sure.

Eric Sprott (45:33)
Yeah, yeah, right.

There you go. Well, we can always buy more, you We know where to

find it, Sprott Money. I buy all mine from Sprott Money.

Craig Hemke (45:50)
brought money and you know, and I know you got to go and we got to wrap this up, but I, this is a great time to remind people it is. tell people is off my golf buddies, family. Gold's not expensive. It's not the gold that's changing. The gold stays the same. An ounce of gold is just an ounce of gold. What's changing is the purchasing power of your currency. You know, it took $1,100 to buy an ounce 10 years ago. It took $2,200 by announce five years ago. takes $4,400 by announce a gold hasn't changed.

And the same is said for silver. Yeah, it's gone up, but when there's only so much silver around and there's this much demand, it's going to keep going. Eric, thank you. Thank you everybody for watching. Again, thank Sprott Money for putting this stuff out by visiting their site, buying some sound money as gifts, storing it at Sprott Money. They can help you with that too. It's almost retirement plan season as we flip the calendar. They'll help you with that. SprottMoney.com, your friends.

in the precious metals business, our friend in the precious built up there in the great white North Santa himself. Eric, thank you so much for your time. All right. Thanks everybody for watching and keep an eye on things. We're to get back at it as soon as the calendar flips to 2026.

Eric Sprott (46:57)
Thank you, great, fun time. See you later.