It has been quiet mainly due to the whole small cap sector being quiet and just about everyone is waiting or the market to wake up and notice the small caps with potential.

I speak from prejudice because I own Gold Reserve shares, who owns Brisas and Choco 5 (does it ring a bell with you?), and seeing VAL with Los Patos as a potential carbon copy of it. Crystallex's assets are also examples but only geologically speaking because I do not like that company's management style and hence do not hold that stock. So there are the geologic factors and also the country of Venezuela.

Some Americans will scream to stay away from this country because their political views are clouding their judjment. I say it is an opportunity mainly due to low labour and energy costs.

Precious metals are rising in price and people rejoice but wonder why the share prices are not going through the roof. Well along with the PM prices the price of energy has also risen and in many cases more so. Hence if you want to dig up and process that darling PM you need a lot of energy to accomplish it. Good luck to you in North America. In most jurisdictions the energy costs offset a large proportion of the gain from the metal's price especially if the quality of the metal in ground is near borderline economical. Well that energy cost in Venezuela is very low and I consider gold amounts of one gram per ton are very economocal ( I'm no authority on mining so just my opinion). Now just look at the amount of gold per ton in the drill results. They alone do not mean much until you notice the range of those deposits. Note worthy is the depth, definitely open pit mining candidate, hence lower cost. (Gold Reserve is building a mine with ore at three quarters of a gram Au per ton!).

As I am into VAL shares mainly because of Los Patos.