Edward, First of all...

...About Webb: I'd have to go back and listen to the interviews in the past. You know from what I've written in the past, I buy things based on people, not numbers. My father was very, very good at sizing up people very quickly, and I think and hope that I may have inherited some of his qualities.

It was very easy to see very quickly that Keith Barron was a trustworthy, intelligent person. He also was a trustworthy intelligent person with a track record. He's not a fighter, and he doesn't have that bulldog temperament that one needs to really sell something. No one in Kimber that I've met really does, but such qualities are rare. Eric King has them, but he remains involved with Kimber only as a stockholder at this time.

Intelligent idea people that really know how to market are as rare as colorless, flawless 20 carat diamonds. Steve Jobs is one. Ross Perot was another. Andrew Carnegie was another. Henry Ford, another. When you find one, jump on. There are very few in the gold mining industry, and I've talked to a lot of people in the industry. Keith Neumeyer is as close to a Steve Jobs as you will find in the entire sector. Robert Quartermain comes close, but there was something about him I didn’t feel comfortable with, so I didn’t buy.

That’s your choice in this environment. You don’t get three strikes to swing at, as Warren Buffet once quipped, you get a thousand strikes, so don’t swing until you really like the pitch. That was Rogers Hornsby’s advice to a young Ted Willilams on how to be a great hitter, what Williams later said was the single greatest bit of advice he ever got as a hitter. Hornsby said, “Kid, get a good ball to hit.” He meant, simply, “Don’t swing at everything that’s in the strike zone. You get three strikes to swing at. Wait for the one that’s right down the middle. During most at-bats, you will get at least one pitch like that. Swing at that one.”

In this industry, as in any one, you’ve got to get a good ball to hit. Quartermain might be a great guy, but something didn’t sit right with me about him, so I let his company go by. That's why I have a lot of First Majestic Stock and no Silver Standard Stock. Silver Standard might go much higher from here, but that is no longer my concern. I’ve made my decision, and here I sit. This is not based on numbers or statistics or anything more than I just don’t like the way Quartermain presented himself. That’s my prerogative as an investor, and I like it that way.

About Webb. From the first time I heard him interviewed on Financial Sense, my thoughts were, "This guy doesn’t understand what he’s doing, and I don’t trust him." Don't get me wrong. That doesn't mean he's a bad guy, or that he is trying to screw people over, just that there was a tone in his voice of someone who really didn't understand what his business was all about, what business in general was all about. I didn’t think that he understood the markets beneath him or that he would have the gumption to follow through on what he was saying. His talk was primarily not about a business plan, but about “hitting it big” i.e. winning the lottery. Not smart business talk, in my view.

Great football coaches will throw the Hail Mary pass every once in awhile, but they don’t depend on it. They beat you on the ground and in the air with tried and true methods, things they are good at and that they can execute. When a CEO incorporates the Hail Mary approach into he strategy, you know you’re in trouble. That’s how Webb was talking in a public forum that he has to know lots of people are listening to. That’s not good.

So don't mistake untrustworthy with "bad" or with "lying". I know many people I don’t trust who I don’t necessarily think are “evil-minded” or “bad” people. It just means I wouldn’t trust them with my money or my kids or my car.

Lincoln found McClellan to be very untrustworthy. McClellen wasn't deliberately disobeying Lincoln involving his methods of going about fighting the Civil War or really doing anything "bad" or "wrong" to the lay observer, but Lincoln just couldn't trust him to get the job done. Grant, for all intents and purposes, was a sloppy, bumbling idiot, but he got the job done. He was trustworthy and delivered on what Lincoln wanted. Ultimately, you want people like that on your team, people who will get in there and "fight" so to speak, rather than stand back and make plans until the enemy overruns them or their troops lose the will to fight.

Webb, was talking what might be construed by some as “a big game”, but it was apparent to me, even back then, that he really didn't know, in my view, how to attack his problems or go after increasing shareholder value. I didn't like what he said or his plan of carrying it out.

Finding trustworthy people in any field is an incredibly difficult undertaking. What makes it difficult is that in order to spot a trustworthy person, one must be trustworthy himself, and very few are. A trustworthy person is not necessarily one who always succeeds, but one who can understand the views of others and will strive to take care of others and those who believe in him to a greater extent than he will to protect or care for his own individual interests, or more importantly, the needs of his own ego. Such people are, once again, as rare as 10 carat Burmese rubies, but spottable.

Another is this guy at Novagold, Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse. This guy is as good as they come. I had sold all my Novagold a few years ago, because I feared the rise in oil might continue too closely in parallel with the rise in gold and hamper Novagold's efforts to get at the Donlin Creek and Galore Creek Deposits, very far inland and dependent to a huge extent on capital expenditure, i.e. building pipelines and roads to get at. I have changed my mind now. Gold, in my view, will go so much higher, that fuel costs will play very little role to hamper prices there. Buying Novagold now is like buying Apple at $7 a share. Marc Faber is on the Board there and George Soros and John Paulson are both big shareholders now as well. This is a good place to be. And Van Nieuwenhuyse remains a trustworthy leader. Is he a great saleman? Not necessarily. Is he a savvy marketer? By no means. But that’s the way it goes. Once again, you need to hit the best pitches you can get. This one is not right down the middle. It’s a little inside, but it’s one a good hitter will be able to drive a long way. Webb is throwing curve balls on the outside part of the plate. You get a thousand strikes. Why even swing at that?

You also may know from reading my posts that I own Agnico-Eagle. Sean Boyd is a quality individual in my view as well. He understands his business, and he knows how to present himself in public. Agnico-Eagle is an excellently managed company, but Boyd is why I own. He can clearly articulate the company's plan and understands the potential for gold in a secular bull market. Most other leaders of big companies can't articulate such things well for the very real reason that, In my view, they just don't understand the industry they are in.

Is this possible. that someone could be in gold mining for thirty years and not know what he or she is doing? Absolutely.

I have a close friend, an inventor from Silicon Valley who actually holds many patents involving what are called end effectors, i.e. the hands on the ends of robot arms. He worked with Noyce and Shockley at Fairchild in the early days on the first semiconductors. Now he’s eighty years old and focuses mostly on ceramics and rare earth applications and is presently developing a product for a large corporation that involves a very thin ceramic piece that no one else in the world except he can make.

He keeps sending the plans out to cut these ceramic components to factories all over the world and they keep screwing them up and breaking them. Inevitably, he has to fly to one of these places himself and set the machines to insure they job will get done correctly.

These are big manufacturers, people like Kyocera, people who have been doing this type of work for a long time, and they can't get it right. He calls me on the phone exasperated and says, "Al, these guys are supposed to be the best in the world. They've been doing ceramics for thirty-five years and they just don't know what they're doing."

This is a seemingly sad fact involving life, one articulated very well more than a century ago by George Bernard Shaw who stated, "It is a common characteristic of life, that one can meet a man on the street who knows more about a subject than another man who has spent thirty years studying the subject." It is the same in just about any field of endeavor whether it be medicine, mining or professional sports. I have seen it myself.

So don't fool yourself into believing that drill results or metrics created by or accepted by the industry mean anything at all. People are all that matter. Good people can succeed. Sure you need to have something in the ground, and sure you have to have a workable plan. Kimber has one. Gordon Cummings is a good guy, but he’s a numbers guy. He’s an accountant by training. He’s not a Steve Jobs, and he’s not Anthony Robbins. He’s not the big-picture idea man. He’s the fullback who carries the ball through the line for four yards every time, pushing Kimber slowly forward towards the goal. Jim Puplava is the “Big Picture” guy. Jim understands the plan and is tight in with management. He understands that there are deficiencies at Kimber as there are in any organization, but he also has the patience to endure this long period as value is being realized by the larger market. I believe that he has the wisdom not to push where pushing will cause nothing but trouble and discord.

You should definitely sell some of that Tyhee and buy Kimber. I know it is hard to take a loss, that is why it is hard to advise you to sell all of your Tyhee. It would be too hard for just about anyone to take psychologically. I would have to work very hard psychologically if I were in your position not to feel the same way. But I would sell half of your holdings, and I’d tell everyone on that Tyhee Board to do the same. In my view, they are going to be disappointed ultimately with what Tyhee is going to do for them. Webb is not Vince Lombardi. At best he is Bud Grant. He won’t win the big game. The big game might win itself for him, but he won’t power it. The power will come from markets or some other place. I’d sell half my Tyhee holdings and buy all the Kimber and First Majestic I could stomach. That way you can come to the Hard Assets show in New York in May and we’ll have something happy to talk about. All the best, Sitting Bull