Bob Bishop

How did you get your start in the mineral industry?

The simple answer is that in 1982 I bought a stock in Bull Run Gold Mines that went up about 1,000% over the next 90 days. Subsequent to that and while working for Howard Ruff of The Ruff Times, I wrote a piece on penny mining stocks and was intrigued by the history, the stories, and the characters surrounding the business. With elevated gold prices and heap leaching and other technological advances suddenly making the industry more accessible to junior companies, gold mining entered a strong growth phase. At the same time, there were few objective sources of information available to investors. Seeking to fill this gap, I decided to work my way out of a job and into a newsletter: Penny Mining Stock Report from 1983-85, Gold Mining Stock Report from 1985-2007. Looking back on it, I'm most grateful to have been involved at a time--the 90s--when a series of back-to-back world-class discoveries were made, and at a time when speculators were rewarded for having a longer term perspective on the market. Speculators got paid for being patient with stocks such as Arequipa Resources, Dia Met, Aber Resources, and Diamond Fields, where Robert Friedland played the world's two largest nickel producers against one another. It was an unusual concentration of world-class discoveries and a good time to be in the mining newsletter business.

What has been the most memorable experience of your career?

Being early on the Northwest Territories diamond story was the most memorable and also the most important, for the simple reason that I was close to being out of business when Dia Met announced its first discovery. The stock market crash of 1987 laid the groundwork for several lean years in the resource sector, especially on the speculative end of it, and I was literally wondering what line of work I might go into. I've likened trying to sell my newsletter at the time to trying to sell cancer door-to-door. Being early and right on the diamond story turned my business around, and also paved the way to being early on Diamond Fields Resources. There was much that was memorable about Diamond Fields, not least because of the money I and my subscribers made, but had it not been for the NWT story, I wouldn't have been in business by the time Diamond Fields announced its Voisey's Bay discovery. I had many memorable experiences over almost 25 years, but it was the NWT story that was most meaningful--and thus most memorable.