Might be more Old Kent Road or Whitechapel Road than Park Lane...

Might be more Old Kent Road or Whitechapel Road than Park Lane or Mayfair but I think at this stage of the game (of monopoly) it's a land grab rather than a construction site.

My thesis for a dabble in Cooper Metals is that the Mt Isa area for copper might be an doppelganger of a punt on the James Bay region in Quebec for hard rock lithium a couple of years back.

It was well known that there was sizeable deposits of hard rock lithium in the James Bay region but for a couple of reasons - a price collapse caused a few early adopters to go broke, the investment surge was led by Chinese firms (and Canada and China are like cheese and chalk) - the lithium sector in Quebec was flat-lining while hard rock lithium in WA was going gang-busters. Apparently you could see huge outcroppings of the stuff just off the road and yet no-one bothered to take up the tenements. Allkem / Galaxy was already there but then a rush of Aussies hit Quebec like a Mack truck, with Sayona and Winsome leading the fray. Sayona is up over 18 times in three years, Winsome up over 10 times and it is probably just getting started. And a common feature of the Aussie swarm was that they went hard for tenements, doing whatever deals needed to be done to get promising tenements. Late arrivals to the James Bay region can expect not only to get less prospective ground but to pay heaps more than the early movers paid.

Now, over the years I've read enough and listened to enough "experts" in lithium to some grasp of the ins and outs of the lithium sector. But, to be honest, I know three quarts of not much about copper. So this comparison may be embarrassingly wide of the mark. But, damn the torpedoes, I've just put a deposit down on Old Kent Road.

A couple or five things I think bolsters my thesis.

1. The James Bay lithium story is regional: there are three sizeable projects close to each other and a number of nearby prospects that are showing early signs of being of similar ilk. Likewise it would appear to me that the Mt Isa area is similarly of regional scale when it comes to copper.

2. I like that there are apparently a number of ageing copper operations in the Mt Isa region which may have surplus processing capacity. Tolling offers the potential for junior start-ups of big capex savings and a short-cut to revenue. A major advantage for Sayona was picking up the makings of a mine and concentrator at its NAL project in Quebec. Also similar advantage for Mincor and hopefully Widgie with BHP's up and running nickel concentrator at Kambalda.

3. My impression is that tenements in the Mt Isa is still cheap and untested. I've been listening to a bunch of presentations from Carnaby and Hammer as well as Cooper and the number of times I heard that such and such prospective area has never seen a drill bit amazes me. You'd think these blocks were in the middle of whoop whoop and not within cooee of down-town Mt Isa ....

4. All the signs are there that the electrification of transport is a long term trend and that both lithium and copper are not only vital to that transition but also are in long-term undersupply. These shortages are not incremental or temporary but are of orders of magnitude and sustained.

5. Just as I'd rather be buying Winsome when it had a market cap of not much than now with its market cap at $350m - who cares about risk weightings! - I'm equally happy buying Cooper with its market cap of $13m.

As I said above I've only just begun the journey of learning about Mt Isa and its copper prospects so shoot as many holes as you can in what I posted. TIA.