Some good points 99921.

But the argument Rick Rule made recently for why some junior companies will experience huge upside market cap moves was not to go into production but focus on building ounces or add good properties and let gold/silver moving higher drive the share prices, this BTW is what happened in 2003 to 2006 where ounces in the ground ruled supreme and juniors didn't try to produce too much because this opens up more risk of failure. This is something Golden Minerals has done quite well over the years, add good properties, ounces in the ground and exploration success. Numerous good companies saw their stock prices move up to 100 times higher with little to no production.

Building a quality production team is not near as easy as some may think given all the regulations, capital required and mine planning. Some juniors have been very successful however as First Majestic and Fortuna come to mind but keep in mind they started in the 2003-2005 period when money was easy and available in size, few who have started after 2010 have been successful.

Production has brought many a junior company down and even some big ones but for sure exploration remains the mainstay of the junior resource companies but unfortunately this has been a dead end now for a quite a few years as capital moved to other areas as gold/silver prices were hammered hard to help in the wealth effect stock market after 2008 collapse of property prices and stock prices.