“I may in fact be over 10% now, I’m sure I bought some shares this week.”

That was Eric Sprott talking Balmoral (BAR, TSX) during his weekly wrap-up.

Balmoral is an important piece to the overall puzzle because they own approximately 80% of the belt, the Sunday Lake Deformation Zone (SLDZ) that stretches from Kirkland’s (KL, TSX, NYSE) Detour mine to Wallbridge’s (WM, TSX) high-grade Fenelon deposit.  You can’t get from Detour to Fenelon without driving right through Balmoral’s property.  Hence the reason Sprott’s increased his equity stake to 10%, or more, and I’d guess he’ll continue acquiring until he maxes out his position (like he did with WM).

Ultimately, Kirkland and Sprott want to own the entire SLDZ.

They believe they got a steal of a deal on Detour, buying the crown jewel for $4.9 billion.  Wallbridge would seem to be nearly captured given Kirkland and Sprott’s combined 30% to 40% ownership.  Which only leaves Balmoral – I don’t think their grand multi-decade plan for the SLDZ will be complete until Balmoral’s extensive land package is fully controlled by them.

This could explain some of the recent outperformance in BAR versus WM.  Sprott, Kirkland, and/or their proxies, have been busy making open market purchases.

Shifting back to Wallbridge, “The Tuesday release was just so incredible!” said Sprott.

He wants everyone to know he’d be buying more WM, but he can’t (so he’s buying BAR, his next best option).  The headline number, 44 grams over 19 m, “To die for!  Where do you get that?”,  Sprott gushed.

Wallbridge also announced a 120-m intersection with 6 visible Gold intersections within that!  Very exciting stuff.

Depending on the results of these next step-out holes we could be talking about 5 to 10 million ounces Gold, just in the Tabasco, so there’s nothing Sprott feels more confident about than WM right now.

Fantastic week for BAR.  It added about 10 cents to 47.5, or 27%, and it’s threatening to break past its 52-week high of 49 cents.

WM closed at 92 cents, up 15%.