The market mood at the time was pretty dire, so he held off. Now, for no apparent reason, the market has started moving up.

Perhaps people just get tired of being gloomy, and hope bubbles back up.

Whatever the reason, if the train is starting to move, the Punter is jumping on.

His ticket to ride is a piece of paper saying he has paid $1820 for 20,000 shares in Alcyone Resources Ltd (ASX code AYN).

The shares are actually a little more expensive than when he last looked at them, but Alcyone may have more silver and copper now than it thought it had before the results of shallow rotary air blast drilling near its existing Twin Hills mine near Texas on the Queensland-NSW border.

The best of seven new holes revealed an average 138 grams of silver a tonne from 26 metres of ore, beginning just four metres down.

Three of the other holes also found signs of silver, lead or zinc.

All were drilled just north of the Silver Spur deposit, which was mined in the early 1900s and produced approximately 100,000t at 800 grams a tonne of silver, 25 per cent zinc and 13pc lead.

Silver Spur is just south east of Twin Hills, which Alcyone reopened in July last year.

The mine has already produced $70 million worth of silver in the three months to the end of September.

The aim is to boost output to at least 1.5m ounces in 12 months, which at the current silver price, that should bring in around $50m, almost half of which would be gross profit.

Moreover, a couple of kilometres to the west of Twin Hills, deeper drilling in difficult ground yielded significant grades of copper and silver at the company’s Hornet target.

Just north of this, shallow drilling has confirmed the area should be worth exploring more thoroughly for base metals such as lead and zinc.

Surveys have already identified eight potential base metal targets in various parts of the company’s 275 square kilometre tenement.

It will all need more work and more expensive drilling, but the Twin Hills silver is providing the cash.

The Punter has no financial qualifications and no links to the financial services industry. He owns shares in a number of companies featured in this column.