(Kitco News) - Electrum chairman sees gold reaching $30,000 to $50,000, calls the correction a "1987 moment" and warns governments may seize profitable mines
Thomas Kaplan thinks gold is going up tenfold, and he is not hedging the word.
"Seeing gold go up another tenfold from here, to me is not just likely, but inevitable," he told Kitco News on Thursday.
Then he put numbers on it, without being asked.
"I can see gold going to 30, 40, 50,000 dollars without a problem."
Kaplan made gold and silver the core of his family's capital after selling Leor Energy in 2007. He is chairman of the Electrum Group, chairman of NOVAGOLD and chairman of Sunshine Silver Mining and Refining, which began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on June 4. He waited 17 years to own the Sunshine Mine and 33 years to bring the company public.
Some scale on the claim: Gold traded near $4,515 an ounce Thursday afternoon, having climbed back above $4,500. A tenfold gain puts it around $45,000, which sits inside the range he named. It would also mean the metal doing what it has taken the last two decades to do, several times over.
Kaplan did not attach a timeframe. Pressed on the near term, he was comfortable saying he had no idea.
"Maybe it already is, maybe it needs to test again, I don't know," he said of the current pullback. "It doesn't matter, because in the long term, even in the medium term, gold and silver are going to multiply from where they are."
A 1987 moment
His read on the drawdown is that it is a correction inside a bull market, and he has a specific comparison for it.
Earlier this year, with gold and silver near their highs, he told investors on a NOVAGOLD webcast that a sharp downdraft was possible, and that it would be an opportunity rather than a warning.
"We could have a 1987 moment," he said. "That was the best buying opportunity of the entire bull market."
The parallel he is reaching for is Black Monday. The Dow peaked at 2,722.42 on August 25, 1987, and closed at 1,738.74 on October 19, roughly a 36% collapse in eight weeks. At the time it felt like the end of the world. On a chart of the last 45 years it barely registers.
That is the whole point.
"You can't see it on a long-term chart," Kaplan said. "The crash of 1987, it really did seem like the world was falling in upon itself, and yet when you look back over that chart, you can't see it. Certainly a person of my vintage would need glasses to be able to perceive it. It's that minute."
Offered the word vindication for the year he has just had, he handed it straight back.
"Vindication wouldn't exactly be the right word, for the simple reason that I wasn't trying to prove anything to anyone," he said. "If anything, the longer it takes for the rubber band to snap back, the bigger the move."
The part that should make people sit up
Buried inside a story about 2007 was a sentence about now.
Kaplan sold his energy company that year. He also sold his platinum company. He wanted out of anything cyclical, and he was sitting in cash when markets seized.
Asked what drove the decision, he gave the expected answer about shale, and then added something else.
"I'd entered 2007 with a view that things were just simply too good, not dissimilar to the way things are right now in certain respects," he said. "And that there was just too much bullishness in asset classes."
He did not predict a crash, and he qualified it twice. But the man who cleared the decks months before the financial crisis just said today rhymes with the last time he did it.
How he got the money in the first place
That 2007 sale is better known by its headline number than by how it actually happened, and the details are more interesting than the total.
Kaplan started an energy company in 2003 and named it Leor, after his two children at the time, Leonardo and Orianne. It went to Texas looking for oil. It found gas instead, and a lot of it.
"Initially, EnCana offered me $200 million and I said, umm, no thank you," Kaplan said.
Goldman Sachs later raised money at a valuation around $500 to $550 million. Merrill Lynch came in at a billion and a half. The final sale to EnCana was $2.55 billion, and total exits to the Canadian producer landed close to $2.8 billion.
Roughly 100 times his money. He sold anyway. Having made that return and watched oil reach his target, Kaplan said he decided he had been "rewarded for being greedy" and that "it was time to leave."
There was also the thing he needs before he will hold anything, and shale was quietly taking it away from him.
"I no longer had metaphysical certitude about whether oil was worth $20 or worth $120," he said. "And I need metaphysical certitude. I have to have my conviction, and I was losing the conviction."
"They will take it from you"
The sharpest stretch of the interview had nothing to do with price.
Kaplan once held mineral rights across Africa and Asia. Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Congo, Pakistan. He says he was the largest holder of mineral rights in Pakistan. He ultimately shifted his focus toward Alaska, Idaho and Mexico.
The reasoning is not geological. It is about what happens to a mine when the metal coming out of it becomes the only thing in the country still making money.
"On what planet do you believe that you will be allowed to keep that gold mine in a country in which, if there's ever a global downturn again, the only thing that's producing cash is the gold or the silver?" he said. "They will take it from you."
"They will say, look, you have shareholders, but so do we. Millions of them. They voted for us, and it's called force majeure. We have no choice."
He calls it the sad irony of a gold bull market.
"You get the macros right, you may even get the micros right on the asset itself, and you are so right that you have it taken away from you."
The rule he uses to avoid it is one sentence long.
"I want to know that when I go to bed at night, whatever I thought I owned the night before, I still own in the morning."
Who pays for a $9 billion mine
NOVAGOLD's Donlin project in Alaska holds roughly 40 million ounces of measured and indicated gold at more than twice the industry average open pit grade, across a 27-year mine life. The November 2025 technical report estimated initial capital cost at approximately $9.23 billion.
Rather than wait for the feasibility study to finish, Kaplan said the company is lining up financing alongside it. Then he identified the pools of sovereign capital he believes could be a natural fit.
"Japan has committed to investing $550 billion in the United States. They are gold bullish," he said. "Korea has committed to $350 billion. Within the last month, they have returned to buying gold for their central bank. So I think they are expressing their sentiments with their feet."
On Korea, the record is more specific. The Bank of Korea disclosed a roughly $250 million position in SPDR Gold Shares as of the end of June, its first gold-linked investment since 2013. The stake is classified as securities within the country's foreign exchange reserves. Its physical bullion holdings are unchanged at about 104 tonnes.
Sovereign wealth funds from the UAE and Saudi Arabia have made US commitments as well, he said, and they like gold.
"It doesn't require that much of an imagination. The worst that can happen is somebody says no."
NOVAGOLD has agreed to buy the 40% of Donlin it does not own from John Paulson, a deal still subject to a shareholder vote. If it goes through, Paulson would hold about 40% of the economics with his vote capped just under 20%.
Kaplan's description of that partnership was the least corporate thing he said all hour.
"I am Moses in this story. I delivered NOVAGOLD. I delivered Donlin from Pharaoh," he said. "But let there be no doubt, I may have been Moses, but John Paulson, he was God. Still is."
Silver, and the people who bought the top
On crypto, Kaplan is not hostile. He thinks it did him a favour.
"I've got nothing against crypto. It's made my life easier. I no longer have to spend very much time explaining why owning something that can't be printed easily is a good thing," he said. "But for me, silver is the thoughtful person's Bitcoin."
Silver was the stronger of the two metals Thursday, up 1.80% at $68.08 an ounce while gold slipped slightly on the day. It remains far below the record it set earlier this year.
Which brings it back to a wedding.
In 1999, Kaplan handed every guest at his wedding a one ounce silver medallion, and insisted the silver come from the Sunshine Mine. He did not own it. He would not own it for another 11 years. Some of those guests eventually sold their medallions on eBay.
So what does he say to the person who bought silver during this year's surge and is sitting on a loss?
He answered it the way he answers everything, with the caveat first.
"Do as I say, not as I do, because my portfolio is not diversified," he said. "As far as I'm concerned, I'm in precious metals, mostly through the equities, and T-bills."
Then he did not soften the rest.
"You're going to be right, and obviously if you are underwater, my suggestion would be that you average down."
And a line that sounded less like a forecast than a temperament.
"If you own it, maybe you already have a full position, in which case just be content, because you will be right if you aren't already right."
What to watch
Three milestones carry the story forward. The NOVAGOLD shareholder vote on consolidating Donlin. Sunshine's feasibility study, expected in the second quarter of 2027. And a final investment decision that could support renewed silver production in late 2028.
