This teaser and the solution were sent in by an anonymous reader, so thanks for that. This is yet another gold play, but this one’s a little bit different.

And as I always love to see, it’s got an interesting back story — it’s about the revival of the Egyptian gold mining industry, which certainly contributed to the wealth of the pharaohs a few years back.

The tease is for a newsletter edited by Sean Broderick called Red-Hot Global Small Caps, which is available for a three-year subscription at $5,000. That’s right up there with the most expensive newsletters I’ve seen lately (so this must be right up there with the best ideas, right?).

So … what are we dealing with here? The big sell is that Egypt is getting back into the gold business in earnest for the first time in 75 years or so, with new concessions offered for miners (eight last year and eight more this year) and a goal of producing more in 2008 than they have in the last 100 years combined.

Sounds kind of interesting.

And Sean will tell you “How to Get Your Own Piece Of the Pharaoh’s Treasure.” For a price, of course (and to be fair, he noted that he hasn’t yet recommended this one, but is “waiting for an entry point”)

We sleuths, however, would rather just figger this one out on our own — so lets look at the clues:

“known resource of over eight million ounces of gold, and is busily drilling to expand and define its resource even more. ”

“It should be able to produce 200,000 ounces of the yellow metal per year. And it expects to start production as soon as the third quarter of next year!”

Market cap is under $800 million.

So they think that “this stock looks like a steal worthy of a band of tomb raiders”

… what do you think?

Oh, wait — you need the name first.

Thanks to our anonymous sleuth, I can tell you that this company is …

Centamin Egypt (CEE in Toronto, CELTF.PK on the US pinks, CNT in Australia and CEY on the AIM in London)

Their Sukari gold mine is right down by the Red Sea in eastern Egypt, they do have roughly 8 million ounces of reserves, and they do expect to begin producing in roughtly a year, in the third quarter of 2008. They appear to be currently waiting for delivery of a gold processing plant later this year (they bought a plant from Newmont in Chile, so it’s a bit of a slog to get it moved over to Egypt).

So … is it worth your money? I have no idea, I’ve done only enough research on this one to confirm that the sleuth is correct. I must admit, after reading a few pages of investor presentations with all those long tables of mining data I get a little drowsy, so I’m not sure how their resources compare to those of other nascent gold miners. I do know that they do keep ramping up their reserves as they continue exploratory drilling, though that’s not particularly uncommon. They appear to trade on pretty decent volume in both London and Australia, not sure about Canada and the US, and of course they’re at least a year or two from being profitable since they’re not mining at the moment. Egypt is likely to be a pretty cheap place to run a mine, but they’re going to need some infrastructure, too, to get the stuff to market, and I have no idea what’s currently available to them.

So … if any of you gold bugs out there have thoughts on this one, please share. I’m out of my element with these mining stocks, but I’m always happy to learn.