| New York spot gold rose $42.50 to $2,385.40 on Monday. The TSX Venture Exchange slid 11.02 points to 576.69, while the TSX gold index shed 3.43 points to 309.25. Most Canadian-listed gold miners were in the red today, and some descended with gusto. Endeavour Silver Corp. (EDV) fell 16 cents to $3.69 on 2.7 million shares and B2Gold Corp. (BTO) kept it company, losing 23 cents to $3.75 on 13.7 million shares. Jaguar Mining Inc. (TKO) led a small cadre of miners northward today. It rose 17 cents to $3.08 on 194,000 shares. Darren Hall's Calibre Mining Inc. (CXB) fell two cents to $1.80 on 5.96 million shares on word it has drilled a 17.7-metre true-width interval grading 7.06 grams of gold per tonne at its Eastern Borosi project in northeastern Nicaragua. And that was just the gold highlight: The company also applauded several silver intercepts, including one that ran 1,432 grams per tonne across a 2.9-metre true width interval. Mr. Hall, president and chief executive officer, applauded the assays, cheering that they "reinforce the potential for discovery and resource expansion" on the Eastern Borosi land package. Further, he enthused, the exceptionally high silver grades "demonstrate further potential to capture additional value in the future." (In other words, the project is still very much centred on gold.) Speaking of assays -- better ones -- Ewan Downie and Matthew Gili's I-80 Gold Corp. (IAU) rose six cents to $1.69 on 2.01 million shares on word it has drilled a 7.2-metre interval grading 29.6 grams of gold per tonne in the Lower Helen zone at its McCoy-Cove property in Nevada. A second hit in that zone produced 18.7 grams per tonne over 8.3 metres. The Upper Helen zone was also in a generous mood -- it coughed up hits including a 3.7-metre intercept that graded 37.2 grams per tonne. Mr. Downie, CEO, and Mr. Gili, president, left the cheerleading to Tyler Hill, their chief geologist. Mr. Hill is thankfully fluent in promoterese and so he left the jargon aside, enthusing that the results "continue to confirm Cove is one of the highest-grade, development-stage gold deposits in North America." The new assays, he glowed, continue to return significant high-grade gold mineralization, consistently in excess of 10 grams per tonne gold. At last report, I-80 credited Cove with one million tonnes indicated at 10.9 grams of gold and 29.1 grams of silver per tonne, along with 3.87 million tonnes inferred at roughly comparable grades -- good for a total of 1.7 million ounces of gold and 3.6 million ounces of silver, mainly in the Helen and the CSD Gap zones. And then there was Colin Padget's Founders Metals Inc. (FDR), which lost two cents to $1.60 on 403,000 shares despite word it has drilled a 13-metre interval grading 11.02 grams of gold per tonne at Antino in southeastern Suriname. The hit was among assays from four infill holes drilled into the Froyo zone, closing a substantial gap in the data. All four holes hit mineralization as expected, with solid grades over significant intervals. Mr. Padget, CEO, was predictably pleased. The infill results from Froyo "provide a clear indication of the continuity and strength of gold grades within the main Froyo shear, particularly as we drill to greater depths within the system," he beamed. The company has also completed several expansion holes along strike to the northwest and south at Froyo, and Mr. Padget and crew are understandably eager to receive those results. Investors were less impressed, as the headline readers will tell you that Founders did better earlier, when it hit a 38-metre zone grading 10.9 grams of gold per tonne in March, and in February, when a 19-metre zone graded 14.23 grams per tonne. Indeed, some are undoubtedly waiting for the Froyo drillers to surpass the six-metre hit late last year that graded 94.69 grams per tonne. And so, while Founders has zigzagged higher from a summer low of 25 cents thanks to the Froyo assays, it is well below its early March high of $1.92. And so, explorers with neither high grades nor significant widths in their new assays suffered today. Marc-Andre Pelletier's Bonterra Resources Inc. (BTR) lost one-half cent to 28 cents on 279,000 shares on word that it has a drilled a 3.3-metre zone averaging 5.18 grams of gold per tonne at Moss, on its Phoenix joint-venture project with Osisko Mining Inc. (OSK: $2.92) in the Urban-Barry district of Quebec. Most of the gold in that zone sat within a one-metre stretch that ran 16.75 grams per tonne. That was a deep hit, and the hole returned a second, even deeper interval that averaged 3.19 grams per tonne over 2.9 metres. The co-venturers also scored a shallow intercept in another new hole. It returned 6.76 grams per tonne, but over just 0.8 metre. A deeper hit in that hole yielded 9.63 grams per tonne, but over just 0.5 metre. Mr. Pelletier, Bonterra's president and CEO, put his best spin forward. He deemed the new results "very encouraging," noting that they show "geological similarities to the Windfall gold deposit" being worked by Osisko, just five kilometres to the northeast. The similarities so far are more a matter of jargon than grade, as Osisko credits Windfall with just over 11 million tonnes measured and indicated at 11.4 grams of gold and six grams of silver per tonne and 12.3 million tonnes inferred at lesser grades -- good for about 7.5 million ounces of gold and four million ounces of silver. Roger Rosmus's Goliath Resources Ltd. (GOT) rose five cents to 93 cents on 458,000 shares. The company says it has "fast-tracked its 49-per-cent ownership in the Golddigger property" in the Golden Triangle area of northwestern British Columbia. It has exceeded the $14-million spending requirement laid out in the option agreement from the spring of 2017 to earn a 100-per-cent interest. The company has acquired its minority interest ahead of time through an amendment to the deal, issuing 10 million shares to the vendor. It will get the other 51-per-cent interest by declaring a resource of at least two million ounces before mid-2027 as previously required. Mr. Rosmus, founder and CEO of Goliath, was "very pleased" with the arrangement, deeming that Golddigger "already is a remarkable gold discovery" with multiple zones that transition from the sediments into the contact of the sediments and volcanics, and then into the volcanics. With further drilling, he is confident that the company will continue to discover "multiple zones that lead to the heat engine that caused the widespread gold mineralization." He blathered on from there, gushing about the "excellent continuity" of the mineralization and the frequency of visible gold noted in the drill core. He pointed to the newly discovered Jackpot outcrop as a promising area that "clearly demonstrates the strong possibility for many more discoveries." Assays have been encouraging, but that maiden resource is still well in the future. |