Castle SilverI don’t understand why some people are questioning whether GBB should drill their Castle Silver property. Silver companies are on fire right now. Both silver producers and non-producers are actually moving up with the Ag price, unlike the gold juniors. Why would you not want to tap into that Ag upside?
GBB is not giving up on Granada. How are they when they are still drilling 24-7 with 2 rigs there? Giving up means pulling away both rigs and not spending any more $ on that property. How is that happening when 37,000m of drilling is left in Phase 3 and they’re going to start exploring at LONG Bars 2 this month?
The reserves report will come and that will stop the speculation as to how much Au is at Granada and it will stop the swing trading as it puts a hard # on what GBB is worth. Right now some think its one thing, others think it’s a different number. Yet calculating a gold resource estimate based on its current dimensions is a deposit id a one line calculation and still the market is all over the place on what they think is there.
Why place all your rigs at Granada when the labs are so backed up in Quebec? You might drill 50% more core in the same time with 3 rigs at Granada than you currently do with 2 rigs, but with more core being sent to GBB’s Quebec labs that are already swamped do you really think that you’re going to get the results faster? Hell no!
More workload on the same amount of lab technicians means longer wait times. How does more work under the same daily capacity equal quicker results? Common sense says it doesn’t. So you’re not going to get a reserves report any faster. That’s the main reason why it’s already been postponed in the first place. You can’t calculate a reserves report until you have your results back from the lab. Only 1 of their current 5 labs has met the original timelines and costs of getting results back to GBB on time. It’s very simple and it’s out of GBB’s hands as the labs are not theirs. People just want to blame them for everything b/c their frustrated right now. Whats next? They're going to get blamed for world hunger too?
I’d rather they currently keep drilling Granada with 2 rigs and drill out the Castle Silver mine (CS) with another one. This way your core from CS can hopefully go to an Ontario lab that is not as swamped as GBB’s current labs and you at least get a better chance of getting results back faster than the current standard. And b/c of the historical very high-grade nature of the deposit (904g/t milled) and the fact that there is a historical resource there it should not take a lot of drilling to prove up a nice Ag resource at SC. GBB even averaged 294g/t Ag when taking grab samples from within one of the tailings ponds at CS. Most primary Ag mines I see operate in the 100-300g/t Ag range. CS has the upper end of that grade in its tailings!
6,000 m of drilling should give more bang for your buck at CS than it would at Granada. Granada probably needs close to 250,000-300,000 m of drilling just to delineate it (inferred), IMHO. We’re talking about a potential 5-6 km of structure there and GBB’s only drilled 1.2 km of it that’s taken about 70,000m of drilling so far (45,000 m from GBB currently + 25,000m historical drilling) just to get to this point. So another 6,000m spent at Granada when labs there are already way behind schedule on timelines isn’t the best way to spend your current $. Their going to have to finance later on this year so might as well get the SP as high as possible before you do and time is ticking.
Now that amount of drilling at CS can really prove up a Ag resource quickly and the market always pays a much higher valuation for Ag names vs. Au names just because they are so much rarer. There’s a sea of junior Au names out there, but only a tiny amount of pure Ag names with actual resources. So when the Ag sector is hot the same names keep rising b/c the money can only go to a few select names. Its supply and demand. Why not be part of that rare group? Especially when the silver is already there and the mine infrastructure is in place, greatly reducing costs and timeline to bring it back into production. And as Ag assets get a better valuation vs. Au assets, producers get a better valuation vs. non-producers. Having more than 1 asset is a good thing not the other way around.
I don’t care if GBB increases in SP b/c of the Au or Ag assets or both. The main thing is that it rises and right now the market is giving GBB a crappy valuation on the gold asset and absolutely nothing for the silver asset. So why not try to get something out of the silver asset bc/ your probably not going to get the gold results from the labs any faster than what it has been to date? And try to light a fire under this name again with potentially high grade silver intersepts to boost the SP up and bring back some technical investors back into GBB. Once the technicals get better new $ moves into the name and thats what you want. Its better than just sitting around for a resource report for Granada that you don't exactly know when its coming out.