RJK Explorations Ltd. (RJX.A) fell $1,000 short of its $425,000 target when it closed its private placement late last week, selling 12.11 million of the 12.14 million shares it was offering at 3.5 cents apiece.
Of course, RJK's placement did handily beat the $350,000 target that the company had initially laid out a month earlier. It undoubtedly helped that RJK's stock has been oscillating between 3.5 and four cents over the past month. RJK, which was unchanged at 3.5 cents on 20,000 shares today, endured a three-year-long dive from the 35-cent mark, finally flattening early this year.
Mr. Kasner, chief executive officer, bought 1.15 million of the shares, spending $40,500. That is less than one-third of the expected insider participation, as the company had said it anticipated insiders would be buying about $130,000 of the new shares. The others did step up -- they just have not filed their insider reports -- as RJK has confirmed that "insiders and a related party to the company subscribed for $130,000 of the placement."
And so, cash in hand, Mr. Kasner and Mr. Chitaroni, president, will be pressing ahead with their plan to drill "potential kimberlite, base- and precious-metal targets" on the company's properties, just west of Lake Timiskaming in Northeastern Ontario. About $300,000 is earmarked for the promised drilling, while the rest will go toward "working capital purposes" -- the most pressing purpose being the payment of some bills.
As for the drill targets, it appears that a kimberlite target on new ground in Bucke township that the company acquired earlier this fall will be first. The feature to be tested is a magnetic anomaly, one that appears supported by indicator mineral sampling. One till sample yielded over 12,000 indicator grains at a site 600 metres down-ice from the anomaly, and RJK's crew has theorized a new mineral swath trailing away from the anomaly -- one unassociated with other kimberlites in the area and with indicator chemistry that is "unique from any known kimberlites in the Timiskaming region."
This drilling is a continuation of RJK's search for the source of the Nipissing yellow diamond, an 800-carat behemoth that wowed Tiffany & Co. over 100 years ago to the point that it sent a crew to the area to find more. The Tiffany geologists never did, nor did crews of geologists who were later working with De Beers, nor did those labouring for an array of eager Howe Street diamond promotions over the past 30 years. Oh, they did find kimberlites -- several of them in fact -- but while some carried diamonds, commercially sized gems were few and far between.
With one noteworthy exception, that is. Contact Diamond Corp. found a kimberlite in the area in 1995. It had a meagre microdiamond population, but the company belatedly realized the size distribution profile was unusually coarse, so it attempted a mini-bulk test in 2004. The result was encouraging, if marginally uneconomic, with a core portion of the pipe grading nearly 20 carats per hundred tonnes and with diamonds potentially valued at $100 (U.S.) per carat. And so, armed with musty old assessment records from 95-2 and a sketch of the Nipissing yellow reminiscent of a drawing of the Loch Ness monster, Mr. Kasner and his crew carry on.