There’s an old saying in mining: the best place to find a new mine is next to an old one.
Integra Gold‘s (TSXv:ICG) Lamaque and Sigma mines in Val-d’Or (direct translation: Valley of Gold), Quebec have produced over 9 million ounces of high-grade gold historically, worth roughly US $10 billion at current gold prices.
The company’s tenacious young President and CEO Stephen de Jong, just 32 years old, and Chairman George Salamis, are leveraging crowdsourcing to assist Integra in making their next multi-million ounce gold discovery.
Integra’s “Gold Rush Challenge” makes 75 years of mining data available through the internet to anyone who wants a chance to win a portion of a $1M prize pool.
In 2000, Goldcorp offered a similar opportunity to the public and the results were phenomenal, with 110 target sites produced resulting in 8M Oz of gold uncovered generating $3B – $6B in value for Goldcorp! Learn all about the backstory of Goldcorp’s success
here.
Integra is offering 12,000 times as much data in this new challenge! The digitized information includes over 500,000 assays, 30,000 drill holes, geophysical and regional data, and hundreds of kilometres of working 3D models of drifts, tunnels, and stopes at the historic Sigma and Lamaque mines. The objective of the challenge is for contestants to pinpoint the next multi-million ounce deposit on Integra’s considerable land package.
Worth noting, Lamaque was only mined to 1,100M and not 1,830M like Sigma. Integra is optimistic there could be undiscovered treasure below Lamaque, not to mention Integra prospecting on the virgin neighbouring property and discovering +1M Oz Au since 2010.
Mr. de Jong believes the mother lode is buried in the data they are releasing. He explains that areas at the historic mine site may have been overlooked, or that work was not followed up on before the mine closed (as a result of low gold prices and labour disagreements, not because the mines ran out of gold).
The competition is open to all fields of discipline and has already attracted over 200 participants from 32 countries.
The hard launch of the contest will begin mid-September and run till the end of 2015. Winners will be announced at PDAC 2016.
Watch the
video and learn more about Integra’s Gold Rush Challenge
here.
FULL DISCLOSURE: Integra Gold Corp is a Stockhouse Publishing client.