Good morning all.
@La Tache take a bow mate and thanks for the kind words too.
It is nice to see that sort of motivation and care taken to bring a translation of your understanding to the thread.
I have not been inclined of late and have to be somewhat careful in posting with the amount of participation I now have in some stocks.
Just like
@JandJ I hold a lot here and this is now my largest holding.
I do thank you
@La Tache for bringing me out of my hidey hole, or rather inspiring me out of it.
The amount I am holding is now spread across the heads, the 2 options and the Con Note exposure which may not be exercised for another year due to the
benefit of the 10% it pays, compounded monthly which makes for a growing income.
Needless to say that this stock has already paid back in spades as the first participation was 8c.
What I would like to portray here is the potential upside that we are not really supposed to speculate about.
Speculation = dreaming in some cases and this is what mine is.
Please bear with me while I digress.
I did put up a vid some time back with Eric Sprott talking about the acquisition of Fosterville.
Please keep in mind that this is all by memory so forgive me if I have some facts slightly modified and please check on the facts.
Fosterville was purchased during a time when the GP was much lower than now.
https://investingwhisperer.com/the-story-beside-the-lowest-cost-gold-producer-in-the-world/Sprott sent Quentin Hennigh to do a geological assessment.
QH tells him that the Sb ( Antimony ) levels at a depth was an indicator of the best part being below what they already have.
So they drill deeper and find the Swan Zone at ~1600m which was 40m wide but contained 2moz and the grades were multiplied rapidly.
Fosterville when purchased was grading around 7g/t, which is a lovely juice to start with but the mining has reached ~45g/t since the Swan Zone inclusion.
If my memory serves me correctly, Sprott says that the value increased something like 13 times from that SZ discovery over a very short time.
Back to VTX.
Below is a pic that shows the Tasman Orogen and the extent of the possible influence that we have seen by some similarities.
And yes it does go down to the NE Tasmania area and yes they have found similar HG Epithermal Vein hosted gold there.
As some of you may know, LRV with Hillgrove, Agnico Eagle with Fosterville, Mandalays Costerfield, and SXG Sunday Creek, all have similar type geology.
There are many more by the way and LGM's Drake may well show a similar type of mineralisation as they progress drilling.
They all have Sb which is the head scratch as this element is absent in our project so far.
According to RJ, they believe that the others had later geological events that introduced the Sb.
If I was to Juxtapose the mineralisation while keeping in mind, there have been later geological events with Fosterville to our own here at Hill End,
one would wonder if it is possible to discover a similar ore body to say the Swan Zone.
We can only dream.
Remember that the original Fosterville that Sprott took over was running at ~7g/t.
We have how many g/t?
Yes, Hawkins Hill at 309g/t which is near enough 10oz/t and Home to the Holterman Nugget which you already know well from this thread.
We also have Reward at 16.72g/t
My Q is, now what could one reasonably expect to find given that our grades above are extremely shallow while being the highest along this orogen.
The only reason the mining was halted at that depth was the water table and the lack of equipment to dewater in those days.
If we include the northern land holding, we have 35km of anticline.
Some of you will also know how difficult it is to drill for this type of ore body.
It is done in a spider web pattern.
If the drilling at Fosterville was done in a conventional pattern at 50m spacings, the Swan Zone would not have been found.
This pic from S2R drilling indicates how that drill pattern is conducted and you can also see it used in the search at Sunday Creek and so on.
The Red lines were added by me but were also where the holes were drilled at a later part of the campaign, ( not exact of course ).
From this pattern they can see where the Anticline-sincline is and where the faulting is.
This pic is how an neat geometry would look but the geo's would need to understand the folding which they get a good understanding from Diamond drilling only.
There are a lot of investors that claim the twin hole ( spider web pattern in the beginning ) as being Directors Specials.
That is because they do not understand the complexities of finding the goods in this type of mineralisation, particularly when there is multiple faulting which adds to the complications.
Here we look at the faulting and how that offsets parts of the form, making the geometry of the targets harder to understand.
Mind you, all these allow more fluids to flow into these systems, potentially bringing the gold with it as in the case of Swan Zone.
Have a look at this one taken from Kirkland Lake at Fosterville.
You can get a better understanding of how some very rich pockets could be missed if the drill patterns were not done in a specific manner and why it costs more to conduct this type of exploration, ( the pay off can be in many many multiples ).
All needs to be DD which also adds to cost.
Now one can understand how good the decision by our board to have our own rig which can fit in our tunnels and the drilling cost substantially reduced.
This pic shows the complexities in a stratigraphic orientation.
It also indicates the Swan Zone and how small it is, ( no proportioning of course ).
But also note the offset and how easy that could be missed if it were not for the geological familiarity gained from understanding the stratigraphy done by DD, Diamond Drilling.
Given that the SZ was discovered at ~1600m and they are now down to something like 2500m, now we look at how deep we are and what grades we started with above the 60m level, ( think Holterman and think 285kg ).
The above targets for KL ( Now Anico Eagle ) they are the offsets ( faults ) were the fluids could be increased and new plumbing introduces more Quartz and hence potentially more gold.
In this pic I have added the target area.
So why is this the target?
Directly beneath the existing, among the known fluids and proven HG vein system, not too far into the water table, not too much drive to add and not far to move the goods.
Why not?
Do I think we will find a Swan Zone?
My bloody oath I do.
Has Fosterville found anything like a Holterman Nugget?
Even at 2500m deep?
So that is my vision of the future here and I think it could be many others also, ( they may not say so to avoid being locked up
).
Just think, we have a few thousand metres to go and 35km of this anticline in total.
Yet we have only scratched the surface with an incredibly compelling starting point that really tells the tale.
If I was trying to get this started as a project and showed the path finders that we have, ( but from the surface ) would that be compelling, without what we have now?
There are around 3000 artisanal diggings that indicate the answer to that Q.
See you at a dollar ( as
@fbx258 has in his chart ) and long before we really hit the GO pedal.
Never mind Biting at the Bit, I have almost chewed through it.
@La Tache keep the flow mate.
Kind regards, Wack.
(20min delay)