BKB hits 2,990g/t silver from silver project in Texas, USA.
Our 2025 Small Cap Pick of the Year Black Bear Minerals (ASX: BKB | OTCQX: BKBMF) just re-assayed old holes from its silver project in Texas, USA.
Returning grades up to ~2,990g/t silver (and gold)...
This project produced ~35.2 million ounces of silver at 521g/t between 1883 and 1942.
The project was most recently mined in 2012-13 from existing processing infrastructure with a replacement value of ~$150M.
Today the project hosts a 17.5Moz @ 289g/t silver foreign (non-JORC) resource, which BKB is working to convert into a maiden JORC resource.
Today BKB released a third round of results from its ongoing re-assay program of old drill core at the project.
Once again, the new silver numbers came back higher than the originals, which while no guarantee is a positive sign for the JORC number to match or possibly exceed the non JORC figure.
There was one standout result today:
(source)
(The first batch of re-assays came back ~50% higher, the second batch up to ~147% higher - higher grades are becoming a trend here. We covered the second batch here)
Verifying the old core results is useful because it means BKB can fold decades of historic drilling into the pending JORC resource conversion.
These are historic results that have already been drilled, so if they can be included then theses results effectively amount to free drilling.
Today's results also confirmed more polymetallic mineralisation, with gold of up to 0.8g/t and lead up to 30%.
These historic samples were only ever assayed for silver, so just including the gold alone could add some nice by-product credits on top of the silver.
Here is how the re-assays have compared to the historic results:
(source)
And here is where the results came from relative to BKB's foreign resource:
(source)
What else is BKB up to?
Earlier in the week, BKB released the results of a scoping study for its Nevada gold project (Independence) based on just a small portion of the resource there.
Over here in Nevada BKB has a ~2.2M ounce gold JORC resource next door to $98BN Barrick and $158BN Newmont's Nevada Gold Mines (NGM) Phoenix Complex.
(source)
The scoping study was based off just ~420K ounces gold equivalent portion of its total 2.2M ounce resource showing:
- A post-tax NPV of ~A$511M - over 5.5x BKB's current market cap of $90M,
- A ~64% Internal Rate of Return, and;
- A ~1.4 year payback on initial capital of ~A$119M.
You can read our deep dive from earlier this week here: BKB: Surrounded by the biggest gold mining complex in the world - and this just happened
What's next for BKB?
🔄 Gold project in Nevada
Next we want to see BKB deliver:
- ✅ COMPLETED: Mining study phases on a heap-leach development
- ✅ COMPLETED: Scoping study
- 🔲 DUE NEXT: Metallurgical testwork across all epithermal oxidation states
- 🔲 DUE AFTER: Revised Scoping Study on the full 1.2M ounce shallow resource
- 🔲 DUE LATER: Pre-Feasibility Study
Eventually when drilling is back on the cards we want to see BKB test for the following:
- 🔄 UNDERWAY: Planning for follow-up drilling north of skarn (the 580m gap to WI-002)
- 🔲 DUE NEXT: Drill testing the Rebel Trend (1km of untested strike)
- 🔲 DUE NEXT: Deeper drilling at South Hill (untested stacked lodes)
🔄 Silver project in Texas, USA
Over the next 6 months the main things we want to see are the following:
- 🔄 Rapid restart study (CAPEX estimate)
- 🔄 Drill program - 11 diamond holes
- 🔄 Multi-element gold/zinc/lead assays
- 🔲 Maiden JORC resource
- 🔲 Scoping Study starts
- 🔲 Restart Final Investment Decision (FID)
