The gold derby is enjoying an ever-expanding number of competitors, and the most current news about gold strikes in this or that part of the world tend to refute the idea that the precious yellow metal is both finite and scarce. The latest to weigh into this competition is yet another outfit calling British Columbia its home. Vancouver-based Chalice Diamond Corp. (TSX-Venture:COD), announced in the second week of June that one of its optionees had struck it big on a reserve in northern Ontario.
Strike Minerals, Inc.(TSX:Venture:STK), which optioned four claims from Chalice and from Abitibi Mining Corp. (TSX:Venture:ABB) (COD owns 75 per cent of the claims), agreed to pay the two companies a total of $60,000 and 300,000 shares over a two-year period as well as spend $300,000 to explore the claims by March 2012. The results of a 30-hole drilling program at Chalice’s Nicholson property in Missinabie, Ontario, near Chapleau were announced earlier in the month and probed truly remarkable, including 298.43 grams gold per tonne over 0.46 metres intersected at a vertical depth of 40.5 metres on the main showing.
Strike is feeling its oats on this project; it’s so confident of future finds on the Nicholson project that it plans later this month to increase its interests in the mine by devoting a further $10,000 and another 50,000 shares to both COD and Abitibi.
Chalice has staked and optioned approximately 170,000 hectares of prospective ground near Missanabie. As part of the Hughes Exploration Group, COD is managed by a team with a stellar track record of discovery and mine development in Canada.
Chalice Diamond was spun out as a public company in 2007 through a plan of arrangement with predecessor Golden Chalice Resources Inc. (TSX-Venture:GCR). The Company's early success in discovering diamonds is due in part to strategic joint-venture partnerships designed to maximize funding and accelerate exploration progress. The company’s experience has also found that the techniques and tools used to explore for diamonds can also be used to discover gold, nickel, copper, silver and other metals.
Other successes on the Wawa-Missinabie project include what’s called the Bird Property, which encompasses an intriguing nickel-copper-platinum group metal target with a similar geophysical setting as the underground Eagle deposit being advanced toward production by Kennecott Minerals Company, a division of Rio Tinto plc (NYSE: RTP), in neighbouring Michigan. Once in production, Eagle will become the only American primary nickel mine.
Chalice Diamond has discovered 35 diamonds, including five macrodiamonds, in the same area in conjunction with Dianor Resources Inc. (TSX:Venture:DOR), on the latter’s Leadbetter Project. Nearby rock outcrops yielded another six microdiamonds from initial sampling.
Such diversity of drilling projects by this aggressive young company ensures that life is never boring. And COD reckons its stock price can only go up from a range of 9.5 cents – to which it peaked around this same time last year – to a 52-week low of two cents. The price is currently stuck around five cents, which is why the news about Strike’s finds is so welcome.
By: AllPennyStocks.com
