THE FIRST ASSAY

TSX · TSX-V · CSE · NYSE-A · Nasdaq — August 16, 2026
8 companies · 52 qualifying holes · 4 jurisdictions

A five-day catch-up edition: the last archive closed 11 August, so this sweep covers every release from 12–16 August in one pass. Copper carries the window — Koryx put 831 m of continuous ore-grade CuEq through a single hole at Haib, while Nine Mile turned a C$15.5M shell into the best value-per-dollar hole on the sheet with 24.55 m of 3.49% CuEq true width at the Wedge. Arizona Gold & Silver was the strongest gold name, stacking three nested Great-rated intervals in one hole at Philadelphia.

Coverage caveat: no browser session was available this run, so 8 of 16 candidate releases could not be read. They are listed under Not Screened.

⚑ HOLE OF THE DAY

Haib Copper Project, Namibia · Porphyry-Cu · Infill · Shallow, from 0 m

HM155: 831 m of 0.27% CuEq* from 0 m
incl. 244 m of 0.42% CuEq from 536 m

HM155 ran 831 metres from surface to the bottom of the hole without leaving mineralisation — the entire hole is ore-grade. At 0.27% CuEq this is a low-grade, very-high-tonnage porphyry, so the number that matters is contained metal rather than headline grade, and 224 %·m is the largest GT on the sheet by a factor of 1.4. The 244 m at 0.42% CuEq from 536 m says the system stiffens with depth rather than fading, and starting at zero metres means the top of it strips at a low ratio — which is the entire economic argument at Haib. This is infill ahead of a resource update and a PFS targeted for end-2026, so it confirms the model rather than discovering anything new. On value-per-dollar it is mid-pack: Nine Mile is ten times better on GT/MCap at one twenty-seventh the market cap. Second-largest copper AuEq·m in the current archive window, behind Andina Copper's 504 m at Cobrasco on 11 August. Watch the updated MRE and whether the silver by-product Koryx has now started modelling survives into the PFS.

* Drilled widths — Koryx states true widths are unknown.

Nine Mile Metals tops the sheet at 5.52× — a C$15.5M company that put 24.55 m of 3.49% CuEq, reported as true width, into one hole at the Wedge. That is 1.7× the next name. The caveat is real: its CuEq is a five-metal calculation assuming a flat 95% recovery across Cu-Pb-Zn-Ag-Au, which is optimistic ahead of metallurgy — on contained copper alone (1.89% over 24.55 m) the ratio roughly halves. Apex Critical Metals at 3.17× is the cleanest large-scale ratio here, though TREO %·m is not comparable to copper or gold.

✓ True width stated · * Drilled width, TW not determined · ◉ From ≤200 m (shallow) · ★ Hole of the Day
GT thresholds — Au: Good >10, Great >50, Exceptional >200 g/t·m · Cu: Good >20, Great >40, Exceptional >150 %·m · TREO: Good >50, Great >200, Exceptional >500 %·m
AuEq basis: Au $3,200/oz · Ag $33/oz · Cu $13,700/t · NdPr $70/kg. GT/MCap uses C$ market cap at 16 August 2026.
Apex states NdPr only as a 10–20% range, so its AuEq is not computable.

Seven near-misses sit in the archive. Two worth naming: Koryx HM152 (62 m @ 0.32% CuEq, 0.99× the Cu Good threshold) and Arizona Gold & Silver PC26-165 (0.98 m @ 10.19 g/t Au) — the latter lands at exactly 0.999× the Au threshold, so a centimetre more core would have qualified it.

THE FIRST ASSAY
thefirstassay.com — every junior miner drill result scored before the open.

Au $3,200/oz · Ag $33/oz · Cu $13,700/t · APT $3,300/mtu
Not investment advice.