THE FIRST ASSAY
Tuesday drill digest
TSX · TSX-V · CSE · NYSE-A · Nasdaq · August 18, 2026 · 9 companies · 63 qualifying holes · 7 jurisdictions
A heavy Tuesday — fourteen releases, nine companies through the screen, and copper set the ceiling. American Eagle's NAK26-87 returned a full kilometre of 0.46% CuEq starting at surface in British Columbia, the longest hole ever drilled at NAK and, at 250 %·m Cu against a C$248M market cap, the best discovery-scale value on the sheet. Gold was busier but more diluted: Silvercorp's 212.5 m at 1.68 g/t in Kyrgyzstan is the single largest GT of the day at 357 g/t·m, yet a C$3.65B market cap knocks it to 0.10×, while K2 Gold and Westward Gold both hit high-grade oxide and Carlin-style gold in the US Southwest at sub-C$250M valuations. Five further releases could not be read in full this run — see Not Screened.
⚑ HOLE OF THE DAY
American Eagle Gold (AE · TSX-V · C$248M)
NAK, Babine Porphyry District, British Columbia · Porphyry-Cu · Extension step-out · Shallow, from 39 m · Stable jurisdiction
NAK26-87: 1,001 m of 0.25% Cu, 0.12 g/t Au (0.46% CuEq) from 39 m, including 218 m of 0.46% Cu, 0.35 g/t Au (1.01% CuEq) from 552 m.
GT
250.3 %·m
EXCEPTIONAL
AuEq·m
464.8
Cu basis
GT/MCap
1.01×
(Cu)
A kilometre of continuous chalcopyrite-bornite mineralisation from 39 m, with no internal break above cut-off — this is the geometry that makes a low-strip open pit, not just a long assay run. The 218 m core at 1.01% CuEq sits 550 m down, so the hole is really two stories: a bulk-tonnage cap and a genuinely economic-grade heart beneath it, and the step-out puts that heart 150 m northwest of NAK25-78 with the system still open to the north-northwest. At 1.01× GT/MCap it is the best value-per-dollar hole of discovery scale on today's sheet, and the largest copper intercept we have screened this month — Alpha Exploration's 67 m at 0.38% Cu yesterday was the prior best. Caveats: true widths are not determined, the CuEq assumes a flat 80% recovery across all four metals, and molybdenum is excluded from our AuEq because we carry no conversion for it. Watch the assay flow — five holes reported out of an ~80-hole programme running to April 2027.
GT/MCap spotlight — top 5
Best row per company. Au, Cu and Zn metrics sit on different price and unit bases — not directly comparable across metals.
Ticker | Hole | Metal | GT/MCap |
|---|---|---|---|
WG | T2601 | Au | 2.15× |
ASTR | LMD-148 | Au | 2.09× |
RYR | HNRC013 | ZnEq | 1.65× |
KTO | DF26-020 | Au | 1.04× |
AE | NAK26-87 ★ | Cu | 1.01× |
Today's qualifying intercepts — top 10 of 63
Rating | Company | Metal | Hole | m | Grade | GT | AuEq·m | GT/MCap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Exceptional | Silvercorp (SVM) | Au | DH26M687 ✓ ⚠ | 212.5 ◉ | 1.68 g/t | 357.0 | 357.0 | 0.10 |
Exceptional | K2 Gold (KTO) | Au | DF26-020 * | 39.6 ◉ | 5.35 g/t | 212.0 | 212.0 | 1.04 |
Great | Silvercorp (SVM) | Au | DH26M818 ✓ ⚠ | 47.0 ◉ | 3.95 g/t | 185.7 | 185.7 | 0.05 |
Great | K2 Gold (KTO) | Au | DF26-020 * | 25.9 ◉ | 7.14 g/t | 185.0 | 185.0 | 0.91 |
Great | Astra Expl. (ASTR) | Au | LMD-148 ✓ ~ | 2.0 ◉ | 80.54 g/t | 161.1 | 162.0 | 2.09 |
Great | Westward Gold (WG) | Au | T2601 ✓ | 27.0 ◉ | 3.72 g/t | 100.4 | 100.4 | 2.15 |
Great | Tiger Gold (TIGR) | Au | CEDDH-014 * ~ | 78.6 | 0.80 g/t | 62.9 | 66.8 | 0.77 |
Good | Ashley Gold (ASHL) | Au | TAK-26-08 * | 38.8 ◉ | 0.73 g/t | 28.3 | 28.3 | n/a |
Exceptional ★ | American Eagle (AE) | Cu | NAK26-87 * | 1001 ◉ | 0.25 % | 250.3 | 464.8 | 1.01 |
Exceptional | Arras Minerals (ARK) | CuEq | n/d * ~ | 568.9 | 0.33 % | 187.7 | n/a | 0.79 |
✓ true width stated · * drilled width, TW not determined · ◉ from ≤200 m · ⚠ high jurisdiction risk · ~ moderate jurisdiction risk · ★ hole of the day. GT thresholds — Au: good >10, great >50, exceptional >200 g/t·m; Cu: good >20, great >40, exceptional >150 %·m; Zn+Pb: good >50, great >150, exceptional >300 %·m. AuEq basis: Au $3,200/oz · Ag $33/oz · Cu $13,700/t · Zn $3,000/t. Mo carries no AuEq conversion and is excluded from all porphyry AuEq figures. 53 further qualifying intercepts and 14 near-misses are in the archive.
Not screened
Metalsource Mining (MSM · CSE) — Silver Hill. High-grade silver to 335 m below surface, 55 m down-plunge step-outs, intervals to 15.3 m. Release enumerated but not read in full this run — no browser was connected and the run hit its reading budget; grade and width pairs were not captured.
Pinnacle Silver and Gold (PINN · TSX-V) — El Potrero, Mexico. Samples to 59.2 g/t Au and 424 g/t Ag with visible gold. Not read in full this run.
Soma Gold (SOMA · TSX-V) — Escondida, Colombia. First intercept 1.85 m at 4.25 g/t Au including 0.65 m at 12.10 g/t. On headline numbers this is a near-miss (GT 7.9); not read in full this run.
Errington Metals (EM · TSX-V) — Balfour Zone, Sudbury. Not read in full this run.
Kirkland Lake Discoveries (KLDC · TSX-V) — KL West, 65-hole district programme. Not read in full this run.
Arras Minerals (ARK · TSX-V) — shown in the table above on headline data only. The source article URL exceeded the fetch length limit, so the hole ID, copper grade and full assay table were not verified, AuEq is not computable, and the market cap is an approximate mid-August figure.
THE FIRST ASSAY · thefirstassay.com · Au $3,200/oz · Ag $33/oz · Cu $13,700/t · Zn $3,000/t · Not investment advice.