The First Assay
Tuesday Drill Digest
TSX · TSX-V · CSE · NYSE-A · Nasdaq · July 14, 2026
19 companies · 51 qualifying holes · 8 jurisdictions
The busiest tape in weeks — 19 companies, 51 qualifying intercepts, and gold accounting for all but a handful. The day splits cleanly into two stories: bulk-tonnage scale (Auro’s 625m porphyry intercept in Ecuador, Sitka’s 348m at Blackjack, Spanish Mountain’s 303m) and high-grade narrow gold, where Metals Creek’s 115.51 g/t over 9.85m at Ogden is the outlier of the year so far on a C$7.4M shell. AbraSilver’s 109m of 221 g/t Ag at Oculto West is the silver headline.
⚑ Hole of the Day
Metals Creek Resources MEK TSX-V · C$7.4M
Ogden Gold Project, Timmins, Ontario — Orogenic · Extension · Deep (from 297m)
TOG-26-76: 9.85m of 115.51 g/t Au* from 296.95m
incl. 3.10m of 356.85 g/t from 301.85m · 0.50m of 2,050 g/t
GT 1,138 g/t·m (Exceptional) · AuEq·m 1,137.8 · GT/MCap 153.76×
Nearly ten metres of triple-digit gold, with a half-metre of 2,050 g/t and visible gold logged in core — this is coarse-gold, flat-lying vein material in the Thomas Ogden fold structure, and the nugget effect means the headline grade should be treated as an upper bound until more holes land. Even so, GT of 1,138 g/t·m is the best gold intercept in the 30-day archive by a factor of seven (previous best: Fury Gold’s 147 g/t·m on 13 July). At 153.8× GT/MCap on a C$7.4M market cap this is the most extreme value-per-dollar reading the screen has produced — with the caveat that Ogden is a 50/50 JV with Discovery Mining, so Metals Creek carries half the ounces, and only three holes were drilled in this program. At ~297m downhole this is an underground target, not open-pit. Watch for follow-up on the fold axis.
* Drilled widths — true width not determined pending geological modelling.
GT/MCap Spotlight — Top 5
| MEK TOG-26-76 Au ★ HOTD | 153.76× |
| ABRA DDH 26-036 Ag | 10.86× |
| RKL RR-26-08 Au | 3.64× |
| RUSH B26C-039 Au | 3.52× |
| SAG SC-26-07/09 Cu | 2.44× |
Metals Creek’s 153.8× is fourteen times the next name on the sheet and is a clean gold number, not an artefact of cross-metal unit scaling. AbraSilver’s 10.86× is unit-inflated (Ag g/t·m against a C$2.2bn cap) and shouldn’t be read against the gold names. Best clean mid-cap ratio: Sterling Metals at 2.44× on a 323m near-surface copper intercept.
Today’s Qualifying Intercepts — Top 10 of 51
| Rating | Company | Hole | m | Grade | GT | GT/MCap |
| Exceptional ★ | Metals Creek MEK | TOG-26-76 | 9.85 | 115.51 g/t Au | 1,138 | 153.76 |
| Exceptional | Auro Metals AURO | DSB-59 | 625.12 | 0.64 g/t Au, 0.10% Cu | 400.1 | 2.01 |
| Exceptional | Sitka Gold SIG | DDRCCC-26-128 | 348.0 | 1.12 g/t Au | 389.8 | 0.98 |
| Exceptional | Montage Gold MAU | BGDD26-090 | 15.0 | 20.97 g/t Au | 314.6 | 0.08 |
| Exceptional | AbraSilver ABRA | DDH 26-036 | 109.0 | 221.2 g/t Ag, 0.72 g/t Au | 24,111 | 10.86 (Ag) |
| Exceptional | Orosur Mining OMI | MAP107 | 135.5 | 1.91 g/t Au | 258.8 | 2.02 |
| Exceptional | Montage Gold MAU | BGDD26-093 | 27.4 | 8.46 g/t Au | 231.8 | 0.06 |
| Exceptional | Scorpio Gold SGN | 26MN-110 | 97.99 | 2.05 g/t Au | 200.9 | 2.16 |
| Great | Spanish Mountain SPA | 26-DH-1376 | 303.18 | 0.50 g/t Au | 151.6 | 1.17 |
| Great | West Point Gold WPG | GC26-169 | 51.9 | 2.50 g/t Au | 129.8 | 0.65 |
Also qualifying (not shown): ALK BD468 (Exceptional, Au-Sb), SAG SC-26 (Great, Cu, 2.44×), AZM WL25-01 (Great, Li₂O, 0.97×), FRED Herradura (Great, 2.08×), TXG MLE26-0135 (Great), RKL RR-26-08 (Good, 3.64×), RUSH B26C-039 (Good, 3.52×), AUME AUR-26-03 (Good, 2.30×), WM MR-26-144 (Good), BYN AX-26-837 (Good). Near-miss: AZM WL25-02 (8.7 %·m Li₂O), BYN AX-26-865 (8.4 g/t·m).
GT thresholds — Au: Good >10, Great >50, Exceptional >200 g/t·m · Ag: Good >500, Great >2,000, Exceptional >10,000 · Cu: Good >20, Great >40, Exceptional >150 %·m · Li₂O: Good >16, Great >36, Exceptional >75 %·m
* Drilled widths — true width not determined. Micro-cap market caps are approximate.
GT thresholds — Au: Good >10, Great >50, Exceptional >200 g/t·m · Ag: Good >500, Great >2,000, Exceptional >10,000 · Cu: Good >20, Great >40, Exceptional >150 %·m · Li₂O: Good >16, Great >36, Exceptional >75 %·m
* Drilled widths — true width not determined. Micro-cap market caps are approximate.
Not Screened
CanAlaska Uranium (CVV · TSX-V) — Nebula, Saskatchewan. Graphitic fault zones and alteration confirmed; no uranium assay intercepts reported.
Standard Uranium (STND · TSX-V) and Aventis Energy (AVE · CSE) — Corvo, Saskatchewan (JV partners, same holes). Anomalous uranium of 100–350 ppm U (≈0.012–0.041% U₃O₈) — geochemical enrichment, well below the 0.15 %·m Good threshold.
North American Niobium (NIOB · CSE) — Seigneurie, Quebec. 946.25 ppm HREO over 7.7m; TREO GT ≈ 0.73 %·m, far below the 50 %·m Good threshold, and NdPr% not disclosed so AuEq is not computable.
Standard Uranium (STND · TSX-V) and Aventis Energy (AVE · CSE) — Corvo, Saskatchewan (JV partners, same holes). Anomalous uranium of 100–350 ppm U (≈0.012–0.041% U₃O₈) — geochemical enrichment, well below the 0.15 %·m Good threshold.
North American Niobium (NIOB · CSE) — Seigneurie, Quebec. 946.25 ppm HREO over 7.7m; TREO GT ≈ 0.73 %·m, far below the 50 %·m Good threshold, and NdPr% not disclosed so AuEq is not computable.
THE FIRST ASSAY
thefirstassay.com
Au $3,200/oz · Ag $33/oz · Cu $13,700/t · APT $3,300/mtu
Not investment advice.
Not investment advice.