The First Assay
Monday Drill Digest
TSX · TSX-V · CSE · NYSE-A · Nasdaq · July 20, 2026
3 companies · 15 qualifying holes · 3 jurisdictions
A thin Monday covering a 72-hour window. The weekend produced nothing at all — no Friday-afternoon or Sunday-evening assay releases — and the three announcements in this digest all crossed the wire within two minutes of each other this morning. The spread is at least geographically interesting: Awalé's deep gold below the pit at Odienné in Côte d'Ivoire, Eastport's sediment-hosted copper in Botswana, and Barksdale's porphyry step-outs in Arizona. Awalé owns the grade-thickness table outright;Eastport, at a C$19M market cap, owns the value-per-dollar column.
⚑ Hole of the Day
▾ Deep · From 364mExtension · Step-outCôte d'Ivoire · Low-Mod
Awalé Resources ARIC TSX-V · C$88M
Odienné (BBM), Côte d'Ivoire
BBDD0030: 46m of 2.35 g/t AuEq* from 364m
incl. 17m of 3.41 g/t AuEq from 371m
| GT 108.1 g/t·m Great | AuEq·m 108.1 Au basis (PR) | GT/MCap 1.23× (Au) | Holes pending 10 of 12 |
BBDD0030 returned 46 metres of 2.35 g/t gold equivalent — 1.93 g/t gold with 0.39% copper and modest silver credits — from 364 metres downhole, with a 17-metre core at 3.41 g/t. This is the first of twelve holes testing whether BBM's high-grade core survives below the open-pit resource, and so far the answer is yes: both holes hit the mineralised structure where the model put it. At 364m these are underground targets rather than pit feed, so continuity and mineable width matter more than strip ratio — and true widths have not been determined, which is the main caveat on every number here. Companion hole BBDD0031 supplied the headline, 7m at 7.21 g/t including a single metre at 43.68 g/t, the highest grade drilled at BBM to date — but a one-metre bonanza is a vein signal, not scale, and our rules keep it out of contention here. At 1.23× GT/market cap this is respectable value for an C$88M company, though perspective helps: July 14 alone produced eleven larger gold intercepts, led by Metals Creek at 1,138 g/t·m. Ten more holes are at the lab.
* Drilled widths — true width not determined pending geological modelling.
GT/MCap Spotlight — Top 5
Au and Cu metrics are on different price bases — not directly comparable across metals.
EVI NAKDD25-007 Cu ◉ — 1.76×
EVI NAKDD25-003 Cu ◉ — 1.72×
EVI NAKDD25-004 Cu ◉ — 1.28×
ARIC BBDD0030 Au ★ HOTD — 1.23×
ARIC BBDD0031 Au — 0.82×
Eastport sweeps the top three, but a C$18.8M denominator is doing much of that work — a micro-cap will almost always screen well on GT per dollar, and these are 0.23–0.30% Cu infill intervals, not a discovery. Awalé's 1.23× is the more robust number, earned against an C$88M market cap. Barksdale trails at 0.49×;its step-outs were explicitly designed to map zonation 600m out from the high-grade cluster, not to repeat it.
◉ From depth ≤200m (shallow) · ⚠ High jurisdiction risk · ~ Moderate jurisdiction risk · ✓ True width stated · ★ HOTD
Today's Qualifying Intercepts — Top 8 of 15
| Rating | Company | Metal | Hole | m | Grade | GT | AuEq·m | GT/MCap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Great ★ | AwaléARIC | Au | BBDD0030* | 46.0 | 2.35 g/t AuEq | 108.1 | 108.1 | 1.23 |
| Great | AwaléARIC | Au | BBDD0030 (2nd)* | 38.0 | 2.74 g/t AuEq | 104.1 | 104.1 | 1.18 |
| Great | AwaléARIC | Au | BBDD0031* | 36.0 | 2.01 g/t AuEq | 72.4 | 72.4 | 0.82 |
| Good | BarksdaleBRO | AuPorphyry-Cu | SUN26-009R* | 111.3 ◉ | 1.62 Ag + 0.058 Au g/t | 6.5 | 8.3 | 0.14 (Au) |
| Good | EastportEVI | CuSed-hosted | NAKDD25-007* | 109.6 ◉ | 0.30 % | 32.9 | 43.8 | 1.76 (Cu) |
| Good | EastportEVI | CuSed-hosted | NAKDD25-003* | 137.1 ◉ | 0.23 % | 32.2 | 42.8 | 1.72 (Cu) |
| Good | EastportEVI | CuSed-hosted | NAKDD25-007 (2nd)* | 54.2 ◉ | 0.47 % | 25.4 | 33.9 | 1.36 (Cu) |
| Good | BarksdaleBRO | CuPorphyry-Cu | SUN26-013R* | 77.7 ◉ | 0.30 % | 23.3 | 31.0 | 0.49 (Cu) |
↗ View all 15 intercepts in Google Sheets
+7 not shown: ARIC BBDD0030 (3rd) Great 0.66×, ARIC BBDD0031 (2nd) Great 0.57×, ARIC BBDD0031 (3rd) Good 0.50×, ARIC BBDD0031 (4th) Good 0.34×, ARIC BBDD0030 (4th) Good 0.25×, ARIC BBDD0030 (5th) Good 0.15×, EVI NAKDD25-004 Good 1.28×
Near-Miss
| Near-miss | EastportEVI | Cu | NAKDD25-003 (2nd) | 37.4 | 0.43 % | 16.0 | 21.4 | 0.86 |
| Near-miss | BarksdaleBRO | Cu | SUN26-013R (2nd) | 7.6 | 1.93 % | 14.7 | 19.5 | 0.31 |
| Near-miss | EastportEVI | Cu | NAKDD25-003 (3rd) | 59.4 | 0.20 % | 12.0 | 16.0 | 0.64 |
| Near-miss | EastportEVI | Cu | NAKDD25-007 (3rd) | 21.9 | 0.50 % | 11.0 | 14.7 | 0.59 |
| Near-miss | EastportEVI | Cu | NAKDD25-007 (4th) | 14.1 | 0.72 % | 10.1 | 13.5 | 0.54 |
| Near-miss | BarksdaleBRO | Ag | SUN26-012R | 91.4 | 4.59 g/t | 419.7 | 4.3 | 8.86 (Ag) |
| Near-miss | BarksdaleBRO | Ag | SUN26-007R | 182.9 | 2.0 g/t | 365.8 | 3.8 | 7.72 (Ag) |
| Near-miss | BarksdaleBRO | Ag | SUN26-012R (2nd) | 36.6 | 8.77 g/t | 320.8 | 3.3 | 6.77 (Ag) |
Barksdale's three silver rows are the distal Mn-Ag-(Zn-Pb) zonation halo, not ore — their high GT/MCap is an artifact of silver's unit scale and is not comparable to the copper names.
✓ True width stated in PR · * Drilled width — TW not determined · ◉ From ≤200m (shallow)
GT thresholds — Au: Good >10, Great >50, Exceptional >200 g/t·m · Cu: Good >20, Great >40, Exceptional >150 %·m · Ag: Good >500 g/t·m
AuEq: Au $3,200/oz · Ag $33/oz · Cu $13,700/t · GT/MCap uses C$ mkt cap at July 20, 2026
Barksdale SUN26-009R passes only on the polymetallic screen (normalized sum 1.01) — both metals are individually sub-economic.
GT thresholds — Au: Good >10, Great >50, Exceptional >200 g/t·m · Cu: Good >20, Great >40, Exceptional >150 %·m · Ag: Good >500 g/t·m
AuEq: Au $3,200/oz · Ag $33/oz · Cu $13,700/t · GT/MCap uses C$ mkt cap at July 20, 2026
Barksdale SUN26-009R passes only on the polymetallic screen (normalized sum 1.01) — both metals are individually sub-economic.
Not Screened
Jaguar Uranium — Huemul U-Cu-V project. Channel and rock-chip samples returned values above the 25,000 ppm upper detection limit for both uranium and copper, with over-limit re-analysis pending. Surface sampling, not drilling — outside the screen.
Thistle Resources (TRCG · TSX-V) — Brunswick Antimony, New Brunswick. Trench program returned portable-XRF antimony values to 23.04% Sb. Trench XRF is a field-screening tool, not a certified assay, and this is not drilling;samples are with ALS Global for certified analysis.
Thistle Resources (TRCG · TSX-V) — Brunswick Antimony, New Brunswick. Trench program returned portable-XRF antimony values to 23.04% Sb. Trench XRF is a field-screening tool, not a certified assay, and this is not drilling;samples are with ALS Global for certified analysis.
THE FIRST ASSAY
thefirstassay.com
Au $3,200/oz · Ag $33/oz · Cu $13,700/t · APT $3,300/mtu · Not investment advice.
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