BKB re-assays lift historic silver grades ahead of JORC conversion

Our 2025 Small Cap Pick of the Year, Black Bear Minerals (ASX: BKB | OTCQX: BKBMF) just released results from the re-sampling of historic drill core at its silver project in Texas, USA.

BKB's project previously produced ~35.2 million ounces of silver at an average grade of 521g/t between 1883 and 1942. (source)

The most recent production run was between 2012-13 - operating ~A$150M of existing infrastructure (processing plant, refinery, grid power and water rights).

The project now has a 17.5Moz @ 289g/t silver foreign (non-JORC) resource - which we want to see converted into JORC compliance and underpin a restart plan for the project.

Today, BKB re-assayed some of the old holes that make up that foreign resource, returning results that UPGRADE the grade of the project…

The headline was a 54% increase in contained silver in one hole, which returned 6.7m @ 408g/t silver versus the 266g/t recorded historically.

(source)

There was also a nice surprise, some re-assays returned gold where the historic core was never assayed for it.

One hole came back at 3.1m @ 181g/t silver and 0.7g/t gold (plus lead and zinc) compared to the historic result containing silver only.

(A good sign considering BKB’s project actually has a history of producing gold too)

(source)

The re-assays also came from right across the project area, not one isolated spot - including hits outside that 17.5Moz foreign resource:

(source)

Here is the historic versus re-assay plot, every point sits on or above the red line showing all of the results range from similar to or better than the originals (above the red line = better):

(source)

That 17.5Moz foreign resource was built off these historic results, so re-assays coming back higher (together with the earlier twin holes) bodes well for the grade of an eventual JORC resource (no guarantees though).

BKB will now extend the re-analysis program across all of the available legacy drill cores from the project.

We covered BKB's most recent drill results here: BKB hits extensional holes to US silver resource with grades up to 1,333g/t silver

What we want to see next from BKB:

🔄 Silver project in Texas, USA

Over the next 6 months the main things we want to see are the following:

• 🔄 Rapid restart study (CAPEX estimate)
• 🔄 Drill program - 11 diamond holes
• 🔄 Multi-element gold/zinc/lead assays
• 🔄 Reassay (all other historic cores available to be reassyed)
• 🔲 Maiden JORC resource
• 🔲 Scoping Study starts
• 🔲 Restart Final Investment Decision (FID)

🔄 Gold project in Nevada

We covered BKB’s 2.2M oz gold equivalent resource in our most recent note here: BKB also owns 100% of a 2.2M oz gold project in Nevada

On that that project we want to see the following over the next ~6-9 months:

• 🔄 Mining studies
• 🔄 Follow-up drilling on deeper targets
• 🔲 Metallurgical testwork across shallow resource
• 🔲 Scoping study (project economics)