Abacus Announces Update on Jersey Valley Geophysical Program

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Oct. 21, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Abacus Mining & Exploration Corporation (“Abacus” or the “Company”) (TSXV: AME) is pleased to announce that a program of ground IP geophysics has begun at its Jersey Valley gold property, within the Battle Mountain trend of north-central Nevada.

The new high-resolution Time Domain Induced Polarization survey will consist of approximately twelve line-kilometres bracketing four historic lines of IP done by a previous operator in 2005. The historic IP has extensive, virtually untested anomalies, and limited past drilling shows that these are both gold and silver bearing. The new work was originally scheduled to commence near the end of September but was pushed back several weeks due to delays on the part of the contractor.

Abacus recently reprocessed the historic IP data, which very clearly shows two flat-lying anomalies (see Company website). The largest target is approximately 600 metres long by 500 metres wide. Both targets are open along strike to the northeast and southwest. The Company doubled the claim size in July of 2020 to cover the southwestern strike extent of these anomalies.

The reprocessing has highlighted the fact that the best portions of the two IP targets are essentially untested, although past drilling clearly indicates that they contain gold and silver, along with a suite of other elements typical of these precious metal bearing systems. The current IP program is designed to extend these anomalies both to the northeast and to the southwest, to enable a drill program to be planned.

Past drilling was neither extensive enough, deep enough nor optimally placed to adequately test the targets. Despite this, three historic diamond drill holes appear to have just grazed these two anomalies. The best results were:

• Drill hole 06JC014C intersected 1.18 g/t silver over 13.1 m near the top and then 0.19 g/t gold over 13.4 m near the end of the hole.
• Drill hole 06JC015C assayed 0.18 g/t gold and 3.6 g/t silver over 6.09 m part way through the hole and then 1.58 g/t gold over 1.52 m near the end of the hole.
• Drill hole 06JC017C, hit narrow zones of anomalous gold and silver throughout, and then 0.18 g/t gold over 29.87 m. at the end of the hole.
• Note that all intercepts are down hole lengths as insufficient drilling was done to determine true widths. Note further that these results are historic in nature and although the author was not involved in the original work, proper industry standard sampling and data verification procedures appear to have been followed

As demonstrated by past operators, the Jersey Valley property is prospective for both intrusion-related sediment hosted, and for epithermal precious metal mineralization, within the Battle Mountain trend of north-central Nevada. Jersey Valley is in close proximity to both the Phoenix/Fortitude mine complex (approximately 14 Moz gold plus significant Ag and Cu past production and a proposed mine life to 2063) and the Cove/McCoy Mine: 3.4 Moz gold and 110 Moz Ag past production. (Data is from the Newmont Mines and Premier Gold Mines websites. The reader is cautioned that the mineralization hosted on nearby properties is not necessarily indicative of mineralization hosted on the Company’s Jersey Valley gold property).