Marvel Discovery Corp said it has acquired an additional 53 mining claims totalling 1,325 hectares of land to add to its existing land position on its Victoria Lake gold project.
The claims were acquired through an option agreement with the vendor, Roland Quinlan, and increases Marvel's land holdings in the area to 7,650 hectares. Quinlan will carry out the prospecting work on the claims, the company said.
This new acquisition is located along the Exploits subzone and covers a large highly prospective structural zone proximal to the Valentine Lake Shear Zone, which hosts Marathon Gold's Valentine Gold project with resources of four million ounces of gold.
WATCH: Marvel Discovery Corp acquires land package in Newfoundland along Baie Verte Brompton Line
"These claim additions were a strategic move, not only in expanding the size and potential but tying up ground with the highest gold till-in-soil samples in the province of Newfoundland,” Marvel president and CEO Karim Rayani said.
“This shows we are in the right place for a potential discovery adjacent to what will likely become Newfoundland's next and largest gold mine. We now have 7,650 hectares tied onto Northern Atlantic's largest gold deposit,” he added.
Marvel said the newly acquired claims contain the highest regional gold-in-till sample in the Newfoundland Geoscience Atlas reporting 785 parts per billion (ppb) gold. It said there were no subsequent exploration efforts to follow-up on this extremely high gold-in-till sample. Till samples exceeding 70 ppb gold are considered highly anomalous, according to Quinlan.
The company said regional gold-in-till samples have increasingly been successful in the Central Newfoundland Gold Belt in vectoring exploration efforts to those areas of high merit leading to an increase in new gold showing discoveries. The Victoria Lake gold project is host to interpreted extensions of the Valentine Lake Shear Zone and two major thrust faults, a wide structural corridor interpreted to play an integral part in the Marathon gold deposit.
Under the option agreement, Marvel paid the vendor $15,000 and 300,000 Marvel shares and 300,000 warrants at $0.25 per share within 15 days of the completion date. It will pay a further $40,000 in cash and issue 200,000 additional shares within three years of the effective date. Within five years, the company will pay a pre-net smelter return (NSR) fee of $10,000. Marvel has agreed to spend a minimum of $60,000 in exploration expenditure within three years of the effective date. The vendor has also retained a 2% NSR, which Marvel has the right of first refusal to purchase 1% for $1.5 million.
Marvel has some 10 projects currently and is looking for gold, nickel, copper, cobalt and vanadium in Ontario, Quebec, and Newfoundland, while also being on the hunt for rare earth elements (REE) and uranium in British Columbia.
Contact the author at stephen.gunnion@proactiveinvestors.com