Gold | Silver
Status:
In December 2020, Condor concluded an agreement with Calipuy Resources Inc. (“Calipuy”) whereby Calipuy will purchase Condor’s wholly owned Peruvian subsidiary, Minas Lucero del Sur SAC (“MLDS”). MLDS is a single purpose company and owner of the Lucero project.
The consideration is US$3.5 million, payable in five years. If the price of gold exceeds US$2,500 per ounce at the time of final payment, the total consideration will increase to US$4.0 million; and if the price of gold exceeds $3,000 per ounce at the time of final payment, the total consideration will increase to $6.0 million. Calipuy has the option of compressing the payment schedule to three years, and in such case, the total consideration will be US$3.0 million. Condor has received the first three payments (a total of US$465,000), with the next payment due in December 2023.
Cóndor has maintained certain participation rights in future Calipuy financings. In the event Calipuy completes a financing, Condor has the option to participate in the financing at a 20% discount on the financing price, converting part or all of any outstanding payments due by Calipuy. Condor’s right to participate in a Calipuy financing is limited to 50% of the financing.
In June 2022, Element79 Gold Corp (“Element79”) acquired Calipuy and assumed Calipuy’s payment obligations. As consideration for the rescheduling of the December 2022 payment, Condor received 250,000 Element79 shares. All other conditions of sale of MLDS remain unchanged.
Location:
The Lucero property is located in the Chila Mountain Range in southern Peru, approximately 130 kilometers northwest of the city of Arequipa and 600 kilometers southeast of Lima. The property is located in the Chachas district, Castilla province of the Arequipa department, about 22 kilometers southeast of Buenaventura’s Orcopampa mine.
Property:
The 67 square kilometer project was acquired through the identification of potential gold and silver systems, by the exploration team, and acquired the mining concessions of the MEM, and all concessions, before the sale of MLDS to Calipuy, were 100 % owned by Condor/MLDS.
Sandstorm Gold Ltd. has a 0.5% NSR in the Lucero project, and Sandstorm, Condor, Calipuy and MLDS have executed an NSR allocation agreement with respect to Sandstorm’s NSR, in which Calipuy assumes the NSR obligations with Sandstorm.
History:
Condor acquired by acquiring a 100% interest in an area of 21 square kilometers, within the extensive former Shila Au-Ag epithermal mining district in Peru. The property is 130 km NW of Arequipa and 25 km SE of Buenaventura’s Orcopampa mine, at elevations ranging between 5,000 and 5,500 m. Buenaventura operated three underground mining areas on the concessions and ceased mining in approximately 2005. The Shila Mining district includes several precious metal vein and breccia mines, of which Sando Acalde, Pillune and Apacheta-shila are among the best known. . The extracted ore was processed at a small plant east of the concessions and during the last five years of Buenaventura production, reported production averaged approximately 20,000 ounces of gold and 470,000 ounces of silver per year with average grades of 14.7 g/t of gold and 450 g/t of silver. Historical mining focused on low, intermediate sulfidation vein deposits and, to our knowledge, there was no exploration beneath the worked area. We believe there is potential for the discovery of additional high-grade ore shoots beneath and in the vicinity of the three former primary producing vein mines on the Lucero claims, and in the numerous other veins and structures located on the property. Condor geologists have also identified a previously unexploited and unexplored high-sulfidation epithermal zone in the northwest part of the concession with anomalous gold and silver values, associated with breccia, silicification and vuggy silica type ledge systems.
Signs of older workings indicate that the gold veins were known long before and were probably exploited in Inca and colonial times.
A sampling program conducted in late 2016 by an unrelated third party confirmed the bonanza-grade precious metals reported in previous mining operations, and reinforces Lucero’s potential to host additional reserves in the many structures (more than 80 veins have been mapped on the surface), and also in the prospectivity of the high-sulfidation epithermal large tonnage target, and also in the evidence of gold and copper porphyries, which crops out in the Pillune area.
Sampling locations were dispersed throughout the concessions and tested six different target areas. In total, 60 samples were taken and analyzed, with the majority (50) being samples from outcrop channels. The majority of the outcrop samples (forty-four of fifty) were taken at the surface, while several of the outcrop samples (six of fifty) were taken from the wall rocks and mineralized structures within the ancient underground works. The remaining ten samples (which were not outcrops) consisted of 8 random samples taken at the surface and 2 random samples from the interior of the old workings. Of the sixty samples, reported gold values ranged up to 144 g/t Au, with 21 of the samples reporting gold values greater than 1.0 g/t Au.
Silver values ranged from 0.1 g/t Ag to over 10,000 g/t Ag, with 23 of the samples reporting silver values greater than 50 g/t Ag. Sample number 3938, a channel rock sample of 1.8 m taken at the surface of the main vein in the Sando Acalde area, reported 18.9 g/t gold and more than 10,000 g/t silver (the upper analytical limit of the laboratory analysis used).
Geology/Mineralization:
High grade “bonanza style” direct shipping ore was mined here in the past from multi-events of vein fills, such as massive sulfides, carbonates primarily (rhodochrosite), quartz, which are low to intermediate sulfidation events. Lucero is one of many areas of epithermal deposits of precious and base metals, hosted in Tertiary volcanic rocks of the central Andes Mountains of southern Peru.
