The playbook — gold · September 22, 2026
Bonanza-grade hit at Premier — while the stock goes the other way
Cambria's infill drilling returns 166.2 g/t gold and 3,383 g/t silver over 3.1 metres, a dense cluster of high grades on a mine that already failed once.
Cambria Gold Mines pulled a stunning number out of the Premier mine in British Columbia’s Golden Triangle: 3.1 metres grading 166.22 grams of gold per tonne — every tonne of that rock carries about five and a third ounces of gold — plus 3,383 grams of silver per tonne. Inside that hit sits a bonanza slug of 1.1 metres at 467 g/t gold and 9,510 g/t silver. This is the same Premier that, under Cambria’s predecessor Ascot Resources, poured first gold in April 2024 but never scaled to commercial production, tipped toward bankruptcy, and was recapitalized for C$175 million and rebranded in January 2026. Robert McLeod, who took Red Mountain to feasibility before selling IDM to Ascot in 2019, runs the company now.
The headline number grabs eyes, but the substance is the cluster. Dozens of underground holes on roughly 12.5-metre centres returned double-digit gold plus strong silver: 5 metres at 37.38 g/t, 10 metres at 14.68 g/t, 9.2 metres at 18.26 g/t. That last one, hole P26-2705, stepped out 10 metres beyond the end of the historic workings along the main Premier structure, between about 246 and 254 metres below surface, toward the 602 Zone. Tight-spaced consistency like this is what firms up resource continuity for mine planning — the company disclosed a 1 g/t cut-off, per-interval true-width factors, named ALS Canada as the lab, and laid out its QA/QC. And yet the market went the other way: over three months CAMB shed 13.3% while the junior gold index jumped 27.2% and gold itself rose 4.8% — a roughly 40-point gap that is company-specific, not sector weakness.
Now the honest part. The true widths of these intercepts run 50% to 99% of the down-hole length. On the star hole, P26U-0095, the drill dipped only 8 degrees — nearly flat — which makes the 63% true-width factor very sensitive to how the zone is oriented, so the real width could be materially overstated. The Qualified Person, VP Exploration Blaine Smit, is named but is a company employee, not independent. Continuity to the 602 Zone is described as ‘believed to be continuous’ — an interpretation, not yet drilled. The bonanza silver relied on overlimit reassay, with nugget effect flagged. First assays from Silver Coin drilling are expected in October 2026; Cambria says it is targeting stope development and underground drilling access at PNL in Q4.