Collective hits 154 m at 12.66 g/t AuEq deep under Apollo's Ramp Zone

On November 3, 2026, Collective Mining reported a drill hole at its Apollo deposit in Colombia that cut 154.30 metres grading 12.66 grams of gold-equivalent per tonne — about two-fifths of an ounce in every tonne of rock, across a slab longer than a city block. Inside that run sat 30.45 metres at 39.01 grams, and inside that, a 4.75-metre slug of 184.25 grams gold-equivalent, carrying 182 grams of straight gold per tonne. The hole, APC174-D4, is a daughter of mother hole APC174-D off Pad 39 — a fan from one collar, drilled to between 1,208 and 1,362 metres below surface. When we last covered Collective, it was hitting ore in ground its own model had marked as waste; this hole does the opposite extreme — it beats the model on grade, badly. Our prior entry left Ramp Zone assays pending. These are the first of them. The rest of that backlog — 71 outstanding holes, 17 of them from the Ramp Zone, four of which have visible gold logged in core (APC174-D7, APC164-D5, APC180-D4, APC180-D3) — is still not reported.

Here is why it matters. True widths are disclosed as 60% to 100% of core length, and the lab work is thorough: anything over 10 grams of gold was re-run by a second method. So the numbers hold. The high-grade core beat the resource model, which had estimated those blocks at about 1 gram per tonne, and the high-grade envelope extended about 20 metres shallower and about 30 metres deeper than predicted along the hole, at depths between 1,208 and 1,362 metres below surface. The Ramp Zone resource already covered approximately 315 metres of strike before this hole; this intercept does not extend that footprint but beats it on grade. The hole ended in mineralization — the drill ran out of rods at rod capacity, not gold. This is the team that built Continental Gold and sold it to Zijin, with Agnico Eagle holding about 14.6%. Even so, the stock shed about a fifth of its value over three months while the junior gold index fell about two percent and gold about three — a company-specific slide, not a sector tide, from a mid-period peak near C$23 down to C$14.56.

What to watch, and the honest limits. True widths are a blanket 60% to 100%, so at the low end that 154.30 metres could be nearer 93 metres of real thickness. The gold-equivalent figure leans on high assumed prices (US$3,000/oz gold), though gold dominates this hole, so the equivalent roughly equals the gold. The northeast continuity rests on visible gold in unassayed core 80 to 410 metres away, and the release itself cautions that what the eye sees is not grade. Ahead: assays for the 71 pending holes; a second track-mounted deep rig arriving later this month to push toward sea level; a roughly 3-kilometre exploration adit starting this month; and the company targets an updated Mineral Resource between Q4 2027 and Q1 2028, followed by a Preliminary Economic Assessment shortly thereafter.

Public sources: source 1source 2source 3