The playbook — silver · October 13, 2026
Collective hits 1,283 g/t silver in a fresh zone north of Apollo
One spectacular silver-tungsten intercept grabs the eye, but the real story is low-grade rock inside the pit shell that used to be waste.
On October 13, 2026, Collective Mining reported a drill hole at the northern end of its Apollo system in Colombia that cut 5.50 metres grading 1,283 grams of silver per tonne, plus 0.83% tungsten, 0.57% copper and 0.17 gram of gold — an unusually intense silver-tungsten slug starting 89.15 metres down the hole. The company calls it a new discovery, 600 metres north of the resource’s tungsten-rich area. When we last covered Collective, it was hitting ore inside ground its own model had marked as waste; that theme continues here. The headline hole, APC-186, also carried a broader 87.6 metres at 158 grams per tonne silver-equivalent from just 17.7 metres down. Our prior entry left Northern Breccia and Ramp Zone assays pending — those still are not in this release, and the 23 Ramp Zone holes now sit inside a backlog of 99 holes awaiting results.
Here is why it matters. The one spectacular silver-tungsten hit is rare, but it is a single intercept. The team itself frames the real story differently: 22 of 23 holes in the Shallow Halo Zone returned mineralization in rock previously modeled as waste above the open-pit cutoff of 0.30 gram per tonne gold-equivalent. That is bulk tonnage that could convert waste to resource inside an existing pit. The grades there are modest — holes ran 44 to 50 grams per tonne silver-equivalent across broad widths, including 149.55 metres from surface in one hole. This is resource expansion within a defined deposit, not a frontier find. It is the same team that built Continental Gold and sold it to Zijin for roughly C$2 billion, with Agnico Eagle holding about 14.99%. Even so, the stock slipped 1.5% over three months while silver rose 4.6% and the junior silver index climbed 9.3% — company-specific weakness, not sector drag. The sparkline shows a run to about C$23 mid-period before a sharp reversal back to where it started.
What to watch, and the honest limits. The 1,283 gram-per-tonne hit is one 5.50-metre intercept; the silver-rich zone is open to the north and east, but high-grade continuity across holes is not yet shown. True widths are disclosed only as a blanket 60% to 100% of core length, so that 5.50 metres could be as little as 3.3 metres of real thickness. The bulk-zone grades are low — the value rests on tonnage and open-pit economics, not grade — and the silver-equivalent and gold-equivalent figures lean on high assumed prices of US$60 per ounce silver and US$93.31 per pound tungsten, with 70% tungsten recovery not yet confirmed by pilot plant. Only 29% of the 2.4-kilometre-by-200-metre target has been drilled. Ahead: assays for the 99 pending holes; the company says adit construction is set to begin in Q4 2026 and an Apollo environmental license application is targeted for the second half of 2027.