The playbook — copper · October 9, 2026
NeoTerrex options a quiet Québec copper-gold belt last drilled in the 1990s
The explorer can earn 100% of the Reservoir project by 2030. The grades are real but historical, and nobody has verified a single number.
NeoTerrex Minerals signed a definitive option agreement dated October 6, 2026 (announced October 9) to earn 100% of the Reservoir copper-gold-silver-tungsten project in Québec’s Eastmain Greenstone Belt. This is a paper transaction, not a drill result — the company gets the ground by spending C$3.5 million (cash plus exploration work) through December 31, 2030, with Fury Gold Mines keeping a 2% royalty. Every number in the release comes from old files, mostly 1985 to 1997, and NeoTerrex says plainly it has not checked any of them itself.
So what’s in those old files. The flagship gold zone, called C52, has been traced about 1,600 metres along strike and is reported open at depth and further along — the release gives no depths for the historical holes, so how far below surface this sits is not stated. The best gold hit is 21 metres grading 1.79 grams of gold per tonne — about 38 gram-metres, a useful but not spectacular number that measures thickness times grade. The richer gold comes in thin slivers: 11.5 grams over 1.5 metres, 8.02 grams over 2 metres. A separate zone called Mitlin, sitting roughly 1,400 metres southwest, threw off eye-popping surface chip samples — one metre at 8.15% copper and 45.9 grams of silver, another at 5.14% copper and 52 grams of silver — but surface grab samples over a single metre are the easiest high numbers in mining to find and the hardest to trust. Only two drill holes have ever tested Mitlin. The company says it does not know how Mitlin and C52 relate. Stephens, a P.Geo. who led UrbanGold’s 2021 sale to Troilus, is the qualified person. The market has not warmed to the story: NTX fell 17.6% over three months while copper gained 7.9% and the copper-equity index rose 12.5% — a company-specific discount, not a sector problem.
Here is what honesty requires. All results are historical (1985–2013) and unverified — no QA/QC, no cut-off grade, no compositing method stated. True widths were never determined, so every width is apparent, likely wider than reality. The high-grade gold intercepts are narrow, 1.5 to 2 metres. The Mitlin bonanza values are surface samples, not drill-confirmed. The Cyr zone has no drilling at all. Watch for exploration permits, TSXV approval of the option, and a winter drill program at C52 and Mitlin — the first modern work here since 2013.