Aton Resources (TSXV:AAN) reports new discoveries the day after gold breaks out following indecision from the Federal Reserve. It's encouraging to see the company release important news like this as more people look to the gold space for opportunity.

The news from Aton out today, June 20th, provides new assays, maps, and field photos from 2 target areas that Exploration Manager Javier Orduna discussed with me in a prior interview, "Zooming around Google Earth". Learn about the exploration stories finding ancient paths to Rodruin with satellites here, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYeRMBLQv4c

The news today puts numbers on the board for these new target areas called Safaga South and Wasif.

At Safaga South, they took 12 selective grab samples and found gold in all of them. They're already talking about "quartz veins... over an area of several square kilometres" and tracing the "...main zone of veins... for approximately a kilometre." Aton provided photos of one of these veins where it had been mined in ancient times. They also shared a map showing 2 clusters of high-grade samples in line with each other, which raises all kinds of questions. This target area is just begging for more exploration.

At Wasif, Aton notes similarities to the Hamama area with a "strong gold-silver-polymetallic geochemical anomalism and the gossanous weathering of primary sulphides..." The news mentions this target covering "at least 1-2 km" there, too.

Big targets are good targets!

It's good to hear Aton note that further field work "... is warranted and will be undertaken in the near future." at both Safaga South and Wasif. There are several competing priorities for Aton, but I see this low-cost, high-impact exploration as an essential part of Aton's edge in the junior mining business.

The more new prospects Aton can identify and test, the better. Aton is able to make several rounds of preliminary investigations into these new discoveries and generate meaningful new information quickly and cheaply. This is an important part of Aton's exploration pipeline. But, of course, Aton also has other areas that are ready for drilling!

With gold getting a bid, there may be more wind in the sails to fund Aton's ongoing activities. Minex Consulting has shown that global exploration budgets are strongly correlated to gold price (+80% R-squared from 1975-2017; http://minexconsulting.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/R-Schodde-IMARC-Presentation-31-Oct-2018.pdf ).

Although political uncertainty ‎in Egypt will keep some people away from Aton, it's clear that the government wants to find a way forward. Bear in mind that the Safaga South prospect is located in the NE corner of the Concession area and that Aton announced on April 2 this year that they were relinquishing 20% of the Abu Marawat Concession, but were also extending it in this location. Clearly they were thinking ahead in order to bring in the Safaga South area. You might be surprised to see Aton give up part of the concession and add new parts at the same time. Why? Well, that's minerals exploration, and there appears to exist the flexibility to be able do this in Egypt.

Aton's discovery news release today is possible because they picked up some new exploration ground. That's a good sign for #EgyptMining. Read this note from Javier's in April for more, https://ceo.ca/@newton/aan-update-javier-orduna

Watch for new policy for the mining industries in Egypt. Changes are working their way through Egyptian political process and may become more important if gold continues to rally.

In the meantime, the Aton news release included a picture of Aton's geologists standing next to the vein at Safaga South. The vein looks thick and nearly vertical for c. 30 feet. It's fascinating to consider how the old-timers would have tracked this vein at surface, or how they would have mined it. Things get even more exciting when you look at the map of the area and see those high-grade samples lining up over hundreds of meters.

What were the old-timers doing at Safaga South or Wasif? These are great opportunities for an experienced exploration team to advance the understanding of new targets with low-cost work programs. This news also makes clear that Aton are looking at different styles of mineralization at Safaga South and Wasif. The mineralization at Safaga South is quartz vein hosted, and sounds similar to that mined on the Concession by the British during the early 1900’s, whereas the Wasif target sounds like a Hamama analogue. This again seems to demonstrate the amazing variety of mineralization Aton have at Abu Marawat and the huge potential of the licence as a whole. These areas of ancient mining activity are begging to be revisited and reworked. Grab samples are a start.

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