Atlanta doesn’t welcome U.S. Gold’s buying spree

According to Atlanta president, Olaf Tolpinrud, the two companies have never had a relationship in the past; however, a few months ago he said that US Gold purchased about one million shares “as one first big cross” and they purchased another 350,000 shares about six weeks ago. “They have been picking up a little bit on the market ever since.”

“US Gold has really been after us for some time, wanting to either take us over completely or form a joint venture. And we really haven’t been too enamored with the offers they have made,” he conceded.

Tolpinrud said that following extensive drilling last year Atlanta has about 900,000 oz of contained gold in two pits on its Idaho property along with 2.5 million oz silver. Deep drilling has also outlined a significant underground gold deposit (200,000 tons) at a depth of 1,100 ft which he said grades approximately 0.4 oz gold. “That has not been included in proven ore reserves which on surface total some 14 million tons grading about 0.07 oz.”

He estimated that about half the reserve is heap leachable and the other half would require conventional milling, namely flotation followed by pressure oxidation and cyanidation of the concentrate. What he described as a pre-feasi- bility study is currently under way and he confirmed “they are coming up with some very interesting numbers.”

Tolpinrud’s Grandview Resources, which developed and operated the Carson Hill mine 120 miles east of San Francisco, was taken over by Western Mining last year and presumably could be a “White Knight” on the horizon. Western Mining paid top dollar for Grandview and it also bought a few shares in Atlanta at the time. “So we are just sitting here waiting for them,” he quipped.

Ventures Trident out of Denver has about the same equity position as US Gold and he said so-called “friends of the company” own about 55-60% of the issued capital.

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