Comstock Mining Announces Progress and Additional Plans for Advancing Dayton Project

Comstock Mining Inc. today announced its progress towards, and additional plans for, advancing its Dayton project, which contains the Company’s second largest gold and silver mineral resource.

The Company has retained the independent mining advisory firm of Behre Dolbear to produce a National Instrument 43-101 (“NI 43-101”) compliant technical report for the Dayton resource area, followed by a Preliminary Economic Assessment (“PEA”) during the fourth quarter of 2018.  This report is expected to include a robust resource estimate, and to provide a plan to further develop the resource. It will also be the basis for the subsequent PEA, which will assess the preliminary economic feasibility for the project.

Corrado De Gasperis, Executive Chairman and CEO of the Company, commented, “We have always planned for the Dayton to be our second operating mine, and have been working diligently to increase our understanding of this important area. The new technical report and PEA will confirm the value we have placed on the Dayton.”

Behre Dolbear authored the Company’s previous, January 2013 Technical Report for the Comstock Mine Project, which included a resource estimate for the Dayton resource area.  The 2013 estimate included 8.33 million tons of Measured and Indicated resources, containing 238,000 ounces of gold and 1,770,000 ounces of silver, at a cutoff grade of 0.007 ounces of gold per ton.  The estimate included an additional 8.59 million tons of Inferred resources, containing 206,000 ounces of gold and 1,130,000 ounces of silver.  The new report will be the first stand-alone, NI 43-101 compliant report for the Dayton resource area.

Since January 2013, the Company has:

• Increased the property position, both mining claims and private land, including more than 350 acres of contiguous private lands suitable for a dedicated mineral processing site;
• Achieved a landmark, Lyon County Master Plan and zoning change that broadened the potential land uses, and restored mining as an appropriate use for the historic mining patents;
• Restored the historic mine portals for safe exploration in the Dayton project area;
• Completed underground geologic mapping of the accessible, historic Dayton mine workings;
• Completed underground sampling that provided assays and other analysis for furthering the geologic interpretation, including the identification of new mineralized structures;
• Drilled 408 shallow holes totaling 30,819 feet, identifying mineralized structures covered by shallow alluvium that meaningfully improved the geological mapping of the area;
• Expanded trials with Cycladex, Inc., a strategic investee, in part funded by the National Science Foundation, for extensive testing of their patented, cycladextrin lixiviant, a potential alternative to traditional cyanide heap leaching; and
• Advanced screening-level, economic analysis of a pilot-processing facility with Itronics, Inc., (OTC:ITRO) using their KAM-Thio metallurgical recovery processes, a potential alternative to traditional cyanide heap leaching for processing Dayton material.

This new information will support building a completely updated, three-dimensional model of the Dayton project, with a new resource estimate, that will be included in a new NI 43-101 Technical Report, scheduled for the fourth quarter of this year.  The new resource model will be used as the basis for a PEA that evaluates multiple economic scenarios for mining and processing the Dayton material.

The ongoing project development has most recently benefitted from updated data and analysis from accessing the restored Dayton Adit.  The Dayton Adit was developed from 1938 until 1942. The Company previously reported historic assays that identified a continuous zone of mineralization in the Dayton Adit of more than 205 feet of length with an average grade of 0.054 ounces of gold per ton.

Heavy rainfall during the past two years exposed and revealed a newly recognized, mineralized, cross-cutting shear zone, dominated by black and orange ferro-manganese clays with bronze colored bands.  The full extent of the shear zone has not yet been exposed. A one meter (approximately 3 feet) wide sample of the material was collected and analyzed using Inductively Coupled Plasma – Atomic Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-AES) and fire assayed for gold and silver.

The results showed the following elevated values for a number of elements:

Previous multi-element analyses conducted in the Company’s resource areas typically showed very low base metal content (typically between 10-20 ppm) and non-detectable values of Cadmium (Cd), Selenium (Se), Thallium (Tl), and Tungsten (W).  This specific zone has a very different geochemistry signature, with much higher values.  The Company plans additional sampling and detailed geological mapping to define the full extent of the shear zone.

Corrado De Gasperis concluded, “The discovery of these exceptional precious metal grades (0.25 opt gold and 3.5 opt silver) and now other minerals, in just a portion of the newly exposed zone affirms and enhances our outlook of Dayton’s potential.  We are gaining traction using internal resources and partners to assess alternative processing technologies with higher yield, lower waste and, critically, lower cost and clean solutions for mining the Dayton. We look forward to publishing these results in a stand-alone, NI 43-101 technical report.”