VR Introduction

September, 2022

History and Structure

VR is an established junior exploration company focused on greenfields opportunities in critical metals, copper and gold in the western United States and Canada. VR is a publically traded, Canadian company registered in British Columbia and listed on the Venture Exchange (TSX.V) in Vancouver under the symbol VRR.V, with secondary listings in Frankfurt (5VR) and on the OTCQB in the United States (VRRCF).

VR is the continuance of 4 years of active mineral exploration in Nevada, USA, as a private company starting in 2014, followed by a successful IPO 2017. The founders are Michael Gunning, CEO, and Darin Wagner, Chairman. The Company is founded on their diverse careers in the global mineral exploration, and their proven track record in the junior mineral exploration sector, having steered three different companies in the past twelve years from discovery through successful M&A transactions for an aggregate valuation in excess of C$1.3B.

The goal of VR is explicit: leverage its experience and expertise in grassroots exploration of underexplored, large-footprint mineral systems towards early-stage discovery in order to capture the steepest part of the value creation curve in the exploration and mining process for its shareholders.

The Company maintains its day-to-day work out of an exploration office established in Vancouver, British Columbia. The Company employs a tight administrative cost structure, with a focus on translating publically-raised funds directly into its mineral exploration work.

The Company limits its annual financing goals to actual annual exploration budgets, in order to maintain a tight share structure. That structure includes a 10-15% insider position, maintained by participation in financings on an ongoing basis, and a collective holding of approximately 45% of the Company’s shares by the CEO and six mining-long resource investment funds.

Capital markets programs are ongoing. The Company works with Peak Marketing Corporation to enhance marketing strategies and expand dissemination of information, including various social media platforms. The Company continues to work with Renmark Communications to ensure its website at http://www.vrr.ca is fully functioning and regularly updated to ensure Corporate disclosure and information on exploration properties and activity are current.

Exploration Model

The Company is focused on opportunities in mineral deposit districts which have been underexplored during the past 50 years of the modern exploration era. The Company applies modern mineral deposit models and new exploration technologies to properties with large hydrothermal and alteration footprints for critical metals, and copper and gold.

VR explores properties it owns outright, 100%, in order to leverage their upside potential to shareholders. Mineral exploration properties in Nevada are held in a wholly-owned US subsidiary registered in Nevada. New opportunities are evaluated on an ongoing basis, whether by internal generative work and direct staking, by a joint venture or a direct acquisition of a property from a third party, or by a corporate transaction (e.g. merger).

The Company has completed independent, NI 43-101 compliant Technical Reports on two of its properties: the Bonita copper-gold porphyry property in Nevada, dated March 2, 2017, and; the Danbo epithermal gold-silver project in Nevada, dated January 27, 2020. Both are filed on SEDAR.

Current Focus

The Company added the Ranoke, Hecla-Kilmer and Northway properties in Ontario to its Nevada-based portfolio in 2018, 2020 and 2021 respectively, as a direct extension of the Company’s platform of applying current models and new technologies to underexplored, large-footprint systems.

Historical exploration in the region has been hindered by the lack of outcrop, covered by a regional blanket of till. However, the properties are proximal to regional infrastructure including active rail, and provincial grid power and the northern terminus of Highway 634 at Otter Rapids, just 23 kilometers east of the Hecla-Kilmer property. Such infrastructure facilitates cost-effective exploration, and is favourable for advanced-stage project development.

The Ontario properties are associated with large magnetic anomalies along the western margin of the Kapuskasing Structural Zone (KSZ), a crustal-scale shear zone and failed rift hundreds of kilometres long which bisects the Archean Superior province between James Bay and Lake Superior. The KSZ has a long-lived history of repeated ultrabasic and alkaline intrusions spanning 1.6 billion years, and it is a prospective setting for the emplacement of multiphase carbonatite complexes and IOCG-IOA fluorite-carbonate hydrothermal breccia systems with critical metals, copper and gold.

Most of the REE + Nb deposits in Ontario occur along the KSZ. VR’s discovery of REE mineralization at Hecla-Kilmer fits the model, and has unique advantages, including:

  • the sheer vertical and lateral scale of the system;
  • the high proportion of high value magnet REO’s;
  • occurrence at surface, and;
  • occurrence near infrastructure at Otter Rapids.

But just as important: the REE discovery at H-K is timely. It is relevant to the critical metal policy statements from governments across North America aimed at developing a domestic supply of raw materials in order to spurn the growth of down-stream EV and wind turbine sustainable technology industries in the emerging green economy.

VR is doing blue sky exploration for critical metals, the R&D, if you will, at the front end of the EV and wind turbine sustainable technology sectors. The ability of North America to lead in those down-stream industries and capture their value is currently impeded by the lack of domestic supply of the required raw materials. For example, there is currently a virtual global monopoly in rare earth elements (REE), with China controlling all aspects, from mining (61%) to metal processing and extraction (87%) to the manufacture of permanent magnets (91%). Western leaders around the world are actively looking to change this inherently unstable and dangerous supply dynamic.

Fortunately, the REE mineral system discovered at Hecla-Kilmer contains valuable REEs such as neodymium that are essential for every permanent magnet in every EV and wind turbine made, and these magnet REEs have even got the attention of the White House, and rightly so. It is this specific REE mineral composition at Hecla-Kilmer which creates such an unusually high in-situ polymetallic basket value of our intersections, and underscores their overall value potential to our shareholders.

Global rare earth element supply must increase by 655% if we are to reach our collective goals in the western world for net-zero emissions in order to address climate change. For many different reasons, we believe our discovery has the potential to contribute to that challenge.

Current Exploration Plans, Second Half of 2022

Hecla-Kilmer project, Ontario.

VR plans for its fourth drill program at its Hecla-Kilmer critical metals discovery in northern Ontario this fall. The plan is to commence delineation-stage drilling in follow-up to mineralization intersected in all three of the first three reconnaissance drill programs across the complex, starting in 2021.

  • News Release NR-22-08; July 21, 2022:

    Drill Hole HK22-013:
    243 m @ 1.01 % TREO, of which 19% are PMREO, within
    290 m @ 0.91 % TREO, starting at surface, and including
    39 m @ 2.01 % TREO with 65 m @ 1.56 TREO with 20% PMREO.

VR has discovered a large and rich rare earth element mineral system at Hecla-Kilmer, starting with Hole 2 in 2021 and culminating in Hole 13 in 2022, as shown above. We have been on the ground for three years proving up this discovery, with 11 of the 17 test holes completed so far having high-grade REE mineralization. It occurs in three different areas across more than 2.5 km of the overall complex. It occurs at surface in all three areas, and has more than 500 m of vertical extent in the Hole 13 area. Finally, it is located a mere 23 km from active rail, provincial grid power and the terminus of Highway 634 at Otter Rapids; location, location, location for cost-effective exploration and favourable economic metrics for development.

Amsel gold-silver property, Nevada.

After continuous surface exploration for two years starting in 2018 at our Amsel epithermal gold-silver property located in west-central Nevada, and upon successfully receiving the POO drill permit, VR completed in March of 2022, the first leg of a planned, two-stage reconnaissance drill program. Three reverse circulation (“RC”) holes were completed on the northern IP anomaly to depths of 774 - 823 ft each (236 - 251 m), for 2,402 ft in total (732 m). Each hole successfully intersected continuous silica-sulphide alteration through its entirety. Gold and silver mineralization was intersected in altered tuff in the upper parts of Holes 1 and 2 and in the lower part of Hole 1, spanning about 200 vertical metres overall in the uppermost part of the epithermal system at Amsel:

- 62.5m @ 15.9 g/t Ag & 0.10 g/t Au in Hole 1, incl. 12.2m @ 32.6 g/t Ag & 0.12 g/t Au, starting at 211.8 m.

The Company continues to evaluate opportunities to complete the second leg of the program during the fall drill season of 2022, in order to test the southern structural block of the horst at Amsel that hosts the overall mineral system. Based on magnetic and IP surveys, and integrated rock and soil geochemistry and alteration mineralogy, the southern structural block is believed to be the principal pathway of the high temperature epithermal fluids, and proximal to the source of the overall hydrothermal fluid system responsible for the 2 x 3 km alteration footprint on surface. This target is on the southwest flank of the hilltop at Amsel where there is little historic exploration and no previous drilling, ever.

The low-sulfidation epithermal gold-silver system at Amsel has attributes comparable to the 20 M oz Round Mountain gold deposit and mine located 45 km to the north, which provides a compelling upside-potential for this project overall.

Investment Summary

VR Resources has demonstrated conviction and discipline towards its business model and exploration strategy during the past 7 years in order to successfully navigate a challenging capital markets cycle in resources during the past decade. VR has maintained active exploration on the ground throughout that period, and is now positioned to expose its shareholders to the potential for discovery-based value creation with targets ready to drill and discoveries ready to advance.

Hecla-Kilmer has received successive $200,000 awards in the two-year, Ontario Government junior exploration grant program enacted to support critical metal exploration. The REE discovery at Hecla-Kilmer aligns with government policies currently being developed in Ontario and across North America to address the inherently dangerous, and unstable global monopoly in REE mining and extraction in China.

The price strength of elements such as neodymium and praseodymium which are essential for permanent magnets necessary in EV’s and wind turbines reflects the rapid growth of sustainable technologies, and the pressing need for a more balanced global supply outside of China, which currently controls more than 90% of end-product permanent magnets. Through its discovery of REE mineralization at Hecla-Kilmer with a high proportion of the high value magnet REO’s, VR has the opportunity to capture value in a resource sector that is shifting to the changing demands of the green economy.

The investment thesis towards the upside potential of VR Resources has not changed since its inception. It is multi-faceted:

  • The life-long experience of its management and Board of Directors in early-stage mineral exploration, and its collective track record of success in value creation for shareholders through successful M&A;
  • The focus of its executive management exclusively to the business of VR;
  • A tight share structure, including a strong insider position and strong positions from six mining-long institutions;
  • A focus on greenfields exploration and discovery, representing the greatest value creation potential at the front end of the Lassonde Curve for the exploration and mining process;
  • Focus, expertise and conviction towards the potential of targets never previously drilled within large-footprint mineral systems that lack both modern and systematic exploration;
  • 100% ownership of properties; no joint venture interests, no carried interests, no back-in interests;
  • Properties with local infrastructure (road access and near-by service -hubs) for cost-effective exploration, and infrastructure such as power grids and railroads essential to mining companies for viable project development should a discovery occur;
  • Properties located in jurisdiction with a long and well-established history of regulatory support for the exploration and mining industry;
  • Properties located in mineral districts where major mining companies are active.

Technical Information and Governance

VR strives for technical excellence in its work, and corporate industry leadership. VR’s management has led numerous industry and research organizations in the past, and is recognized with numerous industry achievement and recognition awards.

Technical information contained on this website has been prepared in accordance with the Canadian regulatory requirements set out in National Instrument 43-101. Justin Daley, MSc, P.Geo., VP Exploration at VR and a non-independent Qualified Person oversees all aspects of the Company’s mineral exploration projects. The content of this document, and this website, has been prepared and reviewed on behalf of the Company by the CEO, Dr. Michael Gunning, PhD, P.Geo., a non-independent Qualified Person.