Surface Mining Of The Lucerne West-Side

VIRGINIA CITY, NV - Corrado De Gasperis, President and CEO Comstock Mining Inc., reported that company completed substantially all of the surface mining of the Lucerne West-side and the extraction and remediation of the historic dump materials relating to the re-alignment of State Route 342 during the second half of 2015.  The re-alignment was completed in the fourth quarter of 2015. We continue processing the mineralized material stacked on our leach pad with recent metallurgical yield estimates increasing to over 87.5% as compared to the previous estimate of 85%. This increases our estimated recoverable gold ounces on the pad by approximately 1,317 ounces of gold.  We now expect that the leaching process and resulting gold and silver pours will continue well into the 2016 third quarter, as compared to previous estimates of June 2016.  During the 2016 first quarter, the Company poured 1,702 ounces of gold and 29,438 ounces of silver.

During the 2016 first quarter, the Company realized an average price of $1,184.91 price per ounce of gold and a $14.13 average sales price per ounce of silver.  In comparison, commodity market prices in the first three months of 2016 averaged $1,181.21 per ounce of gold and $14.83 per ounce of silver.

During the first three months of 2016, actual costs applicable to mining revenue were approximately $1.8 million, $1.4 million net of silver credits, as compared to $4.9 million, $3.7 million net of silver credits, during the first three months of 2015. This reduction of net costs applicable to mining revenue resulted primarily from higher metallurgical yields, and significantly lower labor and processing costs resulting from the Company’s transition out of Lucerne’s surface mining phase and into its underground exploration and development phase. Costs applicable to mining revenue included depreciation of $0.7 million and $1.5 million for the 2016 and 2015 first quarters, respectively.

“We have amassed, rezoned and permitted one of the largest land positions in the economically booming Northern Nevada Reno-Tahoe industrial quadrant while simplifying our capital structure and continuing to drive significant efficiencies across all of our fixed operating and administrative costs.   We are protecting this incredible leverage on gold and silver resource development through the lowest possible administrative and operating cost structure, and we are now ahead of schedule in delivering these savings,” stated De Gasperis.

During the 2016 first quarter, the Company advanced its exploration and development in the Lucerne area, primarily in the Quartz Porphyry (PQ) target and to a lesser extent, the Succor target area.  Lucerne activity included underground core drilling, underground drift (tunnel) development, and underground sampling. We also advanced the Dayton areas exploration activities with certain surface and underground sampling.