Don’t be fooled by Talisman Mining’s (ASX:TLM) $16m market cap – this is a cashed-up explorer with a history of actually creating value for shareholders.

In October last year, Talisman sold its interest in the Springfield copper project to major miner Sandfire Resources (ASX: SFR) for $72.3 million in cash.

The only meaningful discovery near the massive DeGrussa deposit so far – the small but high-grade Monty deposit at Springfield – was made in May 2015 by  Talisman and Sandfire.

Talisman put $40.9 million from the sale straight back into shareholders pockets.

Now, buoyed by a $12m cash balance, Talisman is beginning a new journey at its exciting 3000 sq km Lachlan copper-gold project in NSW.

Talisman’s Dan Madden says it’s an underexplored but extremely well mineralised part of the world.

“When we walk over this ground, we see a lot of outcropping mineralisation and old mining shafts,” he told delegates at the Resources Rising Stars conference on the Gold Coast.

“There’s been very little exploration undertaken in the last 30 years, and therein lies the opportunity for us.”

Madden says the explorer has spent the last 12 months identifying over 40 targets for drill testing.

“It’s taken us the last 12 months to get to this point; the targets have been identified, and now we are testing them,” he says.

“We are now going to be generating a large amount of news flow. We will be very, very active for the next 18 months with the targets we have in front of us.”

The most advanced of these targets is called Blind Calf.

The high grade Blind Calf copper discovery.

Drilling by Talisman and prior explorers has shown the Blind Calf-Dunbar system extends for about 300m and to a depth of over 200m.

Drilling also identified a zone of high-grade copper mineralisation (more than 5% copper) within the main lode that remains open and untested at depth, down dip and plunge.

“At the top of the Blind Calf and Dunbar lodes are the old mine shafts from the 1900s. 20 per cent oxide copper was taken out by the old-time miners,” says Madden.

“We don’t know how deep it is, because it is yet to be tested at depth.

“Theres clearly economic mineralisation at Blind Calf – the question is scale.”