New land raises Silvercrest

Silvercrest Mines (SVL-V) had to wait for a trading halt to be lifted, but once it was the company’s shares went upward bound.

The trading halt on Silvercrest shares was ordered because of unusual pre-market trading activity this morning.

For its part Silvercrest says it isn’t aware of any material issues beyond what was released in its press release from Dec. 1.

That release outlined the acquisition of the La Joya property, which sits roughly 75-km southeast of Durango, Mexico.

In Toronto on Dec. 2, the company’s shares were up 15¢ or 10% to $1.65 on 758,000 shares traded.

Perhaps the movement had everything to do with location. La Joya sits in a veritable hot spot for mining with Grupo Mexico’s San Martin Mine, Industrias Penoles’ Sabinas Mine, Pan American Silver’s La Colorada Mine and First Majestic Silver’s La Parrilla Silver Mine all dotting the landscape.

For now though, Silvercrest is keeping the comparisons in-house.

“These properties bear logistical similarities to our Santa Elena Mine and we are hopeful that we will be able to progress the exploration in a manner and at a rate similar to Santa Elena,” Silvercrest’s president Scott Drever said in a statement.

Silvercrest’s Santa Elena project has probable reserves of 6.5 million tonnes grading 56.7 grams silver and 1.61 grams gold for 11.9 million oz. of silver and 339,000 oz. of gold.

Santa Elena Mine sits 150-km northeast of Hermosillo in the State of Sonora, Mexico.

The mine is a high-grade, epithermal gold and silver producer, with an estimated life of mine cash cost of less than US$375 per ounce of gold equivalent.

The first pour of silver and gold dore at the project came in early September of this year and the company is currently ramping up to production of 2,500 tonnes per day to produce 35,000 oz. of gold and 600,000 oz. of silver per year.

 The company is getting the newest land package by paying the vendors US$2.68 million over three years plus a 2.5% NSR for the western part of the property and another US$1.5 million and a 1.5% NSR for the eastern portion.

Past drilling and surface work was done by Luismin SA de CV from 1985 to 2001, and Silvercrest says that work suggest that geology and mineralization is similar to the nearby San Martin Mine, which is owned and operated by Grupo Mexico.

Silvercrest also says that its due diligence work uncovered several vertical veins and structures with widths up to 50 metres which cross-cut shallow-dipping mineralized skarn deposits up to 30 metres thick.

The company says the main alteration area looks to be roughly 2 km in strike length and 100 to 200 metres wide.

The weighted average grade of 118 historical samples collected at the property comes in at 90.5 grams silver, 0.71 % copper and 0.25 grams gold.

Silvercrest has already begun a 16 core hole drill program for 3,000 metres.

The program will test one kilometer of the exposed strike length of the mineralized system. It has already drilled four 4 holes with core samples from the first hole having submitted for assay.