- The Philadelphia Project lies in the Oatman district which has produced over 2 million ounces of gold
- The Ramsey asset lies two hours west of the city of Phoenix
- Experienced management team
What Arizona Silver Exploration does:
Arizona Silver Exploration (CVE:AZS) (OTCMKTS:AZASF) is on the hunt for high-grade gold and silver in the 'mining friendly' US state of the same name.
The Vancouver-headquartered company owns 100% of the previously producing Philadelphia property in Mohave county, Arizona, which was discovered in the late 1800s and operated intermittently, mainly between 1917 and 1935 as a 50-tonne-per-day (tpd) underground mine.
Past production at Philadelphia ranged from 10 to 27 grams per tonne (g/t) gold with historic silver grades in the production shaft averaging 420 g/t silver.
The firm also boasts the Ramsey asset, which lies two hours west of the city of Phoenix, and saw historic high-grade production of 1,370 g/t of silver. It has 41 existing 1960s underground drill holes. Notably, the silver mineralization is open-pittable at depths hit so far.
The company also owns the Sycamore Canyon project, where 31 g/t gold and 553 g/t silver have been encountered at surface. Here, the company has staked an additional 27 unpatented claims surrounding the core group of leased claims, to protect possible extensions of the silicified breccia, both to the northwest and the southeast, and to cover any additional veins identified.
The Sycamore Canyon property lies 25 miles from Safford, a town which serves the large copper mines of mining major Freeport MacMoran.
How is it doing:
In its first announcement of 2021, on February 9, Arizona Silver announced that it had signed a new contract for a minimum of 4,000 feet of core drilling in at least 12 holes at its Philadelphia gold-silver project.
The group said the new drill program would begin mid-February, with the objective of testing the down-dip extensions of high-grade gold-silver mineralization intersected in the previous round of drilling announced on October 5, 2020.
Arizona Silver also noted results from its fall 2020 drill program at the Philadelphia project. Reverse circulation (RC) and core holes PC-20-40A/B, PC20-42A/B, PC20-43A/B, PC20-44A/B were all drilled to intersect the down-dip projection of the high-grade mineralization encountered in previous core drilling on the property, but all four holes failed to intersect any vein mineralization.
The company said it interpreted these results to indicate that the vein has been faulted off at depth, and it is evaluating where the offset portion of the high-grade vein lies. It noted that the evidence collected to date suggest the fault is possibly a reverse fault and the continuation of the vein lies to the west beneath the cliffs of silicified and veined rhyolite and granite that has not yet been tested by drilling.
Just a week later, Arizona Silver announced that it had signed a lease agreement with the owner of the Perry Patented Claim adjacent to the unpatented lode mining claims at the Philadelphia property.
The company said the Perry Patented Claim contains the continued southern strike extension of the Arabian Fault and the vein that hosted the Arabian Mine in the early 1900s. The vein is exposed for most of the entire 1,250 foot length along the axis of the claim and contains several prospect pits and shallow mine workings along the outcrop expression of the vein, some with visible gold present at the surface.
The vein has never been drilled within the boundaries of the Perry Patented Claim. Company lode mining claims lie adjacent to and further along strike to the south covering the continuation of the Arabian Fault and the associated vein south from the Perry Patented Claim for another 4,500 feet of strike length. Road access is available on the claim immediately adjacent to the vein, the company noted.
Arizona Silver said mapping and sampling along the axis of the vein will commence immediately and drilling will commence once data are received and recorded and studied, and highest priority targets are identified.
Terms of the lease call for an annual fixed lease payment that has already been made, with unrestricted access to test, sample, and drill, the group added.
Back in November 2020, Arizona Silver said it had bought out the existing net smelter return royalty (NSR) on the Philadelphia property, which the company said showed "continued commitment from management to raise future opportunity for investment in Arizona Silver Exploration." Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.
On October 5, Arizona Silver had announced drill results from the Philadelphia property that included 33.6 grams per tonne (g/t) gold and 54.7 g/t silver over 2.4 metres, beginning at a depth of 28 metres.
On the financing front, on December 23, 2020, Arizona Silver revealed that a non-brokered private placement it had announced on December 10 was oversubscribed and had been closed. The placement was originally announced for 4,714,286 units and proceeds of $1,650,000 but was increased to 4,899,382 units for gross proceeds of $1,714,783 to accommodate additional subscribers.
Inflection points:
- News from fresh drill program at Philadelphia project
- More details on the Perry Patented Claim
- Update on Ramsey project drilling
What the boss says:
In the company's statement on February 9, 2021, Arizona Silver vice president of Exploration Greg Hahn said: “We continue to believe we are on the trail of the continuation of the high-grade vein, even though we were interrupted by a fault going down dip. The vein remains open along strike of the high-grade intercept in hole PC20-39A, which intersected 10.76 metres containing 9.26 grams per tonne (g/t) gold, 79.8 g/t silver, and 344 g/t beryllium beginning at a depth of 27.96 metres on section 400N, and which we intend to pursue in the next round of drilling on sections 500N thru 800N.”
He added: “We will also test the silicified and veined exposures to the west of our previous drilling to see if we can intersect the faulted extension of the down-dip continuation of the main vein. The significantly higher gold grades in core hole -21T then were intersected in RC hole -20 indicate we have to drill core where we encounter high groundwater flows that hamper good sampling protocols with Reverse Circulation (RC) drilling methods.”
Contact the author at jon.hopkins@proactiveinvestors.com
