The Silverton claim package covers 1,860 acres in Nye County, northwest of Las Vegas. It’s nice to see the company advance this other project, work that’s been ongoing since March.

There were two parts to this work. A helicopter magnetic survey was flown over the entire property, and rock chip gold samples were also collected. Management found gold samples assaying 100 ppb (0.1 g/t) and higher over an area 2.5 kilometers by 3 kilometers, what they determine is similar to a classic Carlin-style deposit.

Prior drilling was done in the late 1980s to early 2000s but was shallow. Here’s a video of VP-Exploration Greg Hahn talking about when he picked up the property. You’ll hear him say this is “elephant country,” along with how he sponsored a Masters Thesis on the project that showed it was one of the top prospects in the region and now forms the basis of their exploration model.

Greg also highlights the significance of survey (emphasis mine). “Importantly, the air magnetic survey shows a large intrusion at depth. A prominent deep thick property-wide low resistivity layer has unknown origins. It could be extensive alteration, a package of carbonaceous sediments within the resistive carbonate sequence, or a large sill-like altered intrusion. No existing drill holes went deep enough to penetrate and test this large low-resistivity layer.”

Based on this work, AZ Silver staked an additional 16 claims (320 acres) to cover the eastern margins of the large resistivity anomaly. They also received a two-year extension on their drilling permit from the BLM.

Management notes they will now seek a “joint venture or strategic relationship with a large mining or exploration company with expertise in epithermal or carbonate-hosted gold deposits to drill test the property.”

This will be an inexpensive way to get what could be an expensive exploration program done. We’ll stay tuned.

The stock isn’t moving on this news, not too surprising since this is early-stage work. But keep in mind this is the kind of preliminary activity that sets up a drill program to test what now looks like to be a highly prospective target. I remain overweight the stock, and if you’re looking for shares, I’ll point out the market cap of the stock is just C$27.8M.

Courtesy of the Gold Advisor