Silver is attractive. That is narrow vein mining of moderate grade silver and in some cases low to high grade gold. I call "moderate" anything in the 20 to 40 ounces range per short ton.
In fact we could call that high grade even in Canada. Cobalt silver mines ran historically in the 30 ounce range over the life of the camp. Veins of this type are short and discontinuous, so are harder to develop and make money on than pure gold systems. Silver is always smaller pockets due probably to its less transgressive and lower temperature deposition. We see this in gold in that Hyperthermal CDN style Archean deposits made when the earth was hotter and more disruptive, are on the average much larger than epithermal deposits which are only occasionally very large.
The thing about Nyarit is that they tell a diffuse story of their many different vein systems that does not allow a quick overview of the picture and potential to build ounces. It may be an intelligent look at each vein type, but their raconteuring does not allow a calculation of the future of exploration, as it is more analytical and conversational than defining.
Drawing a conclusion at this point would be dangerous. Depth and lateral extent is not inferrable. I always get a bit sanguine about these narrow vein foreign opportunities by asking myself where the miners are going to come from. Many of the SA mines in the past ran with western expatriate contract miners. I don't know what the labour pool of Mexican narrow vein miners is but I suspect it is not that strong. Whenever I mention narrow vein mining in Canada which had the strongest cadre of narrow vein miners in the world at one time, both industry experts and brokers caution me that the labour pool of this specialized worker is depleted and this will be the hardest thing to overcome, let alone dealing with the more restrictive regulations lately in this country. A few years ago I made a very poor case for Yamana getting a narrow vein silver mine going in Argentina. The skills of the local labour in running power equipment and doing modern mine cycling I denigrated completely. I did not think the company was ready to deal with a foreign labour pool, -and- engineer and geologize a mine in that country. I was right then, and it had little to do with silver price as the grades were in line with what Nayarit is finding and looked like they might be economic in some cases.
Strong prices don't seem to care about these realities and to be fair they buoy our pretensions about becoming narrow vein miners in this country as well. A pretension I hope I can prove over a coming few years. Nayarit has to engineer a production mentality as well as an exploration mentality to make a believer out of me. Selling a narrow vein bet without a strong mining case is not that great idea in my estimation. If they talked and walked like a mining aggregation I would get interested in their enterprise. It is surprising with all the opportunity that is not being taken advantage of in south America and Latin America with their somewhat easier regs, that this sort of thing does not attract more CDN miners. There are more small miners on high grade veins in Latin America than there are in Canada by far. Their tech is very meagre, which we could improve markedly if there was a buck in it. I would warrant in fact that if a narrow-vein high-grade team put in place a Latin American engineering office and had a weather eye to overcoming corruption, spotty regs and envi groups that putting into play several undergound ops might duplicate in part what Agnico Eagle was able to achieve in Cobbalt Ontario and Quebec in the 70's and 80's in Canada. When few companies were starting mines, Agnico Eagle built a good size mining company. They made money in silver and gold quite handily. Got to hand that much to Paul Penna's crowd. They were nasty in some ways but they printed bucks for shareholders. Amazing what a group of Jewish restaurant owners were able to achieve with a couple of street bucks and a good story. Simply amazing. I admit that for the most part their food was not that great (The latter day expat Israeli crowd has way better Bourakas etc..), but their mining stock portfolios were enviable.
I am trying to sell a similar paradigm to some investors at present. I am not getting that many believers as I cannot lay out the complete property picture until we are somewhat better heeled, but I believe it would rival the early Agnico Eagle handily if we could get some bucks in the door to wheel and deal. Quite the bootstrap operation. As I have hinted before I guess.
I wish Nayarit luck, and as I pontificated above, it they were leaning towards being hungry and driven narrow vein rock breakers and millers, their profile might improve in my estimation considerably. The track is there, but it may require expanded thinking and monetary profile as well.
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