Only a year and a half late, Sailfish Royalty (FISH.v) today began the process to drum up support for the spin-out of its silver property, Gavilanes, into the new company that by all rights should be called Silverfish, but is bound to end up with something more thrusting and dynamic…Swordfish Silver, perhaps? Here’s the link, here’s the title line:
Sailfish Discovers Several New Higher-Grade Veins on its 100% Owned Gavilanes Silver Project Highlighted by Samples of 2.5 meters of 12.8 g/t Gold and 48.0 g/t Silver; 1 meter of 1,867 g/t Silver, and 0.5 meters of 1,546 g/t Silver
Plenty of words and numbers in that one, Paolo, well done. All that might make Gavilanes sound like something that it isn’t so, for context, let’s run a potted history of the concession:
- Mining for silver began in the 18th century via a company run by Spanish concerns, until the Mexican war of independence, when operations ceased.
- Then in the 1880’s a Guatemalan company re-opened the mine and operated it as a small scale, high grade mine for several decades.
- They were followed by an English mining company, that mined the location until going bankrupt in the 1920’s.
- Gavilanes then became part of a package of properties sold to Luismin (the company that decades later became Goldcorp, but that’s an entirely different story). After surveying what they’d bought, Luismin mined the nearby properties with some modest success but decided to not to mine Gavilanes because all of the high-grade had been mined out by the previous operators.
- Cut to the 1980s, Luismin finally sold the property and a local entrepreneur successfully processed the grading material left behind in the historic mine dumps. But after drilling and testing the UG veins, he didn’t bother trying to mine what was left below ground.
- Then in 2008, Hochschild (HOC.L) took ownership, did some exploration, drilled 10 holes, assayed a bunch of skinny veins and suspended activities. Not worth their time.
- Next up was Santacruz Silver (SCZ.v), who in 2010 paid just under $6m to take over Gavilanes. They promoted it to retail as one of a suite of highly prospective silver assets on their books, did some drilling and then…nothing. All went quiet on the property until 2017, when SCZ sold Gavilanes to Marlin Gold for $3.5m.
- The Wexford sponsored Marlin Gold was in the process of ruining its treasury at the Mexican disaster mine Trinidad at the time. It then morphed and split into pieces, e.g. the disaster that is Mako Mining (MKO.v), as well as royaltyco Sailfish Royalty (FISH.v), the latter becoming the new 100% owner of Gavilanes.
Back in 2021, Sailfish had big plans to spin out Gavilanes but when the silver price took a turn for the worse, they suspended the process. And now with silver moving up and suckers looking at the silver subsector again, FISH’s plans to spin out Gavilanes into its newco and promote the project as the Next Big Thing in Mexican silver opportunities are back on. This despite the Gavilanes underground resource being owned, explored and passed up since then by Luismin, the private owner, Hochschild and Santacruz Silver in the last 100 years, all without any mining activity happening. That’s because the economic high grade has been mined out and, while what’s left is always going to show enough for a splashy assay NR or two, it’s just another one of these skinny veined Mexican wastes of time that will never become a mine. Anyway, that’s what these yoyos are going to pump to the nodding donkeys among retail as their surefire winner and what Lostritto is going to hang his fat annual salary on now that he’s managed to ruin Signature. Have a great day, Silverfishers.