Hunting A Silver Elephant In Colorado

Zephyr Minerals (ZFR.V; ZPHYF.OTC) is about to drill a silver-lead-zinc target with striking similarities to one of the largest, richest mines ever discovered.

Dear Fellow Investor,

With gold barreling ahead on the back of unprecedented monetary and fiscal stimulus, silver can seem like something of an afterthought.

Seasoned precious metals investors know better.

They’ve experienced past cycles in which gold races ahead, with gold-focused juniors providing leverage on the trend, only to see silver eventually catch up and surpass the yellow metal’s gains.

The current crisis has generalist investors squarely focused on gold stories right now, and many of those stories have doubled and tripled in the two months since the market bottom in mid-March.

Now the question becomes: What bets can you make as an investor that have the potential to multiply your gains in the current environment?

Silver looks poised for big run in its own right, and tiny Zephyr Minerals (ZFR.V; ZPHYF.OTC) has quietly built on its land position Colorado with a silver-lead-zinc project that has all the markings of Broken Hill type deposit.

Why is that such a big deal?

Only this: the Broken Hill mine in Australia was among the largest deposits of silver, lead and zinc ever discovered.

The Mine That Put Australia On The Map

In 1883, a man named Charles Rasp came across an unusual rock type while working on a remote Australian sheep station in New South Wales.

He initially thought the rock was an example of tin mineralization. Instead, it turned out to be the marker for one of largest and richest silver, zinc and lead mines on Earth, one that would go on to generate a mind-blowing $100 billion in wealth.

Subsequently staked by Rasp and a group of partners, the Broken Hill deposit would form the flagship asset of Broken Hill Proprietary, a company that continues on in the 21st century as the world’s largest mining company, BHP.

Boasting 280 million tonnes of ore grading 148 g/t silver and 18.5% lead and zinc, the Broken Hill deposit was that rare combination of high grades and massive scale.

Its discovery put Australia on the map as a major source of mineral resources, and mining remains a bedrock of the country’s economy to this day.

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El Plomo: A Broken Hill Target

Fast forward to 2019, and we find Zephyr sniffing around a target area adjacent to its Dawson project in Colorado that appears to be a Broken Hill type target.

The company had spent much of the 2010s pursuing a gold resource on Dawson.

Then, in 2018, it added the Green Mountain and El Plomo properties to the west, with the collective project now dubbed Dawson-Green Mountain.

In 2019, Zephyr had the good fortune to enlist the services of technical advisor Dr. Paul Spry, economic geology professor at the University of Iowa.

Dr. Spry is a recognized world expert in Broken Hill deposits. He has hands-on knowledge of the Dawson-El Plomo-Green Mountain area geology.

Combined with prospecting on El Plomo and a review of its historical data — which also included drill core from two shallow drill holes drilled by US Borax in 1981 — he saw potential for the target to host Broken Hill type mineralization.

Of particular importance he noted the presence of a key indicator/pathfinder mineral called gahnite, which has high zinc content, at El Plomo.

High-zinc gahnite is a key indicator mineral found at Broken Hill in Australia. Another similarity is the presence of potosi gneiss, a key Broken Hill rock type.

Striking Similarities To Cannington

A more recent example of Broken Hill type mineralization was BHP’s discovery of the Cannington silver-lead-zinc deposit in Queensland, Australia in 1990.

The Cannington area was identified as highly prospective by BHP because of the presence of high-zinc gahnite.

The magnetic character of the ore deposits at Broken Hill led BHP to conduct an airborne magnetic survey at Cannington. This yielded a magnetic anomaly which was subsequently drilled and resulted in the huge discovery of Cannington.

Originally outlined at more than 40 million tonnes of 520 g/t silver and 16.7% lead and zinc, Cannington began commercial production in 1999 and was the world’s largest and lowest cost silver producer for 20 years.

Spry’s analysis points to a pattern of high-zinc gahnite at El Plomo very similar to the one that led to Cannington’s discovery.

Intriguingly, a recent airborne geophysical survey has outlined a large magnetic anomaly on El Plomo.

This is particularly noteworthy because the silver-lead-zinc mineralization in the shallow holes drilled by Borax on El Plomo is magnetic (see photo below of drill core from GC-9) and is situated directly above the large magnetic anomaly.

With that same combination of a large magnetic anomaly, gahnite geochemistry and the presence of similar rock types, the key target at El Plomo gives Zephyr the chance to make a Broken Hill type discovery similar to Cannington.

And we’re about to find out if they will....

The Drill Is About To Turn

Thanks to a private placement completed in February, the company has the money it needs to begin a drilling program to test El Plomo’s key magnetic anomaly.

And the drill is starting to turn next month.

As you can see from the graphic below, that anomaly is both large and marked at surface by Holes GC-8 and GC-9, which hit substantial grades of zinc, lead and silver. Note as well the piece of high-grade core from GC-9 which is magnetic.

If the drill hits into significant widths of high-grade silver, lead and zinc as were drilled at Cannington, Zephyr’s C$24 million market cap will likely take off like a rocket.

Given the scale and grades that Broken Hill type deposits entail, it’s easy to see why.

In a market where investors are searching for the next big thing in exploration stocks, placing a bet now on a drill-hole speculation with near unlimited upside makes an abundance of sense.

This is a potential home run. The leverage on the current share price in the event of a Cannington-type discovery would be massive.

Remember, Australian BHT deposits are both huge and high grade. Simply put, Zephyr is elephant hunting here on what may well be the only Broken Hill type exploration play in North America.

With a valuation back-stopped by a small, but significant high-grade gold resource with expansion potential on the Dawson section, Zephyr Minerals’ drill program on the El Plomo target this summer makes for one of the market’s more intriguing stories.

Drills are turning within the next few weeks, so time’s running short to hitch a ride on Zephyr.

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To Learn More about Zephyr Minerals