Patience has been the key during the worst of this bear market correction, and the investors that were content to sit on a bid and let sellers come to them have been able to accumulate cheaply. This trend may be coming to an end now, as the flow of tax-loss selling is ebbing, and more aggressive buyers have started to hit the offer. We are witnessing the signs of a bottom in other words, and this is confirmed by the less speculative mid-tier and senior producers which have posted some nice rebounds lately.

The next phase may be a rapid rise for the smaller producing juniors like IPT. The chance to bottom feed on cheap shares may be approaching its last days in other words. I have added to my IPT and now hold more shares than at any other time but I still hope to grab just a few more before we see a rapid run past the 50 cent level.

I was reading through the new IPT website and came across this note on the Northeast property holdings:

http://www.impactsilver.com/s/northe...

I bring this up because when I toured the mine last year, the company indicated that some of the best potential may come from this part of the property. We saw the old Cucharas Mine portal, and the San Antonio glory hole working, which had flooded to the elevation of the riverbed but was still exposed in the hillside above. The exploration geos reported that some extremely high grade assays had come from sampling and the vein system was one of the largest producers of the entire district, so its likely that similar new discovery success will be encountered as they drill to depth.

The website lists a few drill intercepts, including 2800g silver and 8g gold that was encountered over a very narrow interval of 30cm in the Cucharas drilling this year. The vein is narrow there, but the point is that the high grades mean that they are still within the productive elevation for the vein system below the old workings. As they do more drilling then we can look for economic zones that may exist where the veins swell, further along the system.

For comparison, the holes from the San Antonio drilling are much higher in base metals grades with relatively low gold and silver readings. Therefore this zone is more likely at the lower elevations of the vein system and while it may still be economic to mine as base metals prices recover, it is less interesting at this time for the point of silver mining.

Since these veins can be mapped relatively continuously for many kilometres between the historic mines, there is tremendous exploration potentail by tracing the veins and punching drill holes in a various depths. Most epithermal vein systems in Mexico pinch and swell lateraly, with about 30-40% of the the total vein length representing economic ore concentrations, known as ore shoots. These will typically yield productive horizons of 300-500m depth, sometimes extending down 700m or more. Very few of the old mines that IPT has encountered extend deeper than 300m and that is why the company has been so successful so far to put new deposit zones into production. There is still a huge untapped inventory of drilling targets both lateraly and to depth at all of these old workings.

Anyway, its a good idea to take some time and review all of the info that the company has made available on the website. I think the market is way behind the curve on this one and in hindsight we may all wonder how it was that IPT shares could be bought below 50 cents, even with the whole sector under presure. Conditions are tough, but IPT is going to make it through this financial crunch, and investors can buy as much as they want these days without driving the price much higher. That probably will not last.

IPT is a paid advertiser on my website at www.smartinvestment.ca but I have not been compensated for my comments or encouraged to write on behalf of the company.

cheers!

mike