First Majestic Silver Corp. - Real de Catorce Silver Project

925 West Georgia St.
Suite 1805
Vancouver, B.C.
Canada V6C 3L2
Phone: 604.688.3033
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» Real de Catorce Silver
Project

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Real de Catorce Silver Project

The Real de Catorce property is located approximately 25 km west of the town of Matehuala in the San Luis Potosí state of México which lies about 259 km to the south of the industrial city of Saltillo and about 170 km north of the city of San Luis Potosí. Access to Matehuala from the major cities is via the north-south Highway 57 which connects Mexico City to the United States.

Real de Catorce is an old mining district with an estimated historic production of 230 million ounces of recovered silver, between 1773 and 1990. The majority of production (150 million ounces) occurred from 1773 to 1776 with the remainder occurring after 1851. A former operator estimated that the average grade of all production over the life of the mines was about 1,350 g/t silver (Grace, 1997).

The property was acquired by First Majestic in November 2009 as a result of the purchase of all the issued and outstanding shares of Montreal based Normabec Mining. The property consists of 22 mining concessions covering 6,327 hectares.

The ore deposits are epithermal veins system-low sulfidation type which are hosted in sedimentary rocks ranging in ages from Paleozoic (metamorphosed sediments), Triassic (Huizachal Formation), Jurassic (Zuloaga and La Caja limestones) to mid Tertiary (Quartz-monzonite dikes and Basalts). The main veins are: San Agustin (N50°W, 2,300 m long, 2 to 10 m width), Veta Madre (N62°W, 2,500 m long, 1 to 10 m width), Ave Maria (N70°E, 550 m long, 0.5 to 6 m width) Villanos-San Ramón (N40°W, 1,200 m long, 0.1 to 5 m width) and San Agustín system (N48°W, 2,200 m long, 0.2 to 10 m width). There are also several blind (not outcropping) veins which were intersected by drill holes. Economic mineralization is in almost vertical ore-shoots with vertical extensions of 200 to 400 m. The presence of the most important ore shoots are related with favorable rocks like La Caja and Zuloaga limestones and in the inflections and intersection of structures.

In a period of two years starting in 2006, Normabec had completed 18,151 m in 86 diamond drill holes in the Veta Madre and El Refugio veins and generated 2,549 samples. In order to define the resources of tailings, Normabec drilled 117 Auger holes totalling 1,065.60 m and took 743 samples.

The last NI-43-101; updated to November 10th, 2008 made by Micon International Limited (William J. Lewis ) for Normabec estimated total Resources in all categories of 46,787,527 ounces of silver. For full NI 43-101 Technical Report on the Real de Catorce Silver Project click here.

The Resources are mostly in the Veta Madre vein. The Measured Resources are mineralization in oxides targeted with 43 surface drill holes while the Indicted Resources are in sulfides cut by 29 underground drill holes related to the Purísima ore shoot and Refugio vein in a grid approximately at 50 m x 50 m pattern.

Additional potential in Veta Madre is following the ore-shoots below the elevation 2600 in the NW part of the vein. It is estimated that with an additional drilling program from surface of 10,000 meters, approximately another 25 M eq Ag oz could be indicated.

The second vein in importance in the District is San Agustín, parallel to Veta Madre about 2 km to the SW. There is no information about the history of production in this vein and there are just a few old maps and sections showing the exploited ore-shoots. Normabec had trenched and sampled for geochemistry the outcrop for around 3 km resulting in several surface anomalies which are the targets to drill. In the past, the Canadian company Britannia drilled three holes in the SE part of the vein, one of those holes intersected 4 meters grading 400 g/t Ag (Pierre O'Dowd). The estimated potential for this vein is around 50 M eq oz Ag.

Additional regional potential inside the 6,300 hectares is in several interesting grass-roots prospects like the San Fermín area which could be the SE extension of the Veta Madre and Villanos systems.

Excerpt from Micon report of Real de Catorce: "The property holds the potential for the discovery of silver mineralization of similar character and grade as that exploited in the past, even after two centuries of mining and recovery of 230 million ounces of silver from the district".

First Majestic is expecting to launch an aggressive drilling and exploration program in the latter half of 2010 and is very optimistic that total Resources will be expanded significantly.



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