There's no better pair of words to describe the activity of silver prices as "cruise control" lol, I'm getting quite sick and tired of seeing prices being suppressed in the low 30s. Demand is high, prices aren't rising, why am I still here.
Copper is a way better investment to be honest, because silver is fairly new and most of the public don't know anything about it while copper has seen light in the media (ie. people stealing copper wires, price increases etc.).
It only take geniuses to "accumulate" profits from precious metals, I'd consider those who purchased large quantities back in the early 2000s to be those geniuses.
What are we doing? By purchasing silver, and putting all of our investments and cash into something that we call real money just simply helps push the price up. I'd say the cap has already been broken.
Now as to "using it for bartering", in tough times, most people would fail to recognize the value of physical silver, nor would they care about their prices, it's too expensive to use as wire for infrastructure.
I'm still attached to copper, it's not that volatile as silver and proves to be a great investment. Copper pennies of course :)