Silver Investment

Price is REALLY useless if you don't factor in BOTH demand AND supply. Silver is often a byproduct of gold and copper mines (perhaps zinc as well) and there aren't that many mines that I can think of in the world that are high in silver ores. Refining them is a mess as it often comes with arsenic and sulfur. With this "green" environmental concerns going around the world, refining them will become pricier.

The real problem is that supply hasn't really gone up whereas the industrial usage of silver has risen sharply, in particular coming from China. I don't keep track of what mining companies are opening up new mines that would increase the production of silver but at silver this high price, they will be more than happy to ramp up production to maximize profit any day.

You MUST understand that when prices were too low, there was no incentive to look for new mine deposits. But when prices are this high, chances are yes, new deposits are found and money has already been sunk into infrastructure development. If anyone dares to say prices will continue increasing sharply in the next 10 years, hell no. Will it go down to the low figures of 5 dollars / oz? No, I doubt it. But will it go any higher? Probably yes in the short term but if prices keep going up, remember to pay extra dollars for any x-ray you take. Oh wait, might as well add extra dollars to your tooth fillings if you ever need them.

1 gallon equals 3.78 litres. We are paying $1.45 per littre here in Oz, or $5.48 per gallon. Factor in the exchange rate and we pay $US 5.15 per gallon. What's a gallon cost over there?

When it comes to gas prices, I often remind people that we still have it way better than most places in the world.

After taxes, all our goods are priced tax inclusive, where services can be before or after tax.

Hi Eaglefoot - I drink Starbuck's coffee and your wrong, it's not hot water it's actually black gold . But then my car gets 30-35 mpg and I drive 5 miles to work, so I don't complain too much about gas prices.

As for everyone thinking silver is cheap or expensive, all I know is the 1995 ASE's I have I bought for around $7 in 1995 have doubled in price - which at around 7% compounded appreciation is quite lousy compared to the shares of P&G I bought at the same time. But I don't own very many of either, so LOL. As they say, the easiest way to make $1 million in investing (stocks, coins, metals) is to start with $2 million.

As with gxseries I'm inclined to believe that the rise in metals is temporary and they will actually start go back down at some point. I remember tracking gold companies in the mid-90's when gold was around $300 an ounce and they were able to make money with ore that had 1/10th of an ounce of gold per ton (around a cubic foot of solid rock that had to be crushed and acid leached to extract the gold).

There is plenty of gold in the earths crust, so I have no doubt production will increase in the coming years to the point it drives gold back to $500 per ounce or even less. And since silver is usually a by product in much of this mining, it will also increase in amount produced.

I may be wrong, but I wouldn't start hoarding silver in lieu of any other investments. In five years it is likely that P&G will grow, but in that same five years an ounce of silver will still be an ounce of silver. A company (and the shares of stock that make up its ownership) can grow in value independent of the demand for its shares, the same cannot be said for a commodity (such as gold or silver).

Good luck to all in their investing!