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At the dawn of the technology revolution in the 1970\u2019s and 1980\u2019s, there was a massive increase in the industrial demand for silver.\u00a0 Today, total demand for silver is between 800 million and 1 Billion ounces per year and nearly 700 million of that is funneled exclusively to meet industrial needs.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, between 1980 and 2006 there was a massive government sell of silver.\u00a0 The United States alone nearly sold 3.5 Billion ounces and multiple other governments sold off nearly all their stockpiles.\u00a0 In addition to this, investors net sold 1.7 Billion ounces during that same period.\u00a0 Effectively meaning that between 1980 and 2006, somewhere between 5.5 and 10 Billion ounces of silver were dumped on the market.\u00a0 This effectively kept the silver price flat for decades until the sell off ceased.<\/p>\n
Because of the low silver prices, new mining ventures in silver were nearly non-existent.\u00a0 Consequentially, while the demand for silver rose, the price of silver did not and neither did the mining capacity.\u00a0 As a result, for at least the last 15-20 years, we have been running a 50-200 million ounce deficit every year on silver production, which has decreased the supply steadily year after year after year.\u00a0 Even now as the price of silver has increased, creating additional silver mines will not be an easy project.\u00a0 It takes approximately 7-10 years to take a mine from the point of discovery to production.\u00a0 Another problem is that a majority of silver mined does not actually come from silver mines.\u00a0 Back in 2007, approximately 75% of all silver mined came from copper, zinc, or gold mines.\u00a0 One of these mine would find a large silver deposit and would process it separately from their main metal, but they were not actively seeking to find silver.\u00a0 Only 25% of the supply mined actually came from silver mines.<\/p>\n
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\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In the end, the major deficit that has been run for many years has resulted in above ground silver being more rare than gold!\u00a0 There are three ounces of gold for every one ounce of above ground silver.\u00a0 In fact, the supply of above ground silver is so scarce that if silver mining were to stop today, the above ground supply would only last for four months before being completely exhausted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At the dawn of the technology revolution in the 1970\u2019s and 1980\u2019s, there was a massive increase in the industrial demand for silver.\u00a0 Today, total demand for silver is between 800 million and 1 Billion ounces per year and nearly … Continue reading