Silver may be experiencing a pause before the big break. Austria, France and West Germany continued to use silver in some circulating currencies until the late 1970s. Today, quality gold and silver miners (mostly not in the GDX or GDX) are trading well below their highs and at their lowest valuations for quite some time. The weakening of the pound since 1980 has helped the price of silver rise to this all-time high, while in US dollars the gold and silver price today remains a fraction lower. They have to continue printing money for years and will be an important catalyst for gold and silver when bond markets go the other way.
Interactive chart with historical data on the real (inflation-adjusted) prices of silver per ounce up to 1915. The outlook for silver and platinum looks promising for the next 12 months, as several precious metals analysts say that both will surpass gold. We analyzed the price of gold on August 1 (or just after) to see how much gold you could buy with 5000 pounds sterling over the past 5 decades. After its streak in the early 1970s, silver took three and a half years to start its next run and five years to reach its next peak. The increase in silver prices had some effect on limiting its use, although the main factor was the slowdown in general economic growth and the shift of the economy away from manufacturing products that used silver.
It declined by 10% over the next two years, before stabilizing at 372 to 387 million ounces per year in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The price of silver bullion fell sharply that day, as it had done before, and would do so again, but on Silver Thursday the commodity and futures markets panicked. The cyclical silver bear market is serving its purpose, estimates Jordan Roy-Byrne of The Daily Gold. The next day, silver reached a new peak in two of the three major currencies, the pound sterling and the euro.
The next day, silver reached a new recent high in all three currencies, the dollar, the pound sterling and the euro.
