One of the main advantages of buying silver versus more costly precious metals like gold and platinum is that silver's relative cheapness allows you to buy more metal for the money.
Furthermore, inflation is a reality that eats away at the value of all paper currencies, while boosting the value of hard currencies like silver.
Given the likelihood of ongoing paper currency devaluation and debasement, despite short term perceptual fluctuations in the basket of floating currencies, the U.S. Dollar you are holding today is more valuable in terms of its purchasing power today than it will be tomorrow or a year from now.
Putting Things Into Perspective
If you are skeptical about holding silver or need a way to determine what time frame you should be holding silver for, you can consider the following question:
Given the at least 95% loss of purchasing power in the U.S. Dollar seen since 1913, with the vast majority of that loss of value occurring over the last 40 years, what would you rather be holding one year from now: An ounce of silver or the amount of U.S. Dollars that can currently purchase an ounce of silver?
Now ask the same question over a three, five and ten year time horizon. If your answer is consistently silver, then you really should be stocking up now that its price has retraced substantially from its recently made long-term highs.
This type of analysis allows you to put things into perspective and tolerate the short-term noise as the silver market fluctuates with less anxiety.
Why Choose Silver Over Gold?
Silver is currently preferable to gold for a variety of reasons. One of the most compelling is the price to supply ratio. The current supply of investment grade silver is 1 billion ounces versus 5 billion ounces for gold, while the ratio of metal in the ground is below 20 to 1.
Furthermore, both metals are well below their inflation-adjusted highs, especially when you calculate inflation based on an older, simpler methodology. In fact, silver is even more attractive than gold from this perspective.
Another factor is that silver is actually a more strategic and necessary commodity than ever. Its growing use in electronics, health applications and solar power production assure strong industrial demand for years to come.
Traveling With Silver's Bulk in Emergencies
Some investors who like to hold precious metals as an emergency get-out-of-town card are concerned about silver's extra bulk compared to gold when traveling. Basically, a given dollar amount of silver is much heavier and bulkier than the equivalent dollar amount of gold - so silver is just not as portable as gold.
Nevertheless, silver is not really that bulky relative to its value since a bowling ball made of pure silver would be worth well over $20,000 at $30 per ounce. What else can the average person readily accumulate and store in their house with the equivalent size and value?
Still, if you really need to 'get out of dodge' in a hurry or on foot, it would admittedly be a lot easier to carry only 15 ounces of gold - until you can switch back to silver of course!
Fortunately, investment grade silver and gold share enough properties to make them easily convertible into each other in emergencies. Silver is also easier to spend in small quantities to pay for the necessities of life while traveling.
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