"It's getting used up. And, unlike paper used in a printing press, it don't grow on trees!"
I understand what you're saying about finite supplies. If however silver were to become a rarity, in the uses to which it is currently put, it would no longer be used. If silver becomes prohibitively expensive, less expensive alternatives would come to the forefront for all the uses to which silver were not absolutely critical, resulting in a reduction of a demand and lowering of cost.
Is it possible to get 100, 300 even 500% increase on your investment, even accounting for inflation? Absolutely. Will that ever make you rich? No it wont, unless you were pretty close to being rich to begin with.
Take a look at the silver crash of 1893. At the low (after the crash) silver was selling for .62 cents per oz. That is the equivalent in todays dollars of roughly $12.63 per oz (
I used this).
So if one oz of silver in 1893 had the purchasing power of $12.63 (todays dollars) and today sells for $10 an ounce, that means you only had to wait 113 years to lose 20% of your value.
That same .63 cents invested in the broad U.S. stock market would be worth thousand of times that today. Not double, not triple, but thousands. Such is the power of compound interest, something you don't get by holding precious metals.
Travis, even though I have invested heavily in silver bullion bars the past two months, I'd never invest more than 15% of total investment funds in one area of investment.
ndt, you're a stock broker correct?