Investing in silver investment market offers a variety of products. This overview provides brief discussions of the advantages and disadvantages of buying the most popular silver bullion and investing in silver.

For detailed discussions of specific silver bullion products and silver coins, follow the links or check the list of popular silver investments to the right. Before investing in silver, readers should read this page and follow the links to.

Silver bars have emerged as popular ways of investing in silver because they are uniform in size, making them easy to handle and convenient to store. Additionally, silver bars are compact, which enables investors to secure a great deal of wealth in relative small storage areas. Silver bars with recognized hallmarks are readily accepted for resale, making them easy to convert to cash.

1-oz silver bars (rectangles) are available but not nearly as popular as 1-oz rounds. 1,000 oz silver bars are recommended only for IRA silver investments.

100-oz silver bars dominate the silver investing market. Investors who buy 100-oz silver bars generally ignore the survival aspect of owning silver, which comes with owning pre-1965 US 90% silver coins and 1-oz silver rounds.  10-oz silver bars provide features of both silver investment bars and of survival forms (junk 90% coins and 1-oz rounds).

Precious metals investors often ask, "Should I invest in silver or gold?" EXPERTS says silver, for many reasons.

First, silver has always produced a greater percentage increase during precious metals bull markets. In some precious metals bull markets, silver has tripled in price while gold has doubled. In some moves, silver rose four times while gold doubled in price. Additionally, silver has more industrial applications than gold does, with more uses being developed.

Industrial uses provide an underpinning to the price of silver. So great is the industrial demand for silver that mine production and secondary recovery have fallen short of industrial demand since 1990. According to CPM Group, a New York metals consultancy, between 1990 and 2003 new production and secondary recovery fell 1,899.9 million ounces short of meeting industrial demand. Add in the silver used for coinage, and the 1990-2003 overall deficit swells to 2,214 million ounces.

Not only has production and secondary recovery failed to meet demand each year of the last fifteen years, but aboveground supplies are critically short. Some analysts say that supply will fall far short of meeting demand over the next decade, and that much higher silver prices will be the result. According to accepted statistics, more gold rests in the vaults of the world's central banks than there is aboveground silver.

The drop in reported silver holdings around the world shows just how much the production deficit has eaten into aboveground supplies. In 1995, Comex stocks stood at 260 million ounces; today Comex stocks are struggling to stay above 100 million ounces. In 1991, estimated silver inventories in London and Zurich were 350 million ounces; today that number is closer to 50 million ounces. In 1980, world governmental silver stockpiles totaled some 325 million ounces; today, few governments hold any silver.

Finally, many people think first of gold when the subject of "hard money" arises. Yet, more people have used silver for money than have used gold. In something like fourteen languages, the words for silver and money are the same. In the United States, gold coins ceased to circulate as money with Roosevelt's 1933 call-in. However, the U.S. Mint continued to turn out silver coins until 1965.