Silver Price

Silver price chart 5 years

The price of silver can be depicted in many ways. The most usual way is a chart of 5 years. Here you can see what the price of silver has been doing for the past years. This is mostly used by traders, but can also be interesting to you as a consumer, when you want to sell your jewelry for example. So do this at the right time and check the daily prices of silver, so it is not too low.

Silver price per gram

We just mentioned that Europe measures troy ounces actually in grams, which means that the current price is around 0.70 euro per gram. This is an easy number to calculate with if you want to calculate more. The highest price ever paid for silver per troy ounce was 31.20 euros. This is about 1 euro per gram of silver. This happened in the often mentioned date of April 27th 2011.

Silver price per kilo

The silver price per kilo is currently around 720 euros. The kilo prices are determined by supply and demand on the trade exchanges. A well-known trade exchange is the New York NYMEX, part of the COMEX (now known as the CME Group). A fun fact is that they still trade at the actual floor.

Scrap silver price per gram

Scrap silver is actually the collective name for various old silver products. Examples of scrap silver are cutlery, bowls or candlestick holders. Scrap silver is always checked for its quality before it is valued by a buyer. But you can always make your own calculation before you visit one, of course. When you are selling a high volume of scrap silver, we always advice to get a second opinion.

Coins

The silver price for coins is usually a little lower than what you are used to. This is because of the quality that was used to create these coins. The normal quality is around 925, like jewelry. But for coins, it is too soft , so they used 3rd level silver with a quality name of 700. This means that 72% of the coin is silver and 28% is copper. There are a few coins of 925 in existence, like the Dutch old 50 gulden cent.

925 Silver, which we know from jewelry

In almost all jewelry the well-known 925 silver is used. This silver is the purest we know in the jewelry world. 925 simply represents that 92.5% is silver and 7.45% is different materials. Advantages of using 925 silver is that it is very bendable and you can always push it back into shape. Want to check if you jewelry is 925 silver? You can always check out the logo that is used.

Sterling silver

A fun fact about Sterling silver is that “sterling” is derived from the English word “steorling”. The litteral translation of this is “with a little star” and refers to Normandy. In French it was called “Esterlin”. This also contributed to the name Sterling silver.

Facts about silver

• Silver comes from the earth’s crust. The earth’s crust is built from small particles, called atoms. In the over 80 different atoms, silver is one of them. The silver atom is also called “Argentium”, with the chemical symbol “AG”. Silver does not always come out of the ground clean, because it can be connected to other atoms.
• Silver is naturally an almost liquid and has a very soft structure. It is very rare and you will not find it by simply putting a shovel in the ground anywhere. Silver is usually found as a byproduct of looking for gold, lead, copper or zinc.
• The largest silver mines in the world can be found in Mexico, Peru, America and Canada.
• Known silver names in the silver prices are:

999 – Pure Silver
925 – 1st level quality silver
835 – 2nd level quality silver
800 – 3rd level quality silver
700 – Silver coins

History of silver

The precious metal silver was found in the year 5.000 B.C., probably around the river Eufrate near the Egeic sea. In the years after, around 3500 B.C., human kind though silver was sea, the moon or gods. In this period, mercury was also seen as silver, which is why we have the name “quicksilver”.

Another fun fact is that around 4.000 B.C., silver was unthinkable to leave humans lives and was visible in different objects like coins, necklaces and other decorations. There was already a kind of silver price back then, but more in product form.

Silver was on of the first atoms known to mankind. It was therefore used in a lot of products. Ancient places where silver was dug in mines also had gold in them. The Egyptians were far ahead of their time and started digging silver everywhere like Nubia and Ehtiopia. After the silver period mining halted. After researches i nthe last century where silver mining started back up again, about 2.000 bodies were found. They believe that in the years before Christ, about 20.000 people worked in those mines.

Middle ages to now

In the middle ages, a lot of digging was done in the mines of Austria, where large amounts of silver was found in Schemnitz and Kremnitz. There was also some searching done for silver in the Scandinavian countries Sweden and Norway. A well-known mine from that period is Sala.

The Germanic in the 10th century did not find a lot of silver though. They tried in the mines of Ems and Wiesbaden, but to no avail. The Germanic people later had more success in the mines of Elzas, the Lebertal.

Cortez was a conquerer that discovered a lot of mines in Mexican around 1522. In this time the first silver also came to Europe. The mines of Peru (nowadays still a gold mine), named the Cerro de Potos, gained a lot of gold and silver in this period. Later it was known that there were mines in America and Canada near Ontario that contained silver.