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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;InfleXion, post: 1348030, member: 29012&quot;]I like silver based on a number of factors. The amount of silver available today is at its lowest level in centuries, and I am in the camp that the historic gold/silver ratio of 15:1 will see an eventual return to prominence. Today the ratio is 55:1. The reason I think as much is because the price action today is dominated by paper traded contracts, not the physical market, and that is a temporary situation because it cannot last indefinitely. Time is the wildcard IMO. Also, due to a phenomenon called epithermal deposition, silver is becoming more scarce beneath the ground. World mining numbers indicate the ratio of gold to silver coming out of the ground is 7:1, not the historic 17:1 ratio which supports this. The concept behind epithermal deposition is that when the planet was formed, due to the melting point of silver most of the silver rich veins were formed near the surface of the Earth&#039;s crust, and therefore mines must spend more on energy to go deeper into the ground to get less and less silver. According to Eric Sprott, in the physical market gold and silver are selling at about the same rate from a price standpoint, so silver is disappearing from the market much more quickly. Not only that, but it is largely unrecoverable due to being used in so many small applications such as gadgets (which can be recovered, but it&#039;s not cost effective to do so in most cases), and the countless uses for nanosilver which cannot be recovered even if it were desired. Industrial demand for silver is also growing, and the solar panel industry is more than offsetting the lack of demand in the photography industry.&nbsp;&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>All this being said, I think gold is a wonderful investment as well. Central banks have been buying, and China&#039;s gold imports are skyrocketing. In the 3rd quarter of 2011 gold demand in China eclipsed all 2010, a record year, at over 400 tons in 2011. Plus over 100 tons of that was imported in just November 2011. They have also made gold exports illegal, and have had advertisements on state television for a couple years now encouraging their citizenry to buy. Also of note, the Pan Asian Gold Exchange will be opening up in June 2012. This will not only open up the entire massive population of China to buy precious metals with the click of a mouse, but the paper traded contracts on this exchange will be fully backed at a 1:1 ratio by physical metal, unlike the COMEX which is leveraged around 50:1 paper to physical, conservatively. So even if Chinese citizens do not provide the expected boost to demand the exchange alone will bring an end to the paper market manipulation we are currently experiencing by offering a sound alternative.&nbsp;&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Due to all of these factors I expect gold to have a record year in 2012, but I expect any gains in gold to be eclipsed by silver. It will be a bumpy ride though, so if you don&#039;t have the stomach for it then maybe gold would be better suited for you since it tends to not move as violently as silver. I also like platinum due to being less expensive than gold, but it is an industrial metal and could potentially continue to move inversely to gold, where as silver is a dual role industrial and monetary metal, and will follow gold more closely. </p><p><br /></p><p>A word of caution, there are a lot of fake silver bars going around right now, specifically Sunshine Mint bars and Pan American bars. Many of these can fool magnet tests and weight tests. You can mitigate this risk by buying directly from the mint that produces the bars, or by sticking to government issue coins which can be more easily verified with a set of calipers. 1 oz coins are my preference for this reason, as well as that 1 oz in general is a nice liquid amount for bartering should there ever be a need for that. That&#039;s another reason I like silver over gold, is that if you were to ever need to barter with it you won&#039;t want to be spending a whole ounce of gold at once, and to get fractional gold you will start hitting some high premiums.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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