There is a fact about silver that many people who are new to silver investing probably don’t know about. This fact is that silver, that gleaming metal we are so used to seeing around our necks and on our fingers as jewelry, is actually in short supply, very short supply. In fact, the truth is that there is less silver available in the world right now, in the 21st century, than there was over a hundred years ago, at the beginning of the 20th century. To put this into perspective, you would be interested to know that for every year of the past 21 years, since 1990, there has been more silver used and consumed than there was new silver mined and refined. What this has meant is that the available silver stockpiles are moving towards depletion and that this precious metal becomes more precious each month.

Of course, the result of silver becoming more and more difficult to come by means that prices for the metal have been rising. In fact, whereas gold rose in value by 34 percent in the past year, the price paid for silver has risen nearly 100 percent in this same time period. For these reasons, silver investing has become more and more popular, which leads to further upward pressures on demand and leading to yet higher values. No wonder then that so many financial experts are urging their clients to become part of this lucrative investment option at this point in history.

But just why is silver becoming so scarce in the world? Aren’t we used to seeing an abundant supply of the precious metal? The fact is that most of the silver used today is used in an industrial capacity. Many manufacturing processes use silver because of its many unique properties. Silver is a highly malleable yet strong metal, which is also an excellent conductor and highly resistant to damage from heat. As such, silver is being employed more and more in many industries both old and new. What’s more, silver has important benefits for medicine, the metal having strong antimicrobial qualities and thus used to fight disease and infection. When you combine all of these new uses for silver with the fact that, because of political and economic forces, the production of silver has dropped dramatically, the result is the current silver glut. The smart money is thus on silver investing, now and into the coming decade.