I’m often asked why people buy actual gold or silver rather than futures or by other means which are cheaper and don’t come with a premium. The most common answer I give is that you have something physical in your hand rather than just a piece of paper that tells you do.
It has frequently occurred to me that; if there was a massive market crash tomorrow and all the people who hold futures and other non-physical forms of precious metal don’t actually have any physical form of the metal. If all precious metal investors decided that they wanted physical metal there is no way that there would be enough metal in the world to supply them with it. This is why buying physical metal can only be a benefit, whether it be gold or silver.

Gold and silver are increasingly being used in the manufacturing industry. With silver the best metal for electrical conductivity as well as heat conductivity, even better than copper. There are even small traces of these metals in our everyday electrical items such as mobile phones where a compound of nickel-gold is used.

Silver could also run out at any time. Unlike gold mining where miners are mining specifically for gold, silver is found as a result of mining for other things such as copper and iron. As a result of this the worlds known gold reserves actually surpass the worlds silver reserves. Put simply, we know of more gold in the ground than silver.

With silver currently around £14.50 per ounce and gold at around £1000 per ounce, this disparity cannot go on forever.