Silver Surges from $20 to $67 in Twelve Years, Overtaking Apple

Silver Rises from $20 to $67 After Twelve Years of Forced Patience

Twelve years separate the $20.50 per ounce closing price of silver in 2013 from the all-time high above $67 reached at the end of 2025. During this period, the metal surpassed Apple to become the world's third most valuable asset. The journey included agonizing corrections, unfulfilled prophecies, and iron-willed patience that not everyone could maintain. This rally wasn't improvised; it's the culmination of a decade-long, hard-fought bet, with the metal plunging below $14 in 2015 and showing little life until 2020.

The more interesting question isn't whether silver has risen, but what drove the conviction that it would. And how much of that was analysis versus faith.

The Starting Point: $20 and a Desire for Revenge

When this analysis began its latest iteration in November 2013, the metal had been correcting for two years from the $49 peak during the post-2008 frenzy. The price hovered between $20.50 and $20.80, with an atmosphere of defeat tinged with a desire for vindication. Few were selling; most were buying more.

In those early months, the core thesis that would be repeated for years emerged: against devaluing paper money, physical metal is an anchor. The most common formulation—"holding paper bills isn't idle money, it's constantly devaluing money"—summarized the sentiment. Anything other than silver or gold was suspect, particularly something discreetly emerging at the time: bitcoin. As victory against fiat money seemed within reach, the cryptocurrency arrived with its own narrative, which some interpreted as an existential threat to the metal.

Discovering Backwardation: When Futures Are Worth Less

Here, the analysis turns technically serious. Savers' simple yet baffling question was: if everyone was buying silver, why wasn't the price rising? The answer revolved around a concept rarely seen in mainstream press: backwardation. Explained clearly: "It makes no sense for an asset to be worth less in the future, considering the costs and risks of storage, than it costs to buy it immediately." If the futures contract trades below the spot price, the only reasonable conclusion is a lack of confidence in physical delivery. And if there's distrust, someone doesn't have the metal they claim to possess.

From there, it was a short, unquestioned leap to conspiracy. The dominant theory for years held that the silver market was manipulated by major banks, with JP Morgan accumulating physical metal while suppressing the paper price. The hypothesis, stated insistently but without proof, was that the US entity "used short positions to lower the price and then accumulate 750 million physical ounces at bargain prices." This remains officially unconfirmed and difficult to verify.

The London Fixing and the Specter of Default

In 2014, an event occurred that seemed to validate the doomsayers: the London Silver Fixing closed on August 14, after decades as the price benchmark. With it vanished a discovery mechanism that had operated opaquely since the early 20th century. How would silver's value be set now? Would the same banks maintain control? Was COMEX on the verge of collapse? These questions lingered for years.

Calculations about global reserves also circulated: according to the U.S. Geological Survey, silver reserves could be depleted in twenty years, with the top three producers (China, Mexico, and a third aggregated bloc) running out in less than a decade. The conclusion for those writing was evident: silver wasn't cheap due to abundance, but because of a manipulated situation. The trinc years, with the metal languishing between $14 and $20, seemed to contradict this. Until they stopped.

Silver Isn't Extracted Alone: The Mine Next Door

Not all was financial analysis. The debate over production brought one of the most human episodes of the tracking, pitting an investor against an open-pit mine project in Galicia. The description was precise: with increasingly lower metal concentrations per ton of rock, new projects used heavy machinery, devastating kilometers of fertile land with cyanide. "Opening a mega-mine in the middle of a desert in Australia or a vast ice sheet in Iceland, all dehumanized areas, seems reasonable. Doing so in the heart of the Bergantiños region with 100,000 inhabitants living near the mine, is madness." The project was, at least for the moment, paralyzed.

In parallel, another revealing figure circulated: according to the cost table used, an ounce of silver was extracted at $1.64. With the market price between $15 and $20, the margin seemed enormous. Yet, the metal didn't take off. The simplest explanation—that the paper market dictates the spot market—was unpalatable to many, but it fit the facts.

Bullion, Kookaburra, or Panda: How to Invest €10,000 in Silver

Here, the debate becomes useful for the average saver. For years, the discussion centered on which format maximized returns based on the metal's future price. A frequently repeated comparative calculation presented four options with €10,000:

• K12: 833 coins, 13.86 kilos of silver
• Eagles or Maples: 625 coins, 19.375 kilos
• Pandas: 526 coins, 16.306 kilos
• Gibraltar (high premium): 223 coins, 6.913 kilos

The implicit question: Is it worth paying the premium for collectible coins? The majority answer was that limited-edition coins hold their value even as the metal rises, while pure bullion coins move with the spot price. Time has partially validated this: some series, like the Rwanda 2008, initially priced around €19 in their year, have sold for over €250.

Silver as Historical Money: From Silver Dollar to a Laborer's Wage

One of the most interesting digressions in the tracking involved calculating silver's value in early 20th-century Spain. The data was concrete: an Andalusian day laborer earned around 3 pesetas daily in 1900, while a miner in Vizcaya earned between 3 and 4 pesetas a day, about 780 pesetas annually. Payment was in silver coins. A 5-peseta duro coin weighed 25 grams of 900 silver; a peseta was 5 grams; the 20-cent coin, barely 1 gram. With these equivalencies, any saver could calculate the metal's purchasing power in a pre-inflationary environment. The conclusion was always the same: silver has functioned as real money for centuries, and its status as an industrial metal is what kept it abnormally cheap.

Bitcoin Crossed Paths

A tension runs through the entire analysis: the competition for the narrative of digital gold. When bitcoin began trading strongly, the response from the metal's core supporters was a mix of skepticism and disdain. "Precious metals offer the security of owning something physical; bitcoin is just another speculative product that could end up being a scam," some said. Others countered that they had bought bitcoins precisely to convert them into silver. A return to the old ways seemed imminent.

The 2025 Climax: Peak Rally, Musk, and David Bateman

We reach the end. By late 2025, silver closed the week at a new all-time high above $67 per ounce, with an almost ideal scenario: years of supply-demand deficit, increased investor interest, and a lack of inventory buffer. The price subsequently climbed to $70, with the trend unbroken. The metal reference also became the third most valuable asset in the world, surpassing Apple.

The final round antiestéticatures stellar appearances. Elon Musk, via a tweet, warned that silver "is needed in many industrial processes," a statement some interpreted as a call to hoard, although Musk has no known direct position. Simultaneously, news circulated about an institutional investor, David Bateman, who in six months had acquired up to 1.5% of the world's silver supply, about 12.69 million ounces. Calculations about strategic reserves multiplied: what percentage would silver occupy in the future US critical minerals reserve?

What Could Derail the Scenario

It's not all euphoria. Forecasts circulating in the latest messages vary widely. Some see silver reaching $96 before a pullback to $55 and a subsequent assault on $200 in two to three years. Others, more cautious, argue that if recycling truly becomes cheaper—as suggested by a recent finding from Finnish researchers—the price could correct below $60. And the pace of the rise itself seems unsustainable: in one week, it went from $62 to $70, volatility that in any other asset would be a red flag.

Much has been written about the historical silver-to-gold ratio. It currently hovers around 60:1, well above the 20-30:1 average of the last century. The most repeated thesis is that if this ratio normalizes with gold near €4,000 per ounce, silver has enormous upside potential. But those warning that geology and markets rarely align with models also have arguments.

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Twelve years of waiting have finally paid off. Silver is trading at all-time highs, and those who held on have reason to feel vindicated. Whether this will extend or if we are witnessing the penultimate chapter of another cycle that will deflate like 2011's, there's no way to know. The only certainty is that those who bought at $20 won't regret it anytime soon. Those who sold at $15, perhaps.