Silver · spot €53.97 per troy ounce
Silver as an investmentwhat you buy, and what it costs
Half investment, half commodity, and the only precious metal where industry claims a bigger share of demand than the investor. On top of that comes 21% VAT, and you see that in every premium on this site.
What silver is bought for
4 short answers
21% VAT is in the price
Unlike gold, silver is not exempt. The VAT is in what you pay at the till and does not come back out when you sell. That is the biggest part of the difference between a premium of a few per cent on gold and tens of per cent on silver.
Some shops sell silver coins under the margin scheme; the VAT is then still in there, but is not shown separately on the receipt.
Industry buys it up
Solar panels, electronics and solder joints use silver for its conductivity, the best of all metals. A large part of it is consumed and never returns to the market.
Industrial demand moves with the economic cycle, not with fear on the stock market.
It weighs
For the same amount you buy about 68 times as much weight in silver as in gold. A modest amount is already a box you do not just put in a drawer.
Storage and insurance cost money that is not in the price per ounce.
Big price swings
The silver market is small compared with gold, and a shift in industrial demand or investor demand has a bigger effect on it. That cuts both ways.
Volatility is not return. It says nothing about direction.
Properties and use
where it comes from and where it goes
| Symbol | Ag · argentum |
|---|---|
| World production | ± 25,000 tonnes per year |
| Largest producers | Mexico, Peru, China, Poland, Chile |
| VAT in the Netherlands | 21% |
| With us | 271 offers · 12 shops |
Where it goes:
The highlighted items are the largest. Exactly what goes to which use differs by year and by source; this is the ranking, not a weighting.
A short history
how it ended up here
For centuries silver was simply money. The Dutch guilder was a silver coin, and well into the nineteenth century half of Europe counted in silver.
That ended when one country after another moved to the gold standard: silver lost its role as a monetary unit and became a commodity with an investor side. In 1980 the price shot to about fifty dollars an ounce and then fell back just as hard.
Today most of it goes to industry. That makes silver a different kind of purchase from gold: demand hangs on factories, not only on investors.
- c. 600 BCThe first coins contain both gold and silver.
- 1600–1800The silver guilder is the everyday means of payment in the Dutch Republic.
- 1870sCountries move to the gold standard; silver loses its coinage role.
- 1980The price peaks around fifty dollars an ounce and then falls back hard.
- nowMost of the demand comes from industry, with solar panels as a growing item.
What the price did
in euro, per troy ounce
The price chart goes here. We have been keeping the daily spot price since September 2026. For the years before that we have no source with terms we may use; until there is one this box stays empty rather than filled with figures whose origin we cannot name.
| Term | Average per year |
|---|---|
| 10 years | — |
| 20 years | — |
| 30 years | — |
We never show 1 or 2 years here. Over such a short period you measure the latest wave and not the metal; there have been periods of years in which the price stayed below an earlier peak.
What a purchase costs today
median premium per form
| Form | Editions | Lowest | Median | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | 1 oz silver coins | 9 | +14.79% | +15.38% |
| 100 oz silver bars | 3 | +23.95% | +25.22% | |
| 15 kg silver bars | 8 | +17.08% | +25.59% | |
| 5 kg silver bars | 15 | +17.05% | +27.08% | |
| 1 kg silver bars | 58 | +17.81% | +27.24% | |
| 500 g silver bars | 17 | +23.56% | +29.93% | |
| 5 oz silver bars | 3 | +43.06% | +53.71% |
All routes to one ounce of silver →
Important
Past performance predicts nothing. Figures over a long term show what happened, not what will happen. Precious metal pays no interest or dividend, and a euro return moves with the dollar rate.
This is not buying or selling advice. We sell nothing, do not broker and are not a party to your purchase. Whether this suits you we cannot know.
The premium comes on top of the metal price. What a price chart shows is the metal price; what a buyer is left with is that price minus the premium on purchase and minus the dealer's buying margin on sale.
Check price and stock at the shop itself. Our prices are a snapshot; what is on the shop's site is what counts.
The other three
same page, other figures
