The price of coins and bars of silver fluctuates just like other commodities such as gold and copper, but silver has been getting special attention lately because of its versatility, its increasing need by data centers and artificial intelligence -- and its price volatility.
It could go way up this week and way down next week, so it's very hard to predict, says Gold Stock Data's Don Durrett, but there's one thing for sure:
"Not only is it an industrial metal, that means 70-percent of its supply needs to be done by fabricators, but it's also a critical mineral."
Silver is more in demand than many other commodities for that very reason -- collectors love it; investors are buying lots of it when inflation arises; it's a vital mineral for use in countless products; and is even critical to the production of coins and renewable energy hardware like wind turbines.
"Over 200 million ounces of silver per year are needed just for solar panels and hardware alone," he says.
"All the vehicles, cars and even including airplanes, anything with a wheel on it needs silver, all your appliances all your phones" and most notably today, all your data centers, your artificial intelligence, microchips.
Silver was down to about $73 an ounce early in May, then up to nearly $90 a few days later, and now is down to near $78, showing the volatility, but Durrett says these are signs of a market in flux.
But he worries that because demand is increasing so fast that the prices silver is fetching today makes it cheap even though it's much higher than silver was priced two years ago -- miners can produce just so much silver from the ground, and if demand greatly exceeds supply, which he says could happen even in the near future -- how much is it going to be worth then?