the thing to keep in mind between gold and silver, most of the gold ever mined is still in circulation, it just changes hands or transformed into something else. Silver has several non recoverable industrial applications and new technologies require silver( solar panels , electronic gadgets, medicine, synthetic fabrics, the list goes on) We have been using silver at a deficit for most of the last 20 years (except for 3 of them) Silver is cheap right now and still being mined as a byproduct of other metal mining operations but the ore is of less quality than it once was. Don't get me wrong , I am very much a fan of gold as well! I suspect more gain % on silver. And also not cost effective to mine silver on it's own, several silver only mining companies are struggling.