An amazing story, and I was tempted to do a little more reading on this

"From the 16th century until the end of Spanish rule approximately 45,000 tonnes of silver were extracted. The Spanish used slave labour to extract the silver and it's estimated that 8 million people - mostly locals and African slaves - died either in the mountain or from illnesses related to working conditions."

http://www.travelblog.org/South-America/Bolivia/Potosi-Department/Potosi/blog-260436.html

Incredible that silver is believed to be so valuable, when up to 8 million could have died extracting it from just one mine.

Today at US$42.00 an ounce someone is making a potosi. Up until this year silver has been moving in a range between US$14.00 to US$20.00 an ounce. It's been in that range for nearly 30 years. Prior to that it was valued at about US$6.00 an ounce.

Traditionally, over thousands of years, silver has been valued at one fifteenth the value of gold. Today gold is at US$1900.00 per ounce. Silver should be at US$130.00 per ounce.

Silver's price has been manipulated by Nelson Bunker-Hunter for the past generation or since the Gold Shocks of the mid 1970's. That appears to be changing.

Nice story imajuliarnutter but sadly inaccurate and out of date.

Earlier in my career, you could rely on the silver price to be about US$5-6/oz (from mid-80's until about 5 years ago). It traded in the $10 - $20 range from 2006 to 2010 and took off over the last few months.

Nelson Bunker Hunt and his brother worked their "magic" on the silver market back in the late 70's and early 80's, ie. before the period to which I referred above. He hasn't done much since (with silver) to my knowledge, what with being banned from trading and all.

The gold-silver price ratio of 15 was relevant in the early 19th century but since then has been in the range of 50-80 with a tighter fix on this over the last few years as both have skyrocketed.

You might be interested in a new hot stock - it's called Poseidon - apparently they have some good nickel prospects in WA.

And I thought I could believe what I read on the internet ...