1150 Stacking Silver

There’s 166,500 tons of gold in the world, all together it would fit into an olympic-sized swimming pool. In contrast, there’s about 100,000,000 tons of silver in circulation, so about 550 times more silver than gold. The value of everything in the world is estimated at $100 trillion, so if currency were tied to silver, silver would be $100,000 per ounce and gold would be around a billion dollars an ounce. Obviously, there’s no connection between the price of gold or silver with currency or each other, but the allure remains and people still like to “stack silver.” Stacking silver literally means what is says: the satisfaction that comes from the tactile feel when stacking silver coins. It could be as a hedge against inflation, perhaps useful if the government-backed medium of exchange breaks down, maybe even an investment. However, there’s not many instances of any of those reasons so we have to consider that the security factor of actual possession of vintage & new silver coins minted in the U.S., called Constitutional silver, is why people stack. To be pedantic about it: when those coins were minted, the amount of silver at the time only equaled 73.5% of the face value with 90% purity, so about 66 cents of silver in a dollar back then; of course, the silver is worth much more now but a nickel is still worth a nickel’s worth of nickel.