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Visualizing Who Controls The World's Silver Supply?
Within the Earth’s crust, there is 1 gram of silver for every 12.5 tonnes of earth (27,600 lbs). This makes silver very difficult to find. To understand silver supply, we must first discover how economic silver deposits form.
Silver is typically mined as a byproduct in polymetallic deposits with a variety of metals. Other key metals found in these ores include lead, zinc, gold, and copper. These deposits can form in many different ways:
- Volcanogenic Massive Sulphide (VMS) deposits are formed at or near the sea floor by underwater volcanic activity. They can be a significant source of copper, zinc, lead, gold, and silver.
- Carbonate hosted deposits are known specifically as Mississippi Valley and Irish types with limestone and dolomite as the most common host rocks. Zinc-lead content is usually 5-10% with concentrations of silver and copper present.
- Sedimentary exhalative (Sedex) deposits are formed by release of ore-bearing hydrothermal fluids into water, resulting in the precipitation of metals such as lead, zinc, silver, copper, and gold.
- Intrusion related deposits relate to skarns, veins, mantos, high sulphidation, or other related types of deposits. Intrusions are when liquid rock (magma) forms under the Earth’s surface and slowly pushes up into spaces it can find, sometimes pushing country rock away.
- Epithermal deposits are created close to surface and are deposited by hot fluids. These occur typically in areas where magmas are able to move high in the Earth’s crust. Gold, silver, copper, and other metals are found in epithermal deposits.
Silver occurs in many different types of deposits, and in 2013 silver was mined as the primary metal 29% of the time.
The total amount of silver mined in global history is enough to create a 52m cube. The amount of silver available to the market each year depends chiefly on mine production and scrap metal recycling. In 2013, silver scrap reached its lowest levels since 2001 to 5,966 tonnes, or under 20% of supply.
Silver is most often mined from polymetallic deposits. There are different types spread out through the world, but silver supply is increasingly coming from North and South America and primary silver miners.
Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist and Silver.com
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The pilgrim. If not, then get out as soon as your local shop opens and buy, BUY, pilgrim!
The reality is these people will control the price of silver until some long out future date, so owning it becomes a great big liability. But then again everything is manipulated: libor, energy, oil, metals. It's a conjured reality.
1 gram in 12.5 tonnes, that's a lot of dirt to wash one's hands of....
The chart regarding mined silver is actually inaccurate. It displays the total mined per year world wide as increasing, yet aside from last year the annual total mined worldwide has been declining for the past 13 something years.
I think I gotz most of that cube in my safe.......
Yes, not much Silver and Gold in the earth, however, there's LIMITLESS amounts in space. That can be identified from scans and brought to earth, even brought to the earth's surface. Feasible even at current Prices. If there was every a large move in either, expect space mining to comence to bring prices back in line.
It seems to me that the moon rocks brought back during the seventies cost about a million bucks per ounce... how much would it cost to bring back the silver to which you allude?
I can guarentee you it's much much much cheaper now,. and targets allready have been identified for decades for when the margin is higher. Even if we see a moonshot, it won't last very long.
We can't even get a human out of low earth orbit, and the US can't even put a person into space, just barely 200 miles up and you think we wil be mining asteroids or comets any time in the near future? We can't even go to the moon anymore(if we ever went at all), we aren't mining space rocks any time soon.
We can land probes on them and stick propulsion to them, in fact you may notice with quick 'public' searches, there's been quite a bit of successes with that lately. Can slowly bring them into orbit, cut them up into pieces, and land 'em. Could be already happening for other materials...
and in roughly 5 minutes...here's how silver is "made"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dLtP9j31B8
does that microcosm of how silver is mined and refined look very easy or economical to you???
Yeah, I didn't think so. And most silver miners are totally shut down now. Out of business or shuttering the operations. 25% reduction just this year so far alone in silver production output due to the criminal paper manipulation REGARDLESS of what oil/fuel prices have come down to. It's just not worth it for them to do this and sell it for nothing.
Stack this shit like there's no fucking tomorrow, bitchez. I've been saying it for years now...and their criminal paper manipulation has only made it CHEAPER while it has become more rare and more valuable at the same time!
Stack this shit up high. Like a Ronco roaster: Set it and forget it.
And if you don't understand that the GSR is about 72:1 right now which is absolutely insane in terms of silver valuation compared to gold in U.S. dollar terms while by every other fiat currency standard the PM's are above or near record highs, then you're missing out on the biggest indicator in history.
Silver is more valuable than gold in nominal physical terms right now. And as each day passes it's becoming more and more valuable.
When that GSR drops to 1:1 you're going to shit yourself if you were smart now and have stacked massives piles of cheap-ass phyzz silver.
It has become more rare than gold...and that's the dirty little secret these fuckers don't want anyone in the world to know.
Well, I like silvuh - a lot.
But it's a pipedream to believe that the GSR will go to 1:1.
GSR eventually going to 1:30 or perhaps 1:16, but not 1:1.
Anyway - stack gold and silver - don't put all your eggs in the silvuh basket. Silvuh bulls think when the GSR 'normalizes' then they can sell silvuh to buy gold - but that's a big risk. Stack'em both now while you can.
Then remember that before this is all over, gubmints will stop at nothing to rob your wealth. So by the time you want to cash some in, your going to have to pay a big 'tax' on it, or maybe even get it confiscated. So there's no sure thing. But it's a heck of a lot better than fiats.
"But it's a pipedream to believe that the GSR will go to 1:1.
GSR eventually going to 1:30 or perhaps 1:16, but not 1:1."
Sorry Joe, gonna have to disagree and here's why (though not mentioned at all in the article):
"The fundamentals of silver as a commodity have changed enormously, versus the historical “norm” referred to previously. Indeed, the dramatic change in silver’s economic fundamentals is a direct result of (in particular) the last 50+ years of systemic price manipulation. Specifically, while the supply of silver versus gold in the Earth’s crust is a constant; the quantities (and ratios) of these two metals above ground is not.
Global stockpiles of silver in relation to gold have plunged radically, as detailed in the analysis of the esteemed Ted Butler. By Mr. Butler’s own, best estimates; more than 80% of the world’s silver was literally “consumed” over this period of time, a direct product of the six-hundred year low in the price of silver (in real dollars).....
..We know that global inventories of silver plummeted by roughly 90%, between 1990 – 2005 (reflecting the absolute trough in the price of silver). What we don’t know is how much further those inventories have dwindled since 2005, because it was at that point that the banksters began radically falsifying inventory data, in conjunction with their two, ultimate tools of precious metals fraud: the so-called “bullion-ETF’s” – GLD and SLV.
This catastrophic devastation of global silver inventories (and stockpiles) means that the historic supply ratio of the two metals (as reflected in global stockpiles) no longer exists. The exact ratio is unknown (due to the falsification previously noted) but given the known decimation of those stockpiles; some analysts are suggesting that (above ground) the two metals exist in relatively equal quantities."
Follow the link below for the charts.
$1,000/oz For Silver (Today): A Starting PointWait, I read on ZH a couple years ago that they dig silver out of the ground for $5/oz. Or was that gold.
Great video. Makes me sorry I lost my ASE's when my canoe tipped over.
That was Math Man from memory.
He was an excellent contrarian indicator - whenever he appeared on ZH to trash silver, it turned out to be a great time to stack!
I miss the idiot...
That video is a complete hoax.
Eveyone knows they just dig silver and gold out of the ground for $5...
Yep, AKA Methman.
Great viddie!
Buy silver!
Attention stackers: note the device shown at 0:45 in the video - the niton gun.
When they come to collect your stack, they will have one with them.
Hedge accordingly.
So... bring huge chunks of rock and metal into orbit is a good thing? Cutting them up in orbit, thereby creating more orbiting space junk/debris is a good thing?
That isn't even to count the economics of it all. How much did rocket fuel cost in the 1960s and how much does it cost now? Are Russian rocket engines still for sale to the US?
Nevermind, I'm not interested.
I might be a tin foil hat wearer, but you're fruit loop! Please explain what cost per ounce you think this would average out at?
Dude, you should really lay off the chiva.
"We can land probes on them and stick propulsion to them, in fact you may notice with quick 'public' searches, there's been quite a bit of successes with that lately. Can slowly bring them into orbit, cut them up into pieces, and land 'em. Could be already happening for other materials..."
Holy fuck- I feel 80 IQ points more stupid after simply reading that statement...
Human's can't leave LEO becuase of the radiation belts,. Back in the 60s tho, since they didn't know these belts existed they were immune...
Entirely WRONG. The first US satellite discovered the Van Allen belt - they are not a problem as on translunar trajectory they are passed quickly. What is a potential problem is being hit by a coronal mass ejection while beyond the Van Allen belt. That would have been unfortunate.
However the cotton wool children of the present day just don't understand the mentality of 50 years ago. We were roaring around in V8s with no seatbelts (not provided as standard in mid 60s cars) at 100 mph when the cops weren't looking. NASA knew that one of the crews might get radiated by a CME and all die of cancer later - but they didn't care! We had a very hot war on at the time and the astronauts were all survivors of very dangerous test pilot careers, plus many had been in combat. NASA played the odds (CMEs don't hit Earth often) and got lucky.
I'm of the undertsnding that there are now not just 2 but 3 Van Allen belts which are apparently fields of plasma...can you tell me what the known minimum/maximum temperature of a plasma is?
Plasma isn't a kind of matter, it's a phase. The phase of any given material is as dependant on pressure and its composition as it is temperature. Knowing that, I'm not sure what you are asking. Would you please clarify?
Wathc u talkin about truly stupid?
I have a moon rock FREE from Hawaii.
and we NEVER went to the moon.
Let me know when u get back...take that Bowie album...
Hahahahahahahahahaha.
"Technology will save us!"
There's a lot of space in space, that has to be sifted through first, and it's harder to get through.
It's qiute a bit easier per unit of volume,
but perhaps more difficult by unit of mass.
Really? Thats what you got? Limitless amounts in "Space" is why people should not buy silver? Jeezus!! Have you thought about what you are saying? Essentially, you believe one should not trade little pieces of paper (produced here on earth, dont have to go into "space" to get, created at the whim of whoever says so with only ink as a cost) for a metal that is beautiful and rare in geological terms on our planet, because..... Theres tons of it in the universe? Holy lord. My guess is that you have a big future as a speaker at a Village Idiots Convention.
52m cube works out at close to 7.7 billion kilograms, so about 32 troy ounces per human - close enough.
So, if you have more than 32 troy you have more than your fair share.
Just for reference.
I've had a few beers, so hopefully I didn't miss any factors of ten in there!
From memory (previous calculation) I think gold comes in at about 26g per person or .84 Troy.
Your math may be correct in that there is that much per person supply in existence, but sadly I bet even in wealthy countries like the US not one person in 100 has .84 oz of gold and 32 oz of silver for themselves, much less everyone in their family. Such a small price to pay for an insurance policy.
OOOPS !! Sorry, thats my fault, I picked up a buch of other peoples piles along the way.
I've got fillings.
The 52 m cube represents all the silver ever mined out of the earth. Industrial use in trace amounts in a million consumer products has consigned a lot of that to the landfill over the decades. Silver is too cheap to recycle, other than people's old tea sets and other large chunks.
I hope the author wasn't implying that all the silver mined is still available.
"The total amount of silver mined in global history is enough to create a 52m cube." Better phrased, "would have been enough..."
I have a one meter cube....that only leaves 51 cubes for the rest of ya
Try multiplying by 9 Pinky
52 meter cube means cube 52 meters on a side.
That is 52 X 52 X 52 meters. A lot of meters. 140,608 of them ?
Maff is hard. Back to my gender studies, which is hard too.
Only RE: Bruce Jenner.
Whom ever controls copper is shitting their bed tonight http://finviz.com/futures_charts.ashx?t=HG&p=m5
I swear to god I woke up one morning last year and all of a sudden sheeple everywhere started using 'whom' or 'whomever' ('whomever' is one word btw) instead of who or whoever - by that I mean they just flat out replace one word for the other without even knowing why...I guess it must be a trendy new word to them or something but for fucks sake at least know HOW to use it.
Over 20 years on the net and I've not once made a grammar Nazi comment (don't throw stones in glass houses and all that) because up until now it's all been misspellings or not using a capital after a full stop etc - things that don't matter if you're having a convo in real life. On the other hand say the latest fad word 'whom' wrongly in the real world and you'll just sound like a fucking moron.
Their not gonna like bean told to spel write.
I blame the Normans.
monex ...Im all in after seeing this
Buy SLV ASAP!
How are the MexiCANS so damn poor sitting on all that silver?
They have a government too......
+1 hhaha
Because they waste it all on making silver tequila.
Mexico only became 'poor' after bankers demonetized Silver.
hugo salinas price was just interviewed on sprott, about his ongoing campaign to re-monetize silver in mexico:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BE6wS4IlqgE
hugo is a good man, and pretty much everything he says in the interview is spot-on, except for the swipe he takes at bitcoin. i forgive him though, he's an old guy and he means well.
It's a good thing demand doesn't affect the price or the banksters would be fooked!
Who run Bartah Town?
Silver bullets make kill the Ponzi Kraken!
Silver bullets dipped in pig fat kill the rest...
OOOOH,dats rayciss!!!!
Why would anyone look in the ground when you can buy that shit online Dude.
Buy online? Not me. I give the man in town cash and he puts the "junk silver" coins in my hand. That's the way ya do it :)
Some online retailers are good. You can always reverse charges on an online purchase.
The people at the post office might start to wonder why you are buying so many boxes of "ball bearings"
Nah.
'Plumbing Supplies'.
I have a lot of electrical transformers delivered.
I build audio equipment.
The people at the Post Office are puzzled by my very heavy boxes of nickels. I tore a bicep tendon lifting one.
I just tell them it's ammo.
Well I'm happy to report that I control a reasonable amount of it myself.
So, "Who Controls The World's Silver Supply"?
This is the worst article and infographic yet. How is the geology lesson helpful to anyone remotely interested in "precious" metals...wait, did I say "precious"? As in "rare"...or hard to get?
Secondly, the question posed of "control" is never answered.
Mining production, is not global or national "control" (as in ownership).
But..."free shipping" on orders over $3k!!!
Majestic 12 as in First Majestic? Largest silver miner based in Canada with mines in Mexico. Yep, your post has a First Majestic tone to it.
Like I'm stupid enough to buy it online, lol......
...... what's wrong with buying online....... gotta say the post office lady didn't seem too amuzed when I joked about my uranium shipment finally arriving from ISIS....... oh well phuk her if she can't take a joke ........ and those idiots in that non-descript white van parked down the block too.....
My mailman isn't impressed with monster boxes in the mail. He thinks I go through a lot of ball bearings for the farm....btw, he delivers rural delivery with his car, so its not like a postal carrier deliverying them...that'd be funny.
Well, there's a paper trail concern.
Some people prefer buying silver with cash with no record of purchase.
Anyone have any advice?
You must be new here. That is what boating accidents are for: plausible deniability.
"This was no boating accident!"
Related Topic:
How many nickles are in circulation in the US?
$4.50 of face value for every resident. Food for thought.
Ya I've looked into that. When the metal value of a nickel shoots past 5 cents again I may fill a couple ammo boxes just in case, and if they do change the metal content I may start keeping the old ones, just to enforce Greshams law, but until then, that's a heavy and bulky way to store money. A full ammo can weighing 40+ pounds(just a guess , but it is very heavy) still doesn't have the same value as half a tube of ASEs
$120 in rolls one ammo can, can hold.
I bought nickels from local stores in rolls to "horde" not the ones the buy from the bank but ones they roll them selfs to give back to the bank.
I unrolled them and tried my luck lookin for pre 1964.
After unrolling and re-rolling $100 worth I quit after not finding shit.
I had a shit load (about two litres, I'd judge) of nickels, dimes, quarters etc I'd collected back in the late eighties. Went through them recently - didn't find a single silver coin in the lot.
Gresham's Law is real.
FYI "40 plus pounds" is only about $200 worth of nickels.
Are we all certain that our ASE's are Ag and not plated Zn ???
I'm poor so I have been buying "junk silver" for a long time.
:)
May your poverty increase, and be an example to us all;)
Seriously, I'm pretty much doing that. Some of my friends who know I buy junk silver laugh. I BTFD when I can. I just became debt free recently($3-400 running cc balance at 0%) I should be able to save more of my meager income and buy silver. It's a form capital preservation for me.
We'll see who's laughing when this next financial crisis comes.
:) YeeeeHawww! Stack 'em bitchez
hairball
My plumber noticed an old coin collecting magazine on my table and made the comment: "now that's something people don't do anymore" I said..."yeah, that's right"
Cigerattes, dirty magazines and liquor...that is the precious...invest wisely.
Can cigarettes be stored for long?
Call me dumb, but I ordered all of my silver online via wire transfer. Given the quantities I bought the coin shop would have had to order them anyway. Plus then I'd have the fun of putting 250lbs of silver in the bed of the truck and driving around with it. Seemed easier to have it shipped. I intend to buy a similar amount in the future and will do it the same way. Plus, in those quantities you can have a pretty significant savings over what the coin shop charges.
I figure if they really want to crack down on silver owners, they're going to find you one way or another.
I did take the precaution of having it shipped to a different adress than where it is stored. Will that protect me? Fuck if I know. Again, if they really want to find me, they will. My only goal is to keep it hidden from common theives. If the Feds start looking around for it, I've got bigger problems.
Somewhat ironically, most of my preps are geared towards a complete breakdown of society, and how to survive it. In that scenario, the silver isn't worth too much. When people are desperate and starving, they're not going to place too much stock in random silver coins. I expect ammo will be the de facto currency in such a situation (possibly cigarrettes, but I'm asaving my stockpile for myself).
Why then do I keep the silver around?
1. If the world doesn't end, the silver will probably withstand the ravages of inflation better than most assets.
2. If everything does fall apart, eventually a new economic order will be born, I can convert my stash to whatever the new currency is.
My silver is not going to make my rich. It will, hoever, prevent me from becoming destitute.
Naw, for big quantities, I'd do as you do. As for my remarks, I was simply making a point...being a smartass. That said, it pays to be careful buying anything online these days.... caveat emptor ... :)
That is a shitload of silver. But if you are gearing up for that whole mad max type thing, I'm assuming you have bought a lot of ammo. If you are making bull purchases of ammo online too, I expect they will come looking for you because of that, not your silver. Although I am sure they will take that too. Even if you want to buy a lot, going in a couple times a week and buying a couple tubes at a time won't clean the shop out and it would add up pretty damn quick.
You're right about buying in small increments and working your way up, but that's not my style. I tend to jump in headfirst and do everything to excess. It's how I'm wired, I guess.
I have more ammo than I can possibly use. I also have more rifles than I know what to do with. What I don't have is enough bodies to use said rifles. I have my extended family, but most have never fired a gun. I can train them, but that takes time. They are useful in other areas (doctor and two RNs in the family) but they don't know how to shoot.
My weakest area prep wise is people. I've been quietly feeling out my neighbors, and while they're all like minded people with an array of useful skills, they're all old. Truly, my lack of skilled shooters for defense is one of the things that keeps me up at night.
I have a similar problem with respect to home defence the island is populated with mostly geriatrics living out thier golden years in peace, hell even thier kids are approaching retirement age so banding the neighborhood together is not much of an option beyond a meals on wheelbarrow service ........ though with progress in 3D printing technology I am hoping maybe we can graduate from the old mossberg 12 to something abit more formidable for dealing with zombie pests ........
www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8hlj4EbdsE
Take them out to a range. Don't mention any end of the world stuff, just invite them out there. It's a pretty rare person that doesn't enjoy shooting once they give it a try.
In my neighborhood, the cross fire from all the neighbors is the thing that keeps me up at night.
If event tourists would like to experience the greatest celebration of second ammendment freedom in the US, be in a Houston suburb at midnight on any Dec 31st.
Vague recollection of having somewhere read that modest amounts (say, $2,000 worth) of silver bought online from the same dealer must be reported by the seller to the Feds. ????
That was part of the Affordable Care Act - Section 9006 and the amount is $600
http://www.businessinsider.com/obamas-health-care-contains-a-hidden-tax-...
http://www.newsmax.com/finance/StreetTalk/New-Tax-Gold-Hidden-Obamacare-...
Starting Jan. 1, 2012, small businesses and self-employed people will have to issue 1099 forms, which are used to track and report the miscellaneous income associated with services rendered by independent contractors or self-employed individuals, for every vendor with whom they do more than $600 business in a calendar year.
If they come looking for my ammo, I'll give it to them free of charge...a few grams at a time
I buy online to avoid paying the local and state sales taxes on silver, the way things are looking we won't be able to do it for much longer.
Shit, there must be 12.5 tonnes of earth in the back yard. Now i know what the kids can do this weekend.
My little plot has way more than one gram per 12.5 tons of earth.
Since primary silver mining is only 29% of total. Being a byproduct of other mining would naturally suppress the price. Not complicated.
Dude, I think you need to rethink that. If you are assuming that the "other mining" is constant you are mistaken. In a recession that stuff gets shut down to a degree and the byproduct along with it. You were right about it being "not complicated" though.
All right, what was that?
Seriously, you gave me a couple of paragraphs of 'Wikipedia', and a bunch of pictures...
The author could have done so much more with this material...
Boating accidents are not just for Au.
I am so sick of people with an agenda using these ridiculous human-scale statistics to describe planetary-sized phenomena in hopes of creating a false impression that benefits their cause-- noble or otherwise.
Various sources differ but the average of them seems to be that the Earth weighs about 6.5 sextillion tons. There's a lot of silver still in the ground.
When silver was de-monetized in the 1890s, a large number of high-grade producers simply shut down, sometimes leaving carloads of silver ore lying around. North American mines are not exhausted, they are strangled with regulation that makes mining uneconomical except in a few isolated places that environmentalists never visit-- like backwoods Nevada.
Yet, even so, they are producing. Imagine the flood of silver that would pour out if the nazis got their boot off of everyone's neck. The last thing these people want is a renewed and confident United States that does not need to kowtow to anyone. They do their best to prevent the nation of the Enlightenment rising back up off its knees. Even so, look at the results under the most adverse conditions possible. The Kraken that they fear lives in places like Kansas and Idaho, not at the bottom of the Mediterranean.
"The whole world shall not prevail against her."
Might be easier to mine asteroids than extract silver from the earth's magma.
No unicorn sharting out a silver rainbow??
I assume the Government can fly a drone overhead and spot out the really big deposits of gold and silver.
but like the guy said when they come for it.. we have bigger problems.
So we are moving from peak oil to peak PMs?
Peaks PMS?!?
Now that IS scary!
Let's fuck our planet even more for shiny metals. Fuck yeah!
Who cares if our descendants will suffer? Fuck them all.
Earth is being fucked more by Ipads and smart phones that mines...haha...I made a little funny...they cannot get Ipads and smart phones to work without silver.
There is gold and silver in your shit, people. And no, I'm not making this up.
http://news.sciencemag.org/environment/2015/01/sewage-sludge-could-conta...
There is also 20 MILLION tonns of gold in the ocean. But getting it, well, that is something else...
http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/gold.html
All you precious metal nuts are... nuts. I've stockpiled 87 tons of Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies, assuring that when the collapse comes, I will RULE!!!!
You will be like a god to the rest of us.
It is amazing that the US is anywhere on this list, as it is almost impossible to pass regulatory requirements to start a mine.
There must be an awful lot of silver for that to be even remotely possible. Certainly, in the 19th Century there were silver mines EVERYWHERE in the West. There are two ironies to this. The first irony is that today those are all on BLM land, and prohibited for any commercial activity (must keep the serfs on the urban plantation). The second irony is that these areas were mined with 19th Century methods...meaning that only a tiny percentage of the silver was extracted. There's only so much you can do with a pick, shovel, and railroad ties to support the roof.
So...where can I buy this "cube"?
So, please advise. Is a 10 ounce Sunshine Mint Silver Bar a good investment? Its about $170. How does one know if it is indeed pure silver? Where do you guys keep your silver?
I try to stick to bars from makers on the LBMA good delivery list. Johnson Matthey / RCM / Engelhard etc...
Testing a bar is easy, buy a ultrasonic thickness gauge. Set it for silver, and measure a cross-section. If the gauge reports the actual thickness, then you have pure silver. If the gauge reports something different, then it's not silver.
Keep your silver someplace that would not be stumbled upon casually, and yet is able to be inspected casually, and at a glance. Most importantly, dont talk to anyone, ever, about where you decide to keep it.
1 gram per 12 tons of rock...not always. There was the silver sidewalk in Cobalt Ontario where one vein was the size and shape of a sidewalk. It was pure native silver, as thick as 6" and as wide as 4'. There is a chunk of it in the Fogg Museum (Harvard Universtity, Boston) if you care to see it. Over a 3 year year period Cobalt produced 31 million ounces, much if it in pure native silver, though also many other sulphides.
To see a photo of the vein (it's sideways and runs there probably 4' deep) see
http://www.virtualmuseum.ca/sgc-cms/expositions-exhibitions/cobalt/en/vi...
The vein was so thick that when the rock around it was blasted the silver needed to be cut into managable chunks with chisels as it could not be blasted apart readily nor drilled.
A little back of the napkin calculation. Total silver ever produced divided by world population
(50m)^3= 125,000 m^3
x 12,000kg/m^3 = 1.5 billion kg
1.5b kg / 7 b people = .214 kg/person
Gross Per Capita World Product ~$80T/7B = $11,400 per capita
Assume half silver ever produced were converted to currency, and this currency were valued at one month's World Product, $6.7 T/1.5 B kg =~$4500 /kg.
There were about 25 g of silver in a classic silver dollar (sd), or about 40 silver dollars per kg, which would give about ($4500/kg)/(40 sd/kg) =~$110 in 2015 dollars for a silver dollar.
World monthly product per capita - about $1000 - could be represented by about 9 silver dollars.
Median US wage would be about 2 silver dollars for an 8-hour day, current minimum wage about a half-dollar and a quarter a day in silver.
By comparison, in stories and songs the wage for unskilled day laborers in the late 1800's was famously a dollar or a dollar and a half a day - in silver.
Lesson - a silver-metal currency is not beyond imagination.