Part 1: The World’s Cumulative Gold and Silver Production By David
Zurbuchen Free Silver Stock Investment Newsletter This
is the first installment of a planned 7-part series: Part
1 – The World’s Cumulative Silver and Gold Production. Documenting the total
amount of silver and gold produced since recorded history. Part 2 – The Silver Deficit. Documenting
the silver production/consumption deficit since 1939. Part 3 – The Real Silver Deficit. Answering the
questions of “How much silver has been consumed by industry?” and “In what
potentially marketable accessible forms does it remain?” Part
4 – The Illogical Performance of the Gold to Silver ratio Since
1848. Looking at silver and gold’s production growth since 1848,
and contrasting both this measurement and that of
their shrinking ratio of comparative rarity to the ever-widening market price
ratio between the two. Part
5 – Why the Depressed Prices? A brief look
at the amount of silver stockpiles held in the early 1900’s, as well as some
interesting quotes dating back several decades that made the bullish case for
silver, unwittingly or not. Part
6 – What Happened in 1980? Did production
increase? Did extraordinary amounts of
scrap silver come to market? -- What to expect in any future stratospheric
price rise. Part 7 – The Future of Silver. An overview of silver’s fundamentals, focusing in on industrial usage and it’s growing number of applications. Also included will be my own short and
long-term outlook, together with price predictions for 2006 and beyond. Preface I’m a relatively new
face in the gold and silver bug community, and while attempting to conduct
research of my own I found it frustrating that there did not seem to be any
sort of comprehensive data source dealing with the subjects of silver and gold
production and consumption. In an effort
to change this, I’ve spent several hundred hours this past month perusing
through thousands of pages of documents (namely, the Minerals Yearbooks (1933-2004)).
It is my hope that this series of articles will serve as reliable
reference material for all future writers, researchers, believers and skeptics,
saving them all much time and effort better spent breaking new ground in the
ever thickening plot behind… Those precious two, Of gold and
silver hue, “You missed
them too?” “Boy, how they flew!” Cumulative World Silver Production Source 1 USGS ( http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2004/1251/2004-1251.pdf “Total silver
production from pre-history till 2001 is estimated by the U.S. Geological
Survey (USGS) to have been about 1.26 million metric tons (Mt), one half of
which was mined in the last 62 year period.” (Page 8) 1.26 Mt x 32,150.75 ounces/ton = 40.51 billion ounces + 2.46 billion (production from 2001-2005) = 42.97 billion
ounces Cumulative Silver Production = 42.97 billion ounces
Source
2 (multiple) The History of Silver (3000BC-1493AD)
Bureau of Mines Minerals
Yearbook (1493-1930) (Billions of Ounces)
Bureau of
Mines Minerals Yearbook
(1931-1993) The
Silver Institute (1995-2004) (millions of ounces)
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