One could spend a whole lifetime trying to create gold from base metals, spiders and other unspeakable objects. I do not suppose anyone was ever expected to be successful but trying hard with a flourish was the object of the game.
Silver is another matter.
During the last century a crew of seamen were set to work recovering a useful sunken copper clad vessel that had gone down in South America. When they hauled the hull from the river sand at low tide they were presented with an incredulous situation. Rather than copper, it was clad in silver plate. The ship's scientist realised at once that the river water contained silver salts and that the copper had caused the silver to be precipitated as pure silver as exchange took place. The Victorians used to enjoy creating silver under the microscope from silver nitrate in solution.