page_title: Silver as an investment
section_title: Bars
hierarchical_section_title: Silver as an investment / Investment vehicles / Bars
caption_attribution_description: English: Silver bullion bar 1000oz top view
context_page_description: Silver may be used as an investment like other precious metals. It has been regarded as a form of money and store of value for more than 4,000 years, although it lost its role as legal tender in developed countries when the use of the silver standard came to a final end in 1935. Some countries mint bullion and collector coins, however, such as the American Silver Eagle with nominal face values. In 2009, the main demand for silver was for industrial applications, jewellery, bullion coins, and exchange-traded products. In 2011, the global silver reserves amounted to 530,000 tonnes.
  Collectors of silver and other precious metals who collect for the purpose of investment are commonly nicknamed stackers, with their collections dubbed as stacks. The motivations for stacking silver varies between collectors.
  Millions of Canadian Silver Maple Leaf coins and American Silver Eagle coins are purchased as investments each year.
context_section_description: A traditional way of investing in silver is by buying actual bullion bars. In some countries, like Switzerland and Liechtenstein, bullion bars can be bought or sold over the counter at major banks.
  The flat, rectangular shape of silver bars makes them ideal for storage in a home safe, a safe deposit box at a bank, or placed in allocated (also known as non-fungible) or unallocated (fungible or pooled) storage with a bank or dealer. Silver is traded in the spot market with the code "XAG". When settled in United States Dollars, the code is "XAGUSD".
  Silver bars, like silver rounds, can either be cast or poured, or minted; both categories often involve the production of bars with intricate decorative designs that attractive to collectors, often referred to as 'art bars'; these types of bars are often given as gifts.
  Various sizes of silver bars
  1000 oz troy bars – These bars, 999 fine, weigh about 68.6 pounds avoirdupois (31 kg) and vary about 10% as to weight, as bars range from 900 ozt to about 1,100 ozt (28 to 34 kg). These are COMEX and LBMA good delivery bars.
  100 oz troy bars – These bars weigh 6.86 pounds (3.11 kg).
  Odd weight retail bars – These bars cost less and generally have a wider spread, due to the extra work it takes to calculate their value and the extra risk due to the lack of a good brand name.
  1 kilogram bars (32.15 oz troy)
  100 gram bars (3.215 oz troy)
  10 oz troy bars (311 g) and 1 oz troy bars (31.1 g), which are the least expensive (other than fractional bars) and normally collected in bulk by collectors and small-scale investors.
  Fractional bars – These come in a variety of weights smaller than 1 ozt, including 1, 2, 5 and 10 grams, but are typically stored in large amounts as significantly more of them need to be collected to accrue value.
caption: 1,000 oz silver bar
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