Silver hit US$48.70 per ounce, the highest silver price to date, towards the end of the 1970s.However, the purchase price didn’t exactly reach that level by honest means. As Investopedia explains, the metal’s bid price was driven by the Hunt brothers, two wealthy traders who attempted to corner the market by buying not only physical silver, but also silver futures — they took delivery of those silver futures contracts instead of taking legal tender in the form cash settlements. Their exploits ultimately ended in disaster: On March 27, 1980, they missed a margin call and the silver market price plunged to US$11.Silver wouldn’t test that high again until 2011. At that time, its price uptick came on the back of very strong silver investment demand, and was more than double the 2009 average silver price of US$14.67. The chart below from Kitco spans from the start of January 2010 to February 2022. It shows that the silver price reached US$47.94 in April 2011 before plummeting in the years that followed.