Silver has hit its highest ever price – but will it stay there?
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An ongoing rally has seen silver gaining value even more sharply than gold during 2025. Our broker Barnaby Cotton explain the factors behind the phenomenon, and what this means for private investors.
While the world has obsessed over record-breaking gold prices throughout 2025, investors have been well aware that silver is also the subject of a historic rally, yielding even higher returns than gold in many cases.
Silver reached its highest ever nominal value this november, at £40.95 per ounce. “Silver prices just hit their first record since 1980,” wrote The Wall Street Journal on October 13. And some experts believe the rally has a long way to run. “Silver could double to $100 after crossing the $50 mark,” analysts told CNBC.
Its value by weight may be lower, but silver doesn’t always come second to gold in terms of its performance as an investment asset. This article sets out the facts behind silver’s meteoric rally – and spells out what that means for those thinking of buying.
When did the silver price pass £40/oz. – and what has happened since then?
The silver price reached £40.27/oz on 17 October, 2025. It then fell during the following fortnight, but has since rallied and stood at £40.95/oz on 13 November.
These are the highest nominal silver prices of all time, and they’re astronomical compared to those seen in recent years. On 2 January of this year, the silver price was just £23.61/oz, and the price was as low as £17.46/oz in 2024.
“While everyone’s hypnotised by all that golden glitter, something far more interesting has been happening backstage,” writes This Is Money commentator, Dan Hatfield.
“Gold has climbed a massive 35.6 per cent in the past six months, [but] silver has almost doubled that return, soaring an extraordinary 65.4 per cent.”
What is the ‘silver spot price’?
Similar to the gold spot price, the silver spot price is a live estimate of silver’s market value, continuously assessed and set by authorities including the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA).
Traders treat the silver spot price as a real-time benchmark of the value of silver, rather than the actual price at which they would sell or buy this commodity. Silver brokers must adjust the prices they offer to private buyers and sellers so that they can cover their operating costs and turn a profit.
So, the silver spot price is not exactly the amount an individual would pay or receive for silver items. Rather, it is closely linked to the prices you would be offered.
Why is the value of silver increasing?
The rise in silver’s value has been sustained by ‘favourable winds’, to use a term popular in the finance world. Several factors have coincided to power the ongoing rally:
- Rising industrial demand: increased usage of industrial silver in solar panels, electric vehicles, smartphones, AI servers and other in-demand products has taken up a significant share of the global silver supply, driving up prices.
See World Gold Council’s Gold Demand Trends Full Year 2024 – Technology
- Economic uncertainty: silver is generally regarded as a stable store of wealth, although its price history reveals more volatility than that of gold. Silver is nonetheless treated as a ‘safe haven’ investment by many states and large organisations, and this has been linked to stockpiling by Russia’s and Saudi Arabia’s central banks, among other large entities, throughout recent geopolitical turmoil.
See World Gold Council’s Central Bank Gold Reserves Survey 2025 - Concerns around currency: the unsteady performance of key currencies, especially the U.S. dollar, throughout 2025 has driven investors to transfer their wealth into other assets such as gold and silver.
See Gold Market Commentary – January 2025 & International Monetary System & Gold
- Supply deficits: the amount of silver mined globally (typically as a byproduct of other mining operations) has not risen in proportion to increasing demand for the metal, leading to reports of a silver shortage.
See World Gold Council’s Gold Demand Trends Q1 2025 – Supply & Gold Supply Overview
These are among the many causes which have collectively given rise to silver’s sustained rally throughout 2025 and recent years.
How do silver prices in 2025 compare to other historic highs?
In nominal terms (taking the numbers at face value), silver reached its highest ever price in November 2025.
Even adjusting for inflation, current prices are among the highest in the last 100 years. In dollars, the peak silver price in 2025 (to date) was $53.87. Only two periods saw higher values:
- the rally from September 1979 to December 1980, which peaked in February 1980 with an inflation-adjusted silver price of $145.21, and;
- the period from April to August 2011, when the equivalent figure reached $69.85.
The spike in 1979-80 is widely considered to have been an anomaly. The ‘Hunt Brothers’ – a wealthy family of investors – had accumulated roughly one-third of the world’s silver supply, and their attempts to corner the market drove prices up. A plummet in prices on March 27, 1980 (now remembered as ‘Silver Thursday’) compelled the brothers to divest their silver holdings, and the market subsequently stabilised.
Reddit user, etka64, recalls the 1979-80 silver spike colourfully:
“It was crazy. People were selling anything with silver in it. Coin collections, silverware, jewelry. Billboards all over the place wanting silver.”
What happens next?
While the anomalous 1980 silver spike was followed by a crash in the silver price, the current rally appears to be more stably rooted in structural factors such as insufficient supply and growing industrial demand, as detailed above.
Some commentators foresee considerable further growth in silver’s value. Philippe Gijsels, Chief Strategy Officer at BNP Paribas Fortis, has suggested that the silver price could exceed $100 by 2026, despite the potential for a near-term pullback.
Forex.com is more circumspect, suggesting that the silver price may continue to increase under favourable conditions:
“Silver is holding a bullish rebound similar to gold, […] climbing back toward the 50[-dollar] mark,” they report.
“Key resistance levels in focus are 50.30 and 51.30. A sustained hold above these could redirect the broader trend toward record highs alongside gold, with targets at 53.40, 57.00, and 63.80.”
Of course, no-one is certain of what the future holds for the silver price. Possible medium-term events, such as any significant expansion in silver mining or a ceasefire in Russia’s war on Ukraine, could slow the metal’s appreciation. As we all know, historical performance and events are not an accurate guide to the future.
Silver or gold?
Gold remains the most popular choice among private buyers. Historical price data would suggest that gold has historically been the more stable asset with fewer significant fluctuations in price.
However, silver might now be seen by some as a more attractive option.If you had put £1,000 into gold and £1,000 into silver six months ago (bearing in mind that this article was written in November 2025), the gold would be worth around £1,350, while the silver would be worth around £1,650. But this is a very short timeframe to consider performance over. We consider both gold and silver to be long-term wealth protection tools, rather than things to speculate on.
For anyone exploring how physical silver purchases work in practice — including storage, premiums, and authentication — our team can explain the steps involved