I have a question about storing precious metals. I remember seeing in the news that in Dubai they actually have gold foil ATMs. I wonder, if you have a metal (say, silver) in two different forms (let's say, in leaf and in jewelry) they have same weight and purity, which one will increase in value later? Would the price of gold from a ring go down once it's melted down?
Jewelry seem to be more convenient to own since it's wearable but I heard they might not increase in value and you'd also pay for the craftsmanship on top of the price of the metal.
If ailver went that high a lot of electronics would cost more. Likely what would really happen is that electronic companies would switch to use another metal that is cheaper. Maybe even figure out cheaper gold transistors or something. But they wouldnt want to keep buying silver at a high price
Transistors are made neither of silver nor of gold
They are made of silicon which is as cheap as dirt. Apart from that, I don't think that silver is very widely used in electronics nowadays. Yes, I know that this metal is the best conductor out there (you needn't tell me that), but copper (cuprum) is not a bad conductor either, though it is a lot cheaper than silver (in fact, the electrical conductivity of silver is only marginally better than that of copper). So in the majority of cases it works pretty good and thus is by far more economically viable than silver. The bottom line is that most of demand for silver likely comes from jewelry and investments (i.e. silver as a precious metal)
Copper is definitely more abundant and is heavily used in electrical wires. Many people in my country actually scavenge it since people just throw old wires in the dump. We're not running out of copper anytime soon electronics to rely on silver. Silver has already lost most of its industrial use. It's no longer needed in photography and only expensive mirrors use it as backing and even in there it's not great since it'll eventually tarnish.
