Silver is just Silver . . .
So I will not talk about gold, but gold is the exact opposite of Silver. Silver is a reactive metal to oxidation. It is always tarnishing so while White initially it is always discoloring toward black. And; Black is very ugly.

People buy silver but reality says there is simply to much silver around for it to become valuable. Now do not misunderstand me here , I love Silver as an investment metal. 30 % of my coin portfolio contains Silver but you cannot ever clean Silver coins because coins have ' flow lines ' tiny lines from the minting process. Once those lines are rubbed off the coin is worthless as a currency except for its weight in Silver metal.

All my coins are Gold, Platinum and Silver ; these are tiny pieces of art work so the beauty of the metal ensures my coins increase in value even as the metal value of Silver fluctuates. However Silver simply cannot dramatically increase in value . . .

The reason there are uncounted tonnes of Silver coins and other Silver just sitting around. Once Silver hits a record high price that Silver will invade the market and destroy the supply and demand marketplace. Yes Silver is important and there is simply so much non-utilized Silver available that how can the demand totally outstrip supply.

In the 1980's some very rich Americans inflated the price of Silver to $80/ounce but could not corner the market (Hunt's Billionaires to Bankrupt). To put this another say, Silver is a " smoke and mirrors " currency. The people who invent the fiction of Silver becoming mega value , Upmarket Silver because they cannot overcome the reality of Gold. No matter who these people are they know they can never control most of the gold supply ; primarily because most of the gold in sitting in politically controlled Government banks. Thus they must try and influence people toward Silver.

Can Silver do better , of course ; can it totally change its market price history ?
Impossible ; a Leopard has spots , if that leopard suddenly has stripes its a completely different animal called a Tiger. Such animals cannot change their nature , nor can base metals . . .

You have to admit it must take some doing for billionaires to actually go bankrupt ; )

https://www.statista.com/statistics/273649/silver-reserves-of-countries/

https://www.911metallurgist.com/blog/meet-the-worlds-10-biggest-silver-mines

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Thursday