It's no secret that all commodities from oil, corn, wheat, gold and silver prices have been soaring the past couple of years. There are of course many reasons to this from governments printing money that is highly inflationary, safe havens of money and plain old supply and demand. So with commodity prices soaring, how does the average investor get on board? It's just not practical for the average person to buy and store a barrel of oil or a bushel of oil for investment purposes.

Buying and holding gold or silver is easy. Gold and silver coins are portable, they do not spoil and are easily stored. Gold has for years, has been held in the highest regard as the most precious metal. For over 5000 years silver and gold have been used as money and jewelry. Over that time gold has been more scarce than silver and thus the price of gold has historically been many times higher that silver. While many people have invested in gold and still do in a big way today, there is one aspect that silver has that gold does not. Silver is used extensively in industrial use.

There are very few investors that realize the uniqueness of silver's dual role. Because silver as recently as 1965 was used as circulated coins, most people still assume that the formerly abundant resource is the same today. The truth is since 1940, 90% of the world's silver stockpiles have been depleted. In fact, according to the US Geological Surveys, all of the known silver will be depleted in less than 29 years!

In today's economy, silver is used extensively as an anti-bacterial for water, food and the medical field. Silver is also one of the best semiconductors used in cell phones, laptops and in all electronics. As the demand for solar technology increases, so does the demand for silver. The fact that silver was cheap for years has made it the perfect industrial metal, in which today, there is not any real substitutes. Unlike gold that is hoarded as a precious metal, silver is used and not recoverable.

When you look at the supply vs. demand in silver it is amazing that very few investors know how little silver available there actually is. In fact over the last decade, silver has been one of the best investments available. What will happen to the silver price when more people start to realize that silver represents the "investment opportunity of a lifetime"?

Despite the tremendous gains that silver has experienced the last decade, silver is still vastly unappreciated. For those of us who really understand the fundamental principles of silver, the biggest gains are still ahead. One thing to keep in mind, once more of the public becomes more aware, silver will be very difficult to obtain. Don't wait! Get your hands on physical silver today while you can.