Silver Series - Background

Hugh Clarke, VP Corporate Communications of Endeavour Silver (TSX:EDR, AMEX:EXK) kindly provided me with some statistics on silver. There are some interesting facts including the major uses of silver, which countries are the major silver producers, the percentage of primary vs. by-product production, and on and on. I like the long term prospects for silver or I wouldn't be digging into this information. I'm breaking up the reports into a series of blog posts for the benefit of those of us with short attention spans.

Background
Often considered the “poor man’s gold” silver has been quietly climbing the investment and demand charts since its discovery thousands of years ago in Anatolia, now modern day Turkey. Silver’s unique properties make it ideal for thousands of applications used in every day life.

Silver is:

• Nature’s best conductor of electricity


• One of the best conductors of heat


• The most reactive of metals


• Malleable and ductile

Silver is found today in mines around the world; the top producing mining countries are Peru, Mexico and China.