To find one gram of silver, you need to drill through at least 20 tons of rock! Silver makes up only a tiny proportion of the Earth’s crust. Silver indeed is a rare metal.
Silver is found either as a free metal, or in combination with other elements. We can extract silver from silver ores; the most prominent silver ore is asanthite or argentite. Lead sulphate or Galena is another important source of silver. The principal sources of silver are the ores of copper, copper-nickel, lead, and lead-zinc obtained from Peru, Mexico, China, Australia, Chile, Poland and Kosovo. Peru and Mexico have been mining silver since 1546 and are still major world producers of this lustrous metal.
About 18,000 tons of silver are produced every year. But extracting silver is a tough process. A lot of it comes from the waste left behind after refining copper, lead or zinc. Although silver is relatively scarce, it is the most plentiful and least expensive of the precious metals.
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