Silver Mines
Investment Thoughts
Warning / Notice: this article contains statistics from when this was written. Things change rapidly in the world of finance, so what may be true today, may not be true a week from now! (and of course none of this is “financial advice”)
Silver and gold have been fantastic “investments” for the past five years. When silver and gold go up in price, the profitability of the mining companies goes up too. This of course is reflected in very nice gains in stock prices.
While gold is a great way to preserve wealth, it isn’t a “wealth generator”. Silver is more volatile and has higher buy/sell premiums than gold, thus generally I’ve avoided silver in favor of gold. However mines are a different story. Mines are businesses, they make money. Properly chosen and timed, buying mining stocks can create wealth for you.
Currently gold and silver are taking a bit of a break. This gives us an opportunity to consider investments without the pressure and rush that can come when prices are rapidly rising. Prices always bounce around, for the past thirty days gold spot price is down -2.13% and silver spot price is up 4.22%.
That’s a big change from the past year where gold was up 34% and silver was up 124%.
To avoid repeating the same thing for each mine, a few basics of the silver mining market essentially apply to all companies. Returns in 2025 were fantastic, returns for the past three months have been negative. This demonstrates how their stock prices reflect spot prices. The gains can be magnified though with stock prices gaining twice as much as spot price gains.
Compared to my other investments, my investments in silver mining have gained very poorly (roughly a gain of 4.7% in less than five months – downright terrible compared to my other investments). While things aren’t looking great at the moment, I have great faith that by the end of the year we’ll see a very different picture.
To research all of the companies doing silver mining is far beyond the time I have available. So here are some comments on silver mining companies that I have invested in:
ANPMF (Andean Precious Metals Corp) – they mine in two locations: “Golden Queen” Soledad Mountain Operation in California, primarily silver but some gold; “Empresa Minera Manquiri” in Bolivia mining substantially more silver than their California mine produces.
Andean employees about five hundred people. They claim to try and hire local people (their goal is 100% local labor). As a sample, in California they pay electricians from $28 to $52 per hour.
Over the past three years their stock price has grown 729%. Last year’s growth was 231%. This illustrates how such an investment can blow away investing in index funds and the stock market in general. If you want real growth, you need to target (invest in) the right things!
Andean is currently at $4.83 per share. It looks like $4.60 would be a pretty good price to buy it at. If you were more aggressive for a bargain you might go for $4.50 (but may not get it).
AYA (AYA Gold & Silver Inc) – they have three mines in Morocco, primarily mining silver. Their mine “Zgounder” is a rare silver-only mine! (usually silver is mined as a byproduct of mining for other metals)
Over the past three years their stock price has grown 225%. Last year’s growth was 137%. They are currently at $20.95. They would probably be a pretty good buy at $17.
DSVSF (Discovery Silver) – they are currently proposing a name change to “Discovery Mining” as they just bought a gold mine. They mine in Canada and Mexico.
Over the past three years their stock price has grown 800%. Last year’s growth was 168%. They are currently at $6.23. They would probably be a pretty good buy at $5.60.
KUYAF (Kuya Silver Corp) – Kuya mines in Canada and Peru. They have invested recently to dramatically increase their production.
Over the past three years their stock price has grown 122%. Last year’s growth was 210%. They are currently at $0.62. They would probably be a pretty good buy at $0.58.
My investments have avoided the Mexican silver mines because of the trouble they have had with criminal activity hijacking shipments and kidnapping workers. Also I’ve favored mines that are focused on silver, rather than producing silver as a byproduct of other mining operations.
Silver has become more critical in electronics, the demand appears to be rapidly increasing. Sooner or later we can expect silver’s spot price to start rising again.