Gold Silver Ratio Chart

What is the Gold-to-Silver Ratio?
The gold-to-silver ratio measures how many troy ounces of silver are needed to purchase one ounce of gold.

How is it Calculated?
It’s calculated by dividing the current price of gold by the current price of silver.

What Does it Indicate?
A high ratio means silver is relatively undervalued compared to gold. A low ratio means gold is relatively undervalued compared to silver.

Live Gold Silver Ratio Charts, Historical Gold vs Silver

The Gold Silver Ratio is by far the most watched relative ratio measurement in precious metals investing. Essentially, it is an index that fluctuates based on gold and silver prices. Scroll down to see the live Gold Silver Ratio as well as long-term charts of Gold Silver Ratio history.

Let us begin this analysis with a clear explanation of what the Gold-Silver Ratio is.

Gold Silver Ratio - (n) the dynamic moving amount of silver one can theoretically buy with a fixed amount of gold. Typically, in the Western world, the gold-to-silver ratio is measured in the number of troy ounces of silver one can acquire with one troy ounce of physical gold. Although it can also be estimated in equivalent sizes of bullion weights: grams, kilos, tonnes, etc.

Many modern-day gold and silver bullion buyers and traders use the fluctuating Gold Silver Ratio to determine which precious metal may be poised to outperform the other.

For example, we will examine times the Gold-Silver Ratio has fallen above or below its 20th and 21st Century averages, or longer, which will show you in various longer-term Gold-Silver Ratio charts below.

Depending on their outlook, time horizons, and beliefs, physical precious metal savers may want to buy more gold or more silver, depending on whichever may appear to be more undervalued to the other.

Regarding geologists, we find roughly 8 parts of silver to 1 part gold in the ground. Silver and gold's historic monetary ratio has typically averaged around 16, and has little, if anything, to do with how they are valued today. Remember that silver has been divorced from the modern financial system since 1964

Only produced by star explosions, the lack of a precious supply of both physical silver and gold bullion is one significant attribute to its enduring value. There are, of course, many trillions of other reasons the world saves silver and gold for wealth preservation and even appreciation at the right timeframes.

Extreme privacy between the two bullion types is just one additional attribute they both share.

Gold Silver Ratio Volatility

The Gold-Silver Ratio has varied widely through different places and different times. Even in ancient times, it played an essential role in shaping the economy of various societies. One relevant instance in documented history is that the Roman Empire officially set the ratio at 12:1. Centuries later, the U.S. government fixed the ratio at 15:1 with the Coinage Act of 1792.

You can check the modern-day gold-silver ratio in our interactive chart above.

In bullion bull markets, gold often tends to outperform silver in the beginning acquisition phases. Silver historically plays catch-up and outperforms gold in a more speculative environment, when the average 'man on the street' and even high net worth investors begin choosing silver bullion over gold bullion allocations.

Industrial demand also plays a significant role in deciding silver prices. Silver has an incredible variety of technological applications, and prices usually rise when the industry is in high production.

Gold serves primarily as a security asset, a hedge against economic instability, devaluation, deflation, and currency replacement.

Look back at the bull markets of both 1980 and 2011 for illustrations of these stated facts. And no older-timers, it was not merely the scapegoated Hunt Brothers silver speculations that caused virtually all commodities to multiply in US dollar values many-fold throughout the 1970s.

When silver performs best versus gold in recent history, it is often during timeframes in which fiat currencies and their enduring values are most acutely called into question by the investing masses. Many bullion buyers, including ourselves, believe another era of fiat currency faith loss will come to fruition soon enough.

Over the last few centuries, the Gold-Silver Ratio has been fixed by authoritative government decree, their central banks (e.g., Bank of England, Federal Reserve), or even heavily influenced by commodity futures contract price discovery markets (e.g., from 1974 to today's version of the CME Group's COMEX).

The Gold-Silver Ratio has been as low as 2.5 oz of silver to acquire 1 oz of gold (ancient Egypt). The Gold-Silver Ratio has gotten as high as over 100 oz of silver to buy 1 oz of gold in the 1930s as the US government forced US citizens to turn in their gold coin savings.

The following chart covers the past 300 years of the Gold-Silver Ratio.

Gold Silver Ratio 300-Year Chart

What happened with the Gold-Silver Ratio following the US Civil War?

What happened with the Gold-Silver Ratio following the confiscation of US citizens' private Gold and Silver (1933 / 1934)?

Gold Silver Ratio 70 Year Chart

What caused the lows in the Gold-Silver Ratio in the years leading into 1968, in early 1980, beginning in 2010 and into the year 2011 respectively?

Here at SD Bullion, you can learn more about the fundamental investment factors for gold and silver investing.

Given the way both the silver spot price and gold spot price are mainly discovered by dominating synthetic derivatives at this moment in time, it is not until lessening supplies vs. increased demand factors exacerbate that we often historically see the Gold Silver Ratio drop sharply.

The last significant example of this was from 2009 to the 2011 timeframe, in which physical bullion buying at the margin forced the Gold Silver Ratio sharply downwards, reaching levels as low as 32 or 3,3, depending on the derivatives one uses to measure by.

Of course, one doesn't have to look far to find what may sound like ridiculous gold price predictions. Often, many are arithmetically based on historical US dollar monetary base outstanding precedent. Every 50 years or so, the outstanding US dollar issuance is accounted for by the official US gold reserves. We believe we are on track for another historic beating of the nation's fiat currency, i.e, the US dollar, by gold in the 2020s.

If, for example, the spot price of gold were to hit $5,000 oz USD and the Gold-Silver Ratio tightened to its multi-millennia and naturally occurring near the ground averages, the world could simultaneously have silver spot prices well above $100 oz USD.

The following logarithmic format chart has possible projections for future Gold Silver Ratios moving into the 2020s.

The yellow line tracks the ongoing fiat US dollar price of gold in this 21st-century bullion bull market (see left axis).

The red line tracks the ongoing Gold Silver Ratio in this 21st Century bullion bull market (see right axis, used for both the continuing ratio and the US dollar silver price).

The gray-colored line tracks the ongoing fiat US dollar price of silver in this 21st-century bullion bull market (again see the right axis).

The following logarithmic format chart has possible projections for future Gold Silver Ratio potentials moving into the 2020s.

Gold Silver Ratio Potential Future Chart

Logarithmic scale charts like the above are nonlinear scales often used when there is a broad range of quantities, like we have for various potential Gold Silver Ratio levels ahead.

This chart is scaled, so the same vertical distance represents the two equivalent percent changes on the table (e.g., $50 oz to $100 oz silver vs. $100 oz to $200 oz silver both represent 100% increases, thus they take up the same amount of space on the chart).

Many bullion buyers today fully expect gold and silver bullion (e.g., gold and silver coins and bars) to continue their 21st Century Bull Markets and possibly each respectively reach five and triple-digit fiat US dollar values per troy ounce within the coming decades.

Click here to learn more about the 5,000-year Gold Silver Ratio history. Learn how ridiculously low the Gold Silver Ratio was before the industrial revolution made mining for most often by-product silver, more accessible now than it was in the long-dated past.

We have also written about the Gold-Silver Ratio in general, including a practical guide to how some gold and silver bullion buyers and investors use it when buying their bullion.