Take your financial preparedness to the next level with silver. Its value has been recognized for millennia and isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. While you don’t want to trade all of your cash and investments out for silver, getting some of it for investment and survival purposes is a great way to diversify and prepare at the same time. If you are looking to diversify and prepare at the same time, getting some silver for prepping is a good plan. There are plenty of types of silver bullion to pick from.
This is where we come in. We’ve researched the best silver for prepping and the results are in: the overall best, a bar option, and a coin option. If you need to diversify your survival finances, one of our picks will bring the value.
Disclaimer: We are survivalists, preppers, engineers, MBAs – a lot of things… but nobody on our team is a financial advisor. None of what we discuss below is specific financial advice and shouldn’t be taken as such.
Contents (Jump to a Section)
The Best Silver for Prepping
Versatile, Compact, and Well-Known
Snap off exact change even during the apocalypse, or just have unique investment diversification.
*Price at time of publishing; check for price changes or sales.
A silver bar machined to be broken into smaller silver chits is the ultimate choice for survival-versatile bullion. Don’t overpay with a $250 silver bar- break up your CombiBar instead to get manageable denominations so you can barter, trade, and pay effectively.
It’s small, valuable, and doubles as a neat conversation starter on the merits and drawbacks of bullion at your next prepper meetup.
Here is how the CombiBar measures up:
- 0.999 pure silver
- 100 breakable 1-gram tabs
- 3.21 troy ounces
- Valcambi Swiss Mint
- 4.1″ W x 2.9″ L x 0.05″ H
With unmatched versatility – it’s easy to see why the Silver CombiBar is the best for preppers.
Best Silver Bars
Cost Effective, Efficient Storage, and Well-Known
A well-known Swiss mint with low premiums over spot for bullion bars offers the best choice for silver.
*Price at time of publishing; check for price changes or sales.
When you want the best value for your buck, you’re going to want to look into bars. Known as stackers, they are easy to stack and store and hold reasonable value for the space they take up. They end up just being a smidge over spot value due to the minting, but it’s worth it if you get a well-recognized mint.
We like the Swiss Valcombi mint, and they are one of the newer ones to offer up silver bars in multiple denominations, including 1, 5, 10, 100, and 1000 troy ounces. The higher the weight of the bar you get, the better value it is versus the silver spot value. We like the 10 troy-ounce bar since it represents roughly $300 – a good starting value for stacking bars.
Here is how the bar measures up:
- 0.999 pure silver
- 10 troy ounces
- Valcambi Swiss Mint
- 2″ W x 3.5″ L x 0.25″ H
If you are looking for silver bars to stash for SHTF, Valcombi 10 Ounce Bars are what you need.
Best Silver Coins
Inexpensive, Good Denomination, and Universally Recognized
Skip the numismatics and get the best value with mass production recognition across the globe.
*Price at time of publishing; check for price changes or sales.
The US Mint puts out some of the most recognizable coins in the world, and the Silver Eagle is well known. This helps if you ever need to trade since many people know its approximate value. The one we highlight above is sold with random years since there is not much numismatic value to these modern coins yet. You could opt to go for specific years, but as we point out later it’s not relevant for survival.
As with any coins, you will pay a small premium over the spot value, but they are expected at that value and have good resell value over spot as well. The small coins are easy to store and transport, making them ideal for mobile survival kits or caches.
Here are the full specs:
- 0.999 pure silver
- 1 troy ounce
- US Mint
- 1.6″ D
If you are looking for silver coins for prepping, get Silver American Eagle Coins.
Slightly bigger than a half dollar, the American Eagle is easy to carry and conceal.
Everything We Recommend
The Silver Bullion We Compared
Our research narrowed the field down to several types of silver bullion that we compared: coins, bars, rounds, junk, blocks, – even statues and bullets! All from various mints and sold through various vendors.
You can see our full list of review criteria below in the What to Look For section, with an explanation for each.
We considered a huge range of silver but quickly narrowed it down to practical solutions. Numismatic coins were ruled out although they can be good investments over time. Despite that, their numismatic value won’t necessarily be recognized as easily as bullion spot value in survival situations and emergencies.
We’re always looking for new and better stuff, so if you have a silver bullion preference that you swear by, let us know in the comments. We review most of our tested stuff annually so we can try to get it in the next roundup round and see if it will beat out our top picks.
What to Look For
The best silver for preppers has several important features to look for:
- Spot Premium
- Denomination
- Versatility
- Size & Weight
- Recognition
When you get the right blend of these, you can find silver bullion that isn’t just for investment. Below, we break down what each of these features means for the silver types that truly set themselves apart in survival situations.
Spot Premium
The ‘premium over spot’ is what you are paying over the going rate of silver per ounce for a specific coin, bar, etc. This premium is usually higher for lower denominations (1 ounce) and lower for higher denominations (1,000-ounce bars).
Besides type and denomination, some bullion holds value for other reasons, like scarcity (old collectible coins). When these are valuable, they are graded and known as ‘numismatic coins’. They cost significantly more than spot value but can also hold/increase in value during relatively stable economic conditions. They aren’t that great for survival and prepping, but we’ll cover that when we get to versatility.
Denomination
The denomination of your bullion (usually measured in grams or ounces), is important because it directly ties into its expected value. This makes the denomination important to consider, the same way you consider what specific bills to carry when you want to have cash on hand. You don’t want to be stuck with 100-dollar bills if you are buying something that is only $1, so you want a good mix of bullion denominations and value for the same reason.
Versatility
Our top pick has the versatility of being able to break up into precise denominations while still being solid for easy carrying until then.
Some bullion can be hidden (through its shape or container), used as an improvised weapon, or even loaded into a gun. There are many creative ways to use silver every day, and we focus on a few of the survival applications below.
Size & Weight
If you are bugging out of your home you won’t want a wheelbarrow to be able to move your bullion. If your size and weight of silver start getting unreasonable, you may want to step up to gold.
Silver is great for small transactions and low-cost bullion investing, but gold is far superior in value per ounce. You could also consider platinum and palladium as steps in between silver and gold, but they don’t hold the same universal appeal.
Recognition
In a survival situation, you don’t want to spend too much time figuring out or convincing others that bullion is real. Some preppers push for junk silver for this reason, but people aren’t as dumb as you may think.
Using a recognizable mint with clear purity stamps is usually a good way to go. These historically perform better and have better resale value than junk silver during stable economic times as well.
How to Use Silver for Survival
The most obvious use for silver in a survival situation is as currency or barter. Silver coins and bullion have held value over the years through the rise and fall of many national currencies. Silver isn’t a foolproof currency, but it does have millennia of proven universal value to prop it up.
Many preppers simply diversify their investment strategy using silver. Prepper financial planning isn’t necessarily conservative- it’s diverse. Most preppers don’t go all-in on any single type of currency but choose to dabble in everything so that in the event of a collapse they won’t be left with nothing.
Caches are often used to spread out tools (and currencies).
Besides the main use, silver also has several ancillary uses that a prepper can consider:
- Food Preservation: Silver can be used to extend the shelf life of certain perishable food items. Placing a small silver coin or silverware in stored water or containers of food can help inhibit bacterial growth and spoilage.
- Fire Starting: Silver has high reflectivity and can be used to focus sunlight or as a reflective surface for fire-starting purposes. You can use highly polished silver to concentrate sunlight onto some tinder for a flame.
- Reflective Signaling: The reflective properties of silver can be used for signaling to attract attention in emergency situations. Use a small piece of silver material to reflect sunlight and create visible flashes or signals to potential rescuers- the same way you would a signal mirror.
- Improvised Tools: Silver coins or small silver objects can be used as improvised weights, washers, or even fishing lures in survival scenarios where you need to improvise tools or equipment.
Of course, the proper survival and food preservation tools are ideal for all of these situations but it can be nice knowing you have some backup ideas in your bullion stash.
Who Needs Silver?
Bullion of every type isn’t a necessity for anyone. It does have its uses when it comes to investment and survival, but we don’t see it as an absolutely essential piece of any kit or plan.
For that reason, we merely suggest you consider adding silver to these kits:
Even if you aren’t interested in prepping (but you should be: here’s why you need to prepare), silver can be a great hedge against inflation and a moderately stable investment.
How We Review Products: We research thoroughly before selecting the best products to review. We have vast prepping and survival experience and bring in outside experts when needed. Hours on end are spent testing gear in stressful conditions and using specialized testing gear to verify claims. We assign performance criteria and impartially rate each tested item. Learn more about how we test.
Sources and References
All of our experience and the research we do to determine the best silver for survival are useless without listing our research sources and references. We leaned on these for the book knowledge that we paired with our practical survival and financial experience:
Godasgar, V., et al. (2013). The mechanisms of the bullion markets and the return of gold (and silver) as money. 7th International Conference on e-Commerce in Developing Countries. (Source)
Quinn, S. (1996). Gold, Silver, and the Glorious Revolution: Arbitrage between Bills of Exchange and Bullion. The Economic History Review. Volume 49. Issue 3. Pages 473-490. (Source)
Temple, R. (1899). Beginnings of Currency. The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. Volume 29. Issue 1/2. Pages 99-122. (Source)
The Final Word
The ‘silver bullet’ of low-cost bullion investing is silver, of course. It doesn’t cost much to get started with tangible assets that have been recognized value since close to the dawn of humanity. Be smart when you shop by remembering the importance of mixed denominations, bullion over numismatic value, and mixing bullion types down the road.
Here are a few other guides and reviews our subscribers have found helpful:
We presented quite a lot of information, but as always: if you have any questions let us know and we would be happy to help. Our research and experience found the Silver CombiBar to be the best option given its spot premium, denomination, versatility, size/weight, and recognition.
Keep exploring, stay prepared, and be safe.
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