What is the "silver Standard?"

Historically speaking, silver was the fist metal to be used as a monetary standard. the use of silver began as early as four thousand years ago, or even before then, in Ancient Greece, when silver "ingots" were used. The Athenian silver coin called a tetradrachm was actually the first coin that was used as an international trading standard.

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Hi. Yeah, the term has to do with economic issues and with silver mining. Once upon a time the economic unit of account was determined as the weight of silver. After extensive silver deposits were recovered in Bolivia in the 16th century, the silver dollar became a widely used currency. So altogether silver was used as the main monetary standard since the fall of the Roman Empire until the 19th century when a gold standard was adopted instead. Silver was considered a lot more valuable than gold for quite a while. It wasn't until the late 19th century that there was a drastic decline in the value ratio. The reason for this is thought by some to be the fact that Germany adopted the gold monetary standard in 1871, and introduced the gold German mark two years after that. Some attribute the sudden decline of the value of silver as a monetary standard to the establishing of the Latin Monetary Union in 1866, which apparently was 'denigrated' silver somewhat. During the twentieth century the value of silver rose again but it never went back to its early 19th century rate. Today the value of silver vs. value of gold ratio is roughly 1/50.

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