Silver investors lost their asses over the last 8 years.

In September 2011 Silver dropped to $31 an Oz. You lost $4 an Oz. The last chance you had to get out even on his investment was one year later.

Two years later in Aug 2013 silver was at $25 an Oz. Ever since then silver has gone down to $16 an Oz and stayed around there until 2018. If you didn't get out he has lost a lot of money.

You didn't mention that any profit on silver you make has to be reported to the IRS. If you sells it as bullion it's a 28% capital gains tax. When you buy silver you normally have to pay an extra fee on top of spot price and when you sell silver you have to pay an extra fee too. Normally you don't get to buy it at spot price unless you're buying 10 Oz or more. You said you were only buying it one Oz at a time. That means you were probably paying 10% over spot price.

Let say you pay 10% over spot price for one Oz silver and sell it at 10% of it's current value. Then you have to pay the 28% capital gains tax when he sells it as bullion.

Also, you probably had to pay extra for shipping and handling at least once. Lets add an additional 5% for shipping and handling.

You would have to make 53% profit on each Oz of silver to cut even. Does that sound like a good investment to you?

Lets assume you sold your silver in Aug 2011. Silver was $44 an Oz. You had 50 Oz of silver too. You paid $175 in fees buying the silver. Lets assume you pay another $175 selling the silver. You made $8 per Oz on 50 Oz of silver, which is $400 profit.

You owe 28% tax on that profit, which is $112. You paid $300 buying the silver and selling the silver. You paid $88 or %5 in shipping and handling of that silver. Which means You lost $100 after selling it assuming you sold it at $44 an Oz which was the highest silver has been since 2011. Currnetly silver is $16 an Oz. If you sold it at $16 an Oz you lost a lot of money and you could only get relief by using that loss as a tax write off.