If you had been on the ball right when the market crashed in 2008, you could have bought silver around $9 an ounce. Now, 2.5 years later (April 2011) silver has shot to over $40 an ounce! So if you had started to invest when the market was at its lowest, you could have quadrupled your money by now! That is only 2.5 years of investing for what would normally take you decades to accomplish through interest given to you by the bank!