According to Mine Web, the Silver Institute has just published a trend report on silver, especially targeting jewelry, and things look pretty good for silver jewelry. This is really not a huge surprise since, while the cost of silver has gone up a good deal over the last year or so, you still can't beat silver as the most economical metal for jewelry these days. Really, everything has gone up, silver, gold, and platinum.

From Silver Institute publishes GFMS global silver jewelry analysis report:

The Silver Institute Thursday released a detailed analysis on trends in the global silver jewelry market conducted by London precious metals consultants GFMS.

The study found that silver jewelry consumption is still heavily skewed towards western markets, which pushed fabrication higher in top jewelry manufacturing centers Thailand, Italy and China. In 2005 silver jewelry accounted for one-fifth of total jewelry fabrication and 19% of international silver demand.

Globally, twice as much silver as gold ends up in jewelry while demand for these two metals dwarfs platinum and palladium, according to the study. "Taking all four precious metals together, silver's share of total precious metals jewelry volume increased from 60.5% in 1999 to 65.6% in 2005."

However, GFMS's research discovered large differences in the ratio of silver: gold jewelry consumption on an individual country basis.

While gold was by far the dominant precious metal on a value basis, GFMS suggested that "in reality, and in particular at the retail level, silver holds its own rather better in the value stakes due to the much higher markups on silver than on gold, platinum or palladium jewelry.