Divide the price of an ounce of gold by the price of an ounce of silver and you get the gold–silver ratio: how many ounces of silver buy one ounce of gold on that day. In September 2026 it stood near 68. In January 1980 it briefly touched about 17; in late April 2011, about 31.5. The ratio moves because both prices move, and it means exactly what the two prices meant on the day they were taken — no more.
The same phrase, ounces of silver per ounce of gold, is also used for three different counts: market price, mine output, and London vault stocks. They give very different answers, near 68, near 7, and near 3. All three are below, starting with the price ratio. The mine figures are world totals from survey books, not a list of mining companies, and nothing here is a miner pick.
What the ratio measures
Call gold G and silver S, both in the same currency per troy ounce. The ratio is G ÷ S. If gold is $2,000 and silver is $25, the ratio is 80: eighty ounces of silver have the same dollar value as one ounce of gold at that pair of prices. Change either price and the ratio changes. There is no hidden third input.
The two prices must be taken at the same time. A London gold afternoon fix set against a COMEX silver future from another session is a mixed snapshot. This site’s desk shows a live ratio from matching live prices. The figures below use named prints and year averages so the arithmetic can be checked. This site’s published year-average price series is an LBMA/COMEX annual average for each metal; dividing those two averages gives a year-average ratio, which is not the same as any single day’s figure.
Governments once wrote a ratio into law as well: the mint ratio, a legal number of silver units per gold unit. The Coinage Act of 1792 used 15 to 1; later statutes used 16 to 1. When the legal ratio and the market ratio drifted apart, the metal the law overvalued stayed in coin and the other tended to disappear from circulation — the old bimetallic problem, told under bimetallism.
Mining ratio vs market ratio
The market ratio is one price divided by another. A mining ratio is one year’s mine output of silver divided by the same year’s mine output of gold. Both can be spoken as “ounces of silver per ounce of gold,” but they are different quotients: the first uses two dollar prices, the second two production totals.
This site’s homepage mining-ratio card shows about 7.1. That figure is Silver Institute / Metals Focus World Silver Survey 2026 mine supply of 844.1 million ounces (2026F) divided by this site’s World Gold Council–based 2026e gold mine pace of 3,708 tonnes. USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 prints a matching 2025e pair — 3,300 tonnes of gold and 26,000 tonnes of silver — about 7.9 ounces of silver per ounce of gold by mass. The USGS gold total sits below the World Gold Council mine figure this site uses for the card, so the two official mine ratios land near seven and near eight. The desk’s Stocks & flows mine-output tile shows the same USGS pair. Much of the world’s silver is mined as a byproduct of other metals, which is part of why the mining ratio stays in this range.
The market is somewhere else entirely. On 10 September 2026, COMEX December gold closed at $4,364.50 and COMEX December silver at $64.28 — two futures from the same session on the same exchange. Divide them and the market ratio is 67.9, near 68. The next session’s pair can move a point either way.
People sometimes read the distance between a mine ratio near 7 and a market ratio near 68 as a sign that silver is cheap. That reading mixes two different divisions. Gold’s price answers mostly to demand for a large stock that is rarely used up; silver’s also answers to factories that consume it. Nothing ties the price ratio to the mine ratio, so the gap is not a fair-value gap, and the mine ratio is not a mean the market ratio is bound to drift toward. Who actually buys and uses silver, country by country, is covered in physical silver demand by country.
London vault holdings — a custody inventory
The third count is metal sitting in London vaults. The London Bullion Market Association’s London vault holdings series counts gold and silver in London commercial vaults, plus the Bank of England’s gold (the Bank does not hold silver). The figure is month-end, published one month in arrears, and covers metal inside the M25: wholesale bars, coins, kilo bars, and small bars. It does not count jewellery, household metal, or smaller vaults outside the London clearing system, so it is not a world aboveground census.
The August 2026 print, published 7 September 2026, names 9,632 tonnes of gold and 28,431 tonnes of silver. Using the LBMA’s stated conversion — 1 gram = 0.0321507465 troy ounces — those tonnes become about 310 million ounces of gold and about 914 million ounces of silver. Divide the silver by the gold and the vault ratio is about 3.0 ounces of silver per ounce of gold.
- Gold 9,632 tonnes — about 310 million ounces.
- Silver 28,431 tonnes — about 914 million ounces.
- Vault ratio ~3.0 — ounces of silver per ounce of gold in the same custody inventory.
London is one settlement hub. Metal in New York, Shanghai, Zurich, or a household safe is outside this count, and the next month’s figure can move. Three counts, three answers — about 3 in London vaults, about 7 in mine output, about 68 in the market — and each is correct for what it measures.
What the ratio does not tell you
The ratio is not a natural law. Geology, mine supply, industrial use, and monetary demand all push on the two prices, and none of them fixes “the” ratio. A 15 in a mint statute, or a 17 on a January 1980 trading day, does not bind any later market.
A high ratio means gold’s dollar price is large relative to silver’s on that date; a low one means the opposite. It does not, by itself, say that silver is behind or due to catch up. The year averages below run from under 30 to above 80 since 1971, with no fixed level the ratio keeps returning to.
Nor does the ratio measure industrial tightness on its own. Silver has a large fabrication use; gold’s fabrication use is small relative to its monetary stock. A squeeze in one metal can move the ratio without saying anything about the other metal’s value.
1980 and 2011 as anchors
Two well-documented peaks are the usual reference points.
In January 1980 the London gold PM fix reached $850 on 21 January. Silver’s nearby extreme in that same month, used on this site’s 1980 desk print, is $49.45 on 18 January. Those two prices give $850 ÷ $49.45 = 17.2 — a peak-week snapshot during the Hunt brothers’ silver run, whose collapse is told as Silver Thursday. The 1980 year averages on this site are $612.56 gold and $20.98 silver → 29.2. The January spike and the year average are different snapshots of the same year.
In 2011 the London gold PM fix reached $1,895 on 6 September. Silver’s 2011 year average on this site is $35.12; gold’s is $1,571.52 → a year-average ratio of 44.7. Late April is a different moment again: the London silver fix reached $48.70 on 28 April while gold’s PM fix was $1,535.50, and that pair compressed the ratio to 31.5 — the figure commentary rounds to 30:1. Which “2011 ratio” someone means depends on the date they picked.
What a 30:1 ratio meant in 2011
On any given day the ratio is still gold’s dollar price divided by silver’s. On 28 April 2011 the London gold PM fix was $1,535.50 and the London silver fix was $48.70. Those two London prices give $1,535.50 ÷ $48.70 = 31.5. The day’s two gold fixes averaged $1,533.25; that mean divided by the same silver fix is 31.48, the year’s low on public London-fix ratio tables. “Thirty to one” is the rounded shorthand for that April moment, not a year average. The prices can be checked on a 2011 London-fix archive and on a daily London-fix ratio table compiled from LBMA gold and silver fixes. A contemporaneous April 2011 report named the same pair.
This site’s 2011 year averages remain $1,571.52 gold and $35.12 silver → 44.7, a twelve-month mean rather than the April low. On 6 September 2011 the London gold PM fix was $1,895 against a London silver fix of $41.85: $1,895 ÷ $41.85 = 45.3. Silver had already fallen from its April high, so gold’s September peak came with a higher ratio, not a second 30:1. One year, one definition, three figures: April’s 31.5, September’s 45.3, and the year-average 44.7.
What 30:1 meant in 2011 is that, for a few London sessions in late April, silver’s price was unusually high next to gold’s. The run did not last: by September the ratio was back above 45. Buying of bars and coins and industrial use were both strong that year, but neither changes the arithmetic of the ratio itself; country-by-country demand, from later survey years, is in physical silver demand by country.
The April 2011 low is a date in the record, like the January 1980 figure near 17.2. Neither is a level that later prices are bound to revisit.
Year-average snapshots from the same series
Using only this site’s published year-average prices, so both metals share a method, here are a few more dated ratios.
- 1971: $40.62 ÷ $1.39 = 29.2.
- 1980: $612.56 ÷ $20.98 = 29.2 (year average; January peak prints ≈ 17.2, above).
- 2000: $279.11 ÷ $4.95 = 56.4.
- 2011: $1,571.52 ÷ $35.12 = 44.7.
- 2020: $1,769.64 ÷ $20.55 = 86.1.
- 2024: $2,386 ÷ $28.27 = 84.4.
The year-average ratio sat near 29 in two different decades and near 84–86 in two recent years. The January 1980 figure near 17 is a peak-week pair, not a year; April 2011 near 31.5 is a single London session, not the 2011 year average of 44.7. The labels matter as much as the numbers.
Reading a ratio you see quoted
The useful questions are always the same: which two prices, from which market, on which date — a fix, a futures close, or a year average? A comparison of 1980 with 2011 means little until someone says which 1980 and which 2011. A mint ratio is a law, a mining ratio is ounces mined, a market ratio is a price quotient, and a vault ratio is ounces held in one custody count; most confusion about “the ratio” comes from swapping one for another.
Silver’s older legal ratio is the story of bimetallism, and the 1980 squeeze is told in Silver Thursday. Silver’s double life as money and industrial metal is traced in monetary history and industry, and the argument over whether the cost of mining should limit money is taken up in hard money vs fiat. Physical silver demand by country covers who buys and uses the metal; the desk’s Stocks & flows tab shows live mine output and above-ground stocks. Other market figures, including the U.S. official gold book value, are collected under markets.