I do not know if Silver is manipulated, I do know that it seems to be a bad investment compared to gold.
in around 2008 I bought a bunch of silver and platinum, and if I sold it today I would lose a lot of money.
If I had bought gold, tech stocks or bitcoin I would be much better off.
Yeah if investing in precious metals you have to be prepared to sit on it for awhile. Like you I also bought a bunch of silver almost 15 years ago. The spot price hasn’t risen much but the premiums have. I think the spot when I bought it was around $16 but the premium I paid then was only $2 over spot. It’s not really considered an investment it’s more like insurance in a SHTF scenario. But I think that is about to change soon because of our incredibly reckless deficit spending. There’s almost no talk of austerity rather Congress is going full barrel running up the debt. It’s impossible for this to continue much longer without the dollar being devalued. I’m expecting gold to be around $3k within a year and silver to be in the 30’s in the same time period. And I expect it to continue up on that trajectory. In any event the chance of it going down in the future is almost nil so I consider it a pretty safe investment regardless.
It depends on the reason you are buying silver (or gold or bitcoin for that matter).
If you are seeking trading gains that is one approach.
If you are seeking apocalypse protection that is another approach.
I have neither and seek neither.
;-)