As with everything, something is worth what someone else is willing to pay for it. I get the impression that some people think the value of precious metals is inversely proportional to the value of the dollar. As we print more and more money it gets devalued and thus the value of the precious metals should be rising. And I think the thinking goes, the value of the precious metals is much less than it should be based on the value of the dollar and thus it's assumed the value of the precious metals is being purposely manipulated. I don't have an opinion since I haven't been following it closely.

That being said, this whole silver thing has got me thinking that I should probably add physical precious metals to my portfolio.