The main part of all the silver that's produced in the world is produced in Australia, Bolivia, Canada, Peru, Mexico and USA. The country that produces the most silver is Mexico that produces about 15% of the world production. In most cases the pure silver is mixed with other metals so that it become stronger and more resilient, for instance 92.5% silver and 7.5% copper, this alloy is called sterling silver and it is more resilient against corrosion from air, water and other corrosive substances. This mix is mostly used in the jewelry making business.

Silver gets a darker and more yellowish tone to it, in more extreme cases the reaction becomes so strong that the metal becomes black. Silver reacts often with the sulfur int the air and also with some proteins that exist in the human body.
If you've some time in the past been eating a boiled egg with a silver-spoon, then you can see how the silver in the spoon reacts with the sulfur in the egg-yellow and becomes darker. This means that any silverware have to be cleaned with special silver cleaning chemicals ones in a while to keep its shininess.
Most silverware that are produced to day contains no nickel. Nickel is an element that some humans is allergic against. Silver that comes from Mexico is free from Nickel.

Silver is is used in many processes in the industry, for example as a natural catalyst in the development of photographic pictures. This discovery was made during the early 1800 when the photo art started.
Because of the development of digital photo-technique the usage of silver in this field was strongly reduced. Before, the photo industry used 60% of all the silver, to day its is reduced to almost nothing.

These days most of the silver is used in the making of jewelry and in the the making of electronic-ware.
An simpler and more inexpensive version of silver-like jewelry-metal is Nickel Silver that does not contain any silver, it is also called (new silver, German silver, alpaca), it is an alloy of ca 60% copper, ca 20% nickel and ca 20% zinc. This alloy should not be used by people that is allergic to Nickel.

In naturally existing silver found contains 83% silver and usually 17% copper and it is called Scandinavian silver. When this metal is purified into 92.5% silver it is called sterling silver or 925 silver. There is also a new variation that is used in some parts of the world that contains 80% silver.

Story of Silver: The first areas that started working with silver was the country's to day called Greece, Crete and Turkey. The biggest individual mine was Laurium outside of Athens between 1200 BC and 100 AD. Laurium dominated all production in the known world at that time.

When the Romans had conquered most of the country's south and the middle parts of Europe, they increased the silver-mining mostly in Spain. And they did this under the duration of a 1000 years.

About 85% of all production and trade happened in and from Bolivia, Mexico and Peru between the years 1500-1800. Even to day the mountains of Mexico have the largest production of silver. And the most skillful jewelry-makers is from Mexico like it has been for many hundred years.