Wish I knew how to construct a chart, but oh well... If silver had kept to the "historical" ratio of 16:1 since 1980, then these are the prices we would have seen:
1980 $50:$850
1981 $28.75:$460
1982 $23.50:$376
1983 $26.50:$424
1984 $22.56:$361
1985 $19.81:$317
1986 $23.00:$368
1987 $27.93:$447
1988 $27.31:$437
1989 $23.81:$381
1990 $23.96:$383
1991 $22.62:$362
1992 $21.43:$343
1993 $22.43:$359
1994 $24.00:$384
1995 $23.99:$383
1996 $24.23:$387
1997 $20.68:$331
1998 $18.37:$294
1999 $17.43:$279
2000 $17.43:$279
2001 $16.93:$271
2002 $19.35:$309
2003 $22.68:$363
2004 $25.60:$409
2005 $31.25:$500
2006 $40.00:$640
2007 $52.50:$840
2008 $55.00:$880
2009 $67.93:$1087
2010 $87.81:$1405
2011 $89.06:$1425
We all fall prey to normalcy bias, in this case the norm being the suppressed silver price which had been held down for literally decades.We need to adapt ourselves to a mode of recency bias, wherein recent events become the new norm. As one can clearly see, had the ratio of free market silver floated at the approximate historical ratio of 16:1, we would all have been accustomed to much higher silver prices, and the recent strong uptrend would not have caught so many off-guard and stimulated presumptions that silver was in a bubble.
Will silver revert to its historical ratio? History says it will, given time. One can thus ascertain that a fair price for silver would be $90, and this would only be true if gold held steady... which it won't. Gold will rise as a result of unconstrained money printing, and silver will rise commensurately... but at a faster pace until it nears, reaches, and then exceeds its historical ratio. Neither metal has surpassed its inflation adjusted high.