It was, after all, a simple question that sparked my interest in silver from the start. Some 35 years ago, my now-departed friend and mentor, Israel Friedman, challenged me with a question that took me a year to answer. Actually, “challenged” is not the right word, either back then or today. Izzy simply asked a question to which he had no real answer of someone he thought might be able to answer. In a real sense, the question conveyed a degree of respect, in that Izzy only asked me because he…
