One Gram of Silver
Silver hit a record and film got more expensive, just like in 1980. But a roll holds about a gram of silver, and the bigger risk to film may be the old machines that coat it.
Wren and Theo · 21 min · 13 Oct 2026
Verified to the FactUnion StandardChecked 13 Oct 2026
About this episode
In January 2026 silver passed a hundred and twenty dollars an ounce. A few weeks later Kodak Alaris raised film prices by up to thirty-nine percent and named silver as a reason. It sounded like 1980, when the Hunt brothers tried to corner silver and the New York Times reported that photo prices were rising with it. Then Ilford's maker, Harman, raised its US prices too, and said the cause was tariffs, not silver. Wren and Theo try to work out which story is true.
Along the way: how photography once bought about a quarter of the world's silver, why every colour photo you own was made with silver and kept none of it, the recycling business that hospitals and minilabs ran out of sight, and how Kodak got through the 1980 squeeze. Then the arithmetic, which points away from the metal and toward a few old coating lines and a fragile chemical supply chain that the film revival depends on.
Hosted by Wren and Theo, performed by synthetic voices. Verified to the FactUnion Standard. Supported by ShotBreak.
Fact sheet
Every fact used in this episode, with the source it was checked against. Download the fact sheet
194 of 194 recorded lines matched the checked script.
Silver prices more than doubled in 2025 and reached a record high above $120 per ounce in January 2026.
Film Prices 2026: What Every Roll Actually Costs NowPeriodic Table of Commodities Returns: Silver Took the Gold in 2025 - USFundsSilver, the undisputed star of 2025: Strongest annual gain since 1979 and new all-time hig
Commentary at the time was divided: some analyses tied the 2025 to 2026 silver surge to industrial demand from solar panels, electric vehicles and AI infrastructure rather than market manipulation like the 1980 Hunt brothers corner, while PetaPixel said the rise appeared driven primarily by speculation tied to solar panels, and an IG analyst called it a generational bubble.
Musk is worried. Can new tech prick silver price bubble? - The Economic TimesWhy the 2025 Silver Bull Run Is Structurally Different and SustainedSilver Prices Skyrocket: Understanding the Historic Surge to $100/oz | FinancialContent
Kodak Alaris raised film prices on February 1, 2026, by between 1% and 39% depending on the stock, citing significant increases in the cost of silver and other components.
Kodak Alaris Raises Film Prices | ANALOG PHOTO TODAYKodak Alaris Film Price Increase 2026 – Analog SpaceCheap 35mm Film in 2026: What a Roll Costs Now
Kodak Alaris did not give a breakdown of how much of its 2026 price increase was due to silver versus other costs.
Kodak Alaris Raises Film Prices | ANALOG PHOTO TODAYKodak Alaris Film Price Increase 2026 – Analog Space
Harman/Ilford raised its 2026 US prices by 11% for film and paper and 12% for liquid chemicals, attributing the increases to newly imposed tariffs on goods imported from the United Kingdom.
Ilford Raises US Prices: How Tariffs Are Hitting Film PhotographersHarman Is Raising US Ilford Film and Paper Prices in Response to Tariffs | PetaPixelFilm Prices 2026: What Every Roll Actually Costs Now
A Pellica blog post on Ilford's 2026 US price increases stated that the cause was tariffs, not rising silver prices or factory constraints.
Ilford Raises US Prices: How Tariffs Are Hitting Film Photographers
According to the Silver Institute, photographic demand for silver peaked in 1999 at 229 million ounces.
Price Sensitivity of Above-Ground Silver Stocks (Silver Institute)https://www.about.ag/data/csv/SilverSupplyDemand.htm
In 1999 photography's 229 million ounces was roughly a quarter (about 26%) of total world silver demand of about 877.5 million ounces.
Price Sensitivity of Above-Ground Silver Stocks (Silver Institute)https://www.about.ag/data/csv/SilverSupplyDemand.htm
By 2025, photographic silver demand had fallen to 24.2 million ounces, according to the Silver Institute's World Silver Survey 2026.
Photovoltaic (solar) demand for silver reached 194 million ounces in 2023, having grown from trivial levels in the early 2000s.
Silver Industrial Demand Rose 11 Percent to Post a New Record in 2023 (Silver Institute)Silver Industrial Demand Rose 11 Percent in 2023 Reaching a New RecordSilver Industrial Demand Rose 11 Percent to Post A New
Industry estimates typically put the silver in a 36-exposure roll of 35mm film at around 1 gram, though some sources give 0.2 to 0.5 grams depending on film type and speed.
Anatomy of a Film Roll's Cost | ANALOG PHOTO TODAYJorden Senior | 028 · The Upstream Cost—Film Manufacturing, Sourcing, and the Rebranding Silver content of BW film in g/cm2 | Photrio.com Photography Forums
The raw silver in a roll of film costs roughly $0.90 at $29 per ounce and roughly $1.60 at $50 per ounce, which works out to about $3.86 at $120 per ounce.
Anatomy of a Film Roll's Cost | ANALOG PHOTO TODAYFilm Prices 2026: What Every Roll Actually Costs Now
Cost analyses argue that manufacturing expenses such as clean rooms, coating operations and setup waste dominate the per-roll cost of film, making silver a small fraction of the final price.
Anatomy of a Film Roll's Cost | ANALOG PHOTO TODAYWhy Is Photo Film So Expensive? [The Real Truth Revealed] - Globalnexus.blog
Film coating lines carry large fixed costs that have to be spread over limited production runs, and cinema film production can crowd the coating calendar.
Film Coating Capacity Explained | ANALOG PHOTO TODAYAnatomy of a Film Roll's Cost | ANALOG PHOTO TODAY
The 2026 analog supply chain has been described as fragile: limited manufacturing capacity, reliance on single-source chemical suppliers, and demand growth manufacturers are struggling to meet.
In colour film processing nearly all the silver is removed, leaving only a dye image in the final negative or slide.
Sources of Silver in Photographic Processing Facilities (Kodak J-210)Technology of photography - Colour Film Processing | BritannicaPhotographic processing
In black-and-white processing the silver is split between the final negative and the fixing bath: frames that received more exposure keep more silver in the negative and send less to the fixer.
Sources of Silver in Photographic Processing Facilities (Kodak J-210)Recovering Silver from Photographic Processing SolutionsBlack-and-White Photographic. Chemistry
Minilabs and hospitals recovered silver with electrolytic units that plated it onto cathodes, or with metallic replacement cartridges containing iron that precipitated the silver as sludge.
The Technology of Silver Recovery for Photographic Processing Facilities (Kodak J-212)Comparison of Discharge Silver Concentrations from Electrolytic Plating and Metallic ReplaRefining Silver Recovered from Photographic Processing Facilities
Kodak Park in Rochester ran a centralized recovery operation that used smelting and electrolytic refining to turn recovered silver back into 99.9 percent pure silver for reuse in film production.
The Kodak Silver Recovery ProgramEastman Kodak Company's Waste Management Program at Kodak Park
Kodak's recovery programs at Kodak Park saved over $200 million a year in raw material costs, a figure covering recovered silver, solvents and film base together, not silver alone.
Eastman Kodak Company's Waste Management Program at Kodak Park
As digital replaced film in the 2000s, silver-bearing waste streams such as fixer and scrap film declined sharply, ending photographic processing's role as a major source of secondary silver.
Influence of SO 3 2 − ions and current density on silver electrowinning from spent photNov/Dec 2001 - Sierra Magazine - Sierra Club
The 1979 to 1980 Hunt brothers episode was an attempt to corner the silver market that collapsed on Silver Thursday and helped destroy most of the brothers' fortune, leading to their bankruptcy in 1988.
How the Hunt Brothers Cornered the Silver Market and Then Lost it All - PriceonomicsSilver Thursday | Causes, Impact, & Aftermath | BritannicaHunts Guilty of Scheme to Corner Silver : Texans Ordered to Pay $130 Million to Firm in Fr
As silver prices soared in 1979 to 1980, there was a rush to recover silver from sources including jewelry and coin collections.
A tale of two silver markets—and two disasters (ABA Journal)From film to forks, scrap silver rush strains refiners | ReutersMELTS OF SILVER COINS HAVE AFFECTED COLLECTORS
On February 11, 1980, the New York Times ran a business story headlined 'Photo Prices Rise With Silver.'
Photo Prices Rise With Silver; Du Pont in Second Place ... - The New York Times
In a February 1980 statement to Kodak shareowners from the chief executive officer, Walter A. Fallon, Kodak said revenues from recent price increases were designed to offset the rising cost of silver and other materials, not to inflate profits.
Kodak executives said that, facing rising costs in 1979, the company's employment increased only 1 percent against a 14 percent sales gain.
Kodak said in 1980 that its recovery systems at Kodak Park recaptured over 99 percent of the silver lost in production.
Kodak reported cutting the silver content of its X-ray films by more than 20 percent over a five-year period.
Kodak pursued silver-free technologies around 1980, including Ektaprint copiers and Ektachem colorimetric slides that needed no silver.
Kodak Highlights; Vol. 33, no. 2International Kodakery; Vol. 15, no. 6Kodak: History of Kodak: Milestones 1980 - 1989
