Silver

But while gold has relatively few uses for manufacturers (besides looking pretty for jewelry), silver, much like copper, is a component of a variety of industrial products.

Silver is a component for products ranging from batteries and semiconductors to solar panels and water purification systems. That means that there are more than just inflation concerns driving up the price of silver.

"There is such a high demand for industrial use of silver. So a lot of companies, particularly in Asia, are gobbling it up in order to get their economies growing again," said David Beahm, vice president of economic research with Blanchard & Co., a New Orleans-based investing firm that specializes in gold and other precious metals.

Beahm said that silver's spike is a recovery from the depressed levels of late last year when investors were panicking about the state of the economy in the wake of the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Silver dipped below $9 an ounce last October.

"The real reason silver is going up now is because it took such a beating during the fears of deflation," Beahm said.

In that respect, the surge in silver prices is probably more similar to the rally in other assets that had been priced for financial Armageddon, such as bank stocks and airline stocks.