Where can I buy the best silver in Kathmandu?

DPPL trades from the 5th floor of Sasa Complex on New Road, Kathmandu — Nepal's precious-metal market. We deal only in 999 fine silver: bars of 100 g, 500 g and 1 kg, and loose silver grain sold by weight. Every piece is weighed on calibrated scales in front of you and leaves with a full invoice, and we buy back documented metal at the published purchase rate.

What is today's silver price in Nepal?

The current silver rate for Kathmandu — sale and purchase, per tola and per 10 grams — is published on dppl.com.np and updated each morning from the official Kathmandu bullion market reference. One tola is 11.6638 grams.

Is DPPL a silver importer or a retail dealer?

Both. DPPL supplies investment-grade 999 fine silver bars and industrial silver grain to households, jewellers and businesses in Kathmandu, in quantities from 100 grams upward. Call 01-5915052 for larger commercial orders.

What does 999 fine silver mean?

999 fine means 99.9% pure silver, the standard for investment bullion and higher than sterling silver at 92.5%. Every DPPL bar is stamped with its fineness, weight and the DPPL diamond mark.

How much do making charges add to a silver bar?

The published rate is the price of the metal by weight. Bars also carry a making charge for refining, casting, stamping and packaging, added at the counter and itemised on the invoice. Making charges are lower per gram on larger bars.

Does DPPL buy silver back?

Yes. DPPL buys back bullion it has sold at the purchase rate published on the day of the buy-back. Bring the metal and the original invoice; the bar is weighed and checked, and payment is made at the counter.

What are DPPL's opening hours and location?

DPPL is open Sunday to Friday, 10:30 to 18:00 NPT, closed Saturdays and public holidays, at 5th Floor, Sasa Complex, New Road, Kathmandu 44600. Call 01-5915052 or WhatsApp +977 980-561-7932.

Five thousand years of silver money

History12 June 20268 min readDiamond Palace Pvt. Ltd.

Long before anyone struck a coin, silver was already money. In Mesopotamia, contracts and debts were recorded in shekels — a unit of weight, not a coin — and a shekel of silver was the standard against which barley, land and labour were measured. A merchant settling an account weighed out metal on a balance. The idea that value could be carried in your hand, verified by weight, and accepted by a stranger begins here.

What made silver suitable was a rare combination of properties. It is scarce enough to be valuable but common enough to circulate. It does not rust away like iron. It can be divided into small amounts without losing value, which gold — too valuable per gram for everyday trade — could not easily do. And it is unmistakable: the colour, the weight in the hand, the ring when struck.

The first coins

Around 600 BCE, in the kingdom of Lydia in what is now Turkey, someone had the idea of stamping a lump of metal with a mark guaranteeing its weight and purity. The first Lydian coins were electrum, a natural alloy of gold and silver. Within a generation, King Croesus was issuing separate gold and silver coinage — and the practice spread across the Greek world almost immediately, because it solved a real problem. A stamped coin did not need to be weighed by every party in every transaction. The stamp was a promise.

Athens took this furthest. The silver mines at Laurion, worked by thousands of labourers south of the city, funded the Athenian navy that fought at Salamis. The Athenian silver tetradrachm — the "owl" — became the first widely trusted international currency, accepted from Egypt to the Black Sea. Cities that could not mine silver imitated the owl rather than issue their own design, because traders already knew and trusted it.

Rome, and the temptation of debasement

Rome paid its legions in silver denarii, and the denarius illustrates the oldest problem in monetary history. A state that controls the mint controls the silver content. When Rome needed more coins than it had silver, it quietly reduced the purity — a little at first, then a great deal. Over roughly two centuries, the denarius went from nearly pure silver to a token barely coated in it, and prices rose accordingly.

This is worth understanding for a reason that is not merely historical. Every paper and digital currency in the world today is a claim, and every claim depends on the discipline of its issuer. A weighed piece of fine metal makes no promise about the future and requires no trust in an institution. That is the entire argument for holding bullion, and it is five thousand years old.

The metal that globalised trade

In 1545, Spanish colonists found an enormous silver deposit at Potosí, in present-day Bolivia, and later at Zacatecas in Mexico. The scale of what followed is difficult to overstate. Silver mined in the Andes at appalling human cost was minted into eight-real coins, carried by galleon across the Atlantic to Seville, and across the Pacific from Acapulco to Manila.

The eight-real coin — the "piece of eight" — became the first genuinely global currency. It circulated in Europe, was legal tender in the early United States, and was the standard trading coin across South and East Asia. China, which ran its economy on silver for centuries and taxed in it, absorbed a substantial share of the world's production. For the first time, a single object connected miners in Bolivia, merchants in Manila, and tea growers in Fujian.

The linguistic residue is still with us. The French word for money is argent — silver. The Spanish is plata — silver. In several Indian languages, the everyday word for wealth traces back to the metal. Money and silver were, for most of recorded history, the same word.

Demonetisation and the modern era

The nineteenth century ended silver's monetary reign. Newly unified Germany moved to a gold standard in 1871, the United States effectively followed in 1873, and other nations fell in line. Silver was demonetised across much of the world within a single generation, and its price fell relative to gold. What had been the money of empires became, officially, a commodity.

But something unexpected happened. As silver left the world's vaults, industry discovered it could not do without it. Silver is the best electrical conductor of any element, and the best thermal conductor. It is highly reflective, and it is antimicrobial. Photography consumed it for a century. Today, electrical contacts, brazing alloys, medical dressings, batteries, and above all photovoltaic cells consume it — every solar panel manufactured contains silver paste, and the world is manufacturing a great many solar panels.

What this means for a buyer today

Silver now has two identities at once, and this is what makes it unlike any other asset available to an ordinary household. It remains a store of value with an unbroken five-thousand-year record — it has never, in all of recorded history, been worth nothing. And it is simultaneously an industrial input that gets consumed: a solar panel installed on a roof takes its silver out of the market permanently.

Gold is hoarded; the great majority of all gold ever mined still exists. Silver is both hoarded and used up. That asymmetry is the single most interesting fact about the metal, and it is the reason a household bar of fine silver is not simply a smaller version of a gold one.

DPPL deals only in 999 fine silver — bars of 100 g, 500 g and 1 kg, and loose grain sold by weight. Every piece is weighed on calibrated scales in front of you and leaves the counter with a full invoice.

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