The Reserve boasts a 2.5-tonne door, quadruple alarm systems, mantraps, motion and vibration sensors, nearly 500 CCTV cameras and security provided by armed Singapore Auxiliary Police.

Slathered in a five-millimetre-thick onyx facade backlit with LED lights, The Reserve resembles a massive brick of gold lying just outside Singapore’s Changi Airport. The effect is somewhat misleading, because that glowing golden slab is one of the world’s largest storage facilities for silver, refurbished from its drab past as an electronics factory.

There’s still gold inside — The Reserve claims space for roughly 100 tonnes of gold and platinum — but that’s tiny compared to the 15,500 tonnes of silver stashed behind its gleaming walls.

To put that in perspective, all the world’s silver mines produced ro

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