At one point Herbert Bunker Hunt and his younger brother Nelson, as well as other members of the Hunt clan owned around two-thirds of all the privately held silver on the planet.
According to their subsequent legal defense the vast stockpile wasn’t a ploy to manipulate the price of silver higher only for them to ultimately cash in. Instead, their motive – according to their defense at least – was to hedge against the surge in inflation of the 1970’s and the debasement of the US dollar.