Silver Ore is an ore found in Middle-earth which can be smelted into silver ingots.
Silver ore is most often found by mining. It can be found up to layer 32 and is about twice as common as gold. It can also be bought from those miners and other miners for 11-15 coins. A pickaxe of at least iron or equivalent strength is required to mine this ore.
The most important use of silver ore in the game is making coins. One block of silver ore will yield one ingot when smelted, which, in turn, can be turned into nine nuggets. Four of these can be combined in the regular crafting area, which will make four coins, or nine silver coins per ore.
Other uses for silver include using the ingots to make chandeliers and trimmed bricks, and using the nuggets to make trimmed armour. Since Public Beta 30 it's also possible to alloy it with Mithril to obtain Ithildin. Lastly, a more important use, silver blocks can be made to claim land in a radius of 16 from the silver block.
When you look at the picture to the left, you'll notice that it is quite difficult to tell the four white ores apart. Silver has the same texture as tin, but the colour is brighter, nearly white. There are no diagonal streaks like in Mithril. Nitre has a similar colour to tin but the streaks of mineral in the ore are larger and differently shaped, in the same way as sulphur.