Quote Originally Posted by jp View Post

With the price of silver as shown in

http://silverprice.org/silver-price-history.html
The silver content in a 8x10 sheet now is under $1 worth, during the high 2011/12 silver prices it could had been around $1.7.

Cheap X-Ray films have even x3 more silver. Tabular emulsions contain the minimum figures (around 3gr/m2 ?), perhaps 1/5 of what some X-Ray (until 18gr/m2) films can contain.

RoHS is from 2002/2003, but took effect on 1 July 2006, this is when the Silver price rocketed. Probably high prices stimulated prospection and production, so most of RoHS effect happened yet. IMHO you are pretty right about how market behaves.