Winning a gold medal is the ultimate achievement in sports. If two brothers had succeeded in cornering the silver market in January 1980, "winning the silver" might have meant winning it all instead.

Brothers Bunker and Herbert Hunt created one of the greatest bubbles in the history of financial markets, pushing silver prices from US$6 an ounce in early 1979 to just over US$50 an ounce - its highest price ever - in January 1980. Investors today can learn some important lessons from the saga.

Here's how the saga ended.

On January 21, 1980, the commodity exchanges, with support from the U.S. government, announced that no one could buy anymore silver. Investors could only sell silver - and only sales to exchange-approved buyers were allowed.