Determining the appropriate price of a good is the main activity of experts in many fields, for example, those appraising privately held firms for tax purposes, those appraising houses for mortgages, or those appraising fine art for auction reserves. Often such experts testify in court. At the Hunt trial, the economist expert witnesses all expressed opinions about what the price of silver would have been without the Hunts' trading. Because the appropriate – the “competitive” – price of silver directly determined damages, the experts were asked to name a specific dollar value per troy ounce. As typical in trials distinguishing liability from damages, their appraisal was considered a distinct issue, separate from their other opinions about the silver market and the way it functioned.

In naming the “competitive” price for silver, the experts at the Hunt trial disagreed by several hundred percent. At one end of the spectrum, Professor Houthakker pronounced the price without the Hunts' trading to be $8 to $10 per troy ounce, up slightly from the $6 prevailing in January 1979. At the other end of the spectrum, Professor Edwards, the defense expert who testified most directly on this issue, proposed something like $45 per troy ounce, just slightly below the peak price of $50 reached in January 1980.