The silver market is messed up. These buyers are feeling the pain.

Last week, border police stopped a car crossing from Hong Kong into the neighboring mainland Chinese city of Shenzhen. The suspected crime: silver smuggling.

Two men in their 40s hid nearly 500 pounds of silver bars in 10 Danish-style cookie tins, six milk-powder tins and nine crispy egg-roll boxes. The estimated market value was roughly $782,000, according to Hong Kong customs authorities, who arrested the men and seized the bars and the cookies they were hidden under.

The duo were likely headed for one of the largest bullion markets in China, the Shenzhen Shuibei Gold and Jewelry Market, hoping to cash in on the biggest silver boom in a generation.

The market, where prices trade at a premium compared with other countries, has become an epicenter of a metals mania that has captivated traders around the world.

Silver prices have shot up more than 250% in the past year to as high as $114 a troy ounce in New York trading. At their peak, they were up 63% in January alone. In China, where the metal is needed for solar-panel production and coveted by speculators, silver futures have risen to even higher levels, above $140 on Thursday.

Silver’s surge crumbled on Friday, when prices plunged more than 30% off the record highs, below $80 a troy ounce. The metal’s meteoric rise, analysts say, had been supported less by rising industrial demand or lack of supply, and more by speculators betting on a shifting global order and growing distrust of the U.S. dollar.