Loss of silver due to wear on coins

[dan53]

I was reading a post by Marblerye and he was talking about how 90% the kennedy halves rarely lose value due to loss silver content from wear. I Agree. Recently I bought 22 walking liberty halves and they were of the grades.....F-15 to VF-25. On all of them lady liberty's left leg was worn, which is typical of circulated walkers. I was curious as to how much silver was lost due to wear. I put the coins in a wrapper and weighed them. The weight, less the weight of the wrapper was 270.5 grams. When minted they would have weighed 275 grams. So the loss was appox 4.5 grams in 22 coins. This gives a weight of each coin at approx 12.3 grams rather than the minted 12.5 g. To me, this is negligible. To wit: Based on the current spot price, each coin would have a silver value of $12.00. This as opposed to the value of $12.15 for a completely unworn coin. If I sold all the coins at spot, that would be $267.30. There is a $3.30 loss due to wear. Is that amount significant enough that you would mention it before the sale culminated?

[Lemon Thrower]

in that condition, no. people know that anything other than 64 kennedys will be light. dealers price junk based on an assumption that it will have 715 ounces per thousand face. that assumption gets stretched for WLs, barbers, and dimes and quarters, but the market for those is below spot anyway.

its cheaating though to sell holed coins or slicks - generally stuff that grades below G4 - to other collectors. dealers apparently don't care about slicks becuase they have sold plenty of them to me.

as silver increases in value, this will become more of an issue.

[beauanderos]

When you buy older series coins, or newer series that contain older dates (Washington quarters) it ought to be with the understanding upon the part of the buyer that the coins you receive will be in average circulated condition. The confusing part to this equation is... what is avg circ condition? Well, it varies depending upon the series of coins you are referring to. Taking half dollars, for instance, as you stated, there is very little wear on Kennedy's. It would be surprising to find a roll that wasn't 250 gram wt (723 troy oz (per $1000 face bag)). Franklins will weigh in at an average of 247 - 249. Walkers will generally be 245 - 246, unless there are numerous early dates included. Barbers should run 238 - 243. The older coins have circulated longer, so their "average circulated" gram wt will be less than newer series. If you want more bullion for your money, buy strictly the newest issue denominations. If you like numies, you need to purchase the earlier dates. Perhaps you could start with newer 90% issues, then when you've built your stack a bit, begin to nibble at earlier series for the novelty and diversification's sake in the case that (as I suspect will happen) 90% undergoes a vast melting... making the older dated coins extremely scarce and thus enhancing their numie valuations. One final thing. You mentioned wear on the leg of Liberty. When people sell coins, they sell what they see as bullion grade coins to other buyers, particularly if they maintain their own collections (they've picked out the better grade coins for themselves to keep). It would be extremely unlikely that you would find rolls of extra fine grade Walkers, for instance, or even rolls of VG8 Barbers being marketed as bullion, at melt or near melt prices. I stopped buying on ebay when I noticed that eighty percent of the stuff I was getting was predominately well worn, with a liberal dose of slicks tossed in. If you do buy on ebay, don't buy generic rolls, look for pictures where you can determine the degree of wear. And if you buy online, be aware beforehand, that the Barber rolls or bags you are buying will not be 715, they will be more like 670, and the dealers will not compensate you for the difference. That's just the way these coins are traded currently. At some point in the future, at much higher prices (gold isn't there yet) items will be purchased by actual gram wt, not by face value.

[Engineer]

Going through some dime bags from a large dealer, I noticed the same. Rolls of 64s average about .2 gram lighter than mint state, while old Mercs are quite a bit lighter. I sorted through my teens and 20s Mercs, pulling out the best example of each year and mint, then sorted what was left by how much of the back rim was visible since it tends to wear the quickest.

What I'm left with is:
5 rolls of heavily worn (back rim almost or completely missing), averaging 115.4g (out of 125)
2 rolls of moderately worn (at least a partial back rim present), averaging 119g
1 roll of lightly worn (full back rim and decent details), weighing 121g

That leaves me with 93.6% of the original weight, which is almost identical in percentage to Ray's example of the Barber bags.

[Rosco]

At the Coin Club I have been able to buy at Spot or just under older coin that had been eye graded will the value of older coins go up with Melt or are they just bullion??

[Lemon Thrower]

i pulled an 1892-S barber half form a bag a junk which was a nice find. this was about 4 years ago. It was a 300 dollar coin then when silver was $14, and its still a $300 coin.

[68Camaro]

These days I normally buy with a minimum weight specified. My keeper rolls are all the "conventional" 98.9% of full weight or higher, and all worn individual corns pulled out. Only exceptions are very early coins that might have numi value.

[Saabman]

Here's some info on wear rate from another forum I check out. It's the Tom Dankowski (Nasa-Tom for all you MDer's) forum.

http://www.dankowskidetectors.com/discu ... #msg-10190


"I'm quite short on time at the moment...........but...........a short answer for silver,,,,,,,,,,,,,as...... I believe this is would most want to know.

A Barber dime & quarter will go from MS-65 to G-4 in approx 3-1/2 years of 'regular' circulation. (Barber half dollars took about 4-1/2 years). The determining factor of the 'grade' of Barber coins is the letters "L I B E R T Y" in the headband. THEY WORE QUICKLY!!!! Most folks do not realize how 'soft' silver is.

A Mercury dime would wear from new condition (MS-65) to Fine (F-12) condition in approx 13 months. Then another 5 years of regular circulation......and the coin would be in Good (G-4) condition. This is to say that; just over 6 years of circulation...... a silver Mercury dime would be in G-4 condition.

This 'model' above is a good representation for how other silver coins would wear.

I had one of the neatest occurences many years ago. I found a very tight/focal coin spill that.........4 of the coins were Barber Quarters. Dates were 1895, 1902, 1909 & 1916. The 1916 was VF-30, the 1909 was G-6, the 1902 was G-4..........and the 1895 was barely a G-4.......a very flat quarter. It appeared the 1909 'survived' a bit longer than 'norm' model. Maybe in a piggy bank for a handful of months. BUT, still...... all fit within the normal wear model.

Two years later, I found a nearly uncirculated 1919 Mercury dime stuck to a G-6 (almost VG-8) 1916 Mercury dime. Definately from the same pocket.

Many more 'coin spills' to validate the above data. Also Q. David Bowers has written several books on silver U.S. coins.......and he covers 'how quickly' these coins will wear. He does a superb job on the Barber series coins. If you need more info on his publications.....just holler.

A redesign of a coin does not appear to have much of a effect, IRT the removal of the older design. Indian Head pennies were still in circulation in the early 1950's (although a bit sparce)..........Shield nickels were still in circulation in the 1920's...............'V' nickels were still in circulation throughout the entire Buffalo nickel era. Seated Liberty dimes/quarters/half-dollars were in full circulation throughout the entire Barber coinage era......and all the way through the 1930's. Wheat pennies were still in circulation in the early 1980's. This specific situation about the wheat penny is a bit unique in two respects: 1) there were MANY more coin collectors in the 1980's (vs earlier years), and 2) pennies are the easiest to collect."