Need help with terminology and definitions

[dan53]

Where I live there's this coin store and the owner says: "I sell my silver for 27 times face pat dollar." He isn't big on explanation. He's a german guy and for all I know, Pat Dollar could be a relative he has living over in Germany. There are auctions held there and I recently bought 20 ninety percent silver quarters. They were listed as: quantity 20......5 x face......$105. While it didn't say so, I think it was meant like this: quantity 20....5 x face .. pat dollar. I have other methods of math that tell me this was a good deal and I bought the quarters. The next day I sold them for $120. But the main purpose of this post lies in the hopes that someone could help me to understand the math this guy is using. It would be greatly appreciated.

[Country]

US 90% SILVER (dimes, quarters, and halves)
X = 0.715 * ($spot-SILVER)

US 40% SILVER (40% halves)
X = 0.295 * ($spot-SILVER)

20 90% SILVER quarters is $5 face. AT $40 spot-SILVER, X would be .715 * 40 = 28.6. So, if you bought your quarters for X = 21, you did quite well. You sold your quarters for X = 24.

[neilgin1]

lemme try, even though some of my bro's here know more:

first go to this website: http://www.coinflation.com

every pre 1965 Half dollar, Quarter and Dime contained 90% silver, which means that a roll of $10 FACE value contains 7.15 to 7.23 troy ounces of Silver....the Halves and Quarters are in $10 rolls, 20 Halves, and 40 Quarters, the dime roll is $5 face value and contains 50 dimes.

coinflation.com has a silver value calculator.....scroll down, you'll see it. click on it and its easy to use. Just start to remember the amount of silver in these individual American coinage.

in 1965, LBJ stopped this practice, but the Half dollar Kennedy continued to be minted with a 40% silver composition, from 1965 till 1971. Tricky Dick stopped this in 1971, guess he figured he's pay his old nemesis back, i dont know, i'd ask that human hyena, but he's probably drinking lava hot bitumen down in hell with bezalbubb, so....thats a no go.

theres one more 40% silver composition coin worth a look and thats the UNCIRCULATED Eisenhower Dollar, but you have to be really careful, the Brown and Blue Ike Dollar is 40% silver, but remember this, all CIRCULATED Ike's minted are just "clad" coins, meaning they have no silver...its only the UNcirculated and PROOF Ike's that contain Silver. There's a lot of tricksy folks out there, and the way to tell is two fold, if they advertise, or you see a "circulated" Ike and they say "silver"..stay away, the other way is to take a digital scale, the clad IKE is 22 something gram, while the REAL Silver Ike will weigh out at 24.6 grams, but dont freak if you see them at 24.1-24.2 gms.

so if i quote you a $10 face value roll of pre 65 American coinage and say "i'm offering this roll at 30 times face", that means i'm asking $300 for the roll...thats roughly where the market is TODAY...and you do the math, 300 divided by roughly 7 oz's is about $43 to the ounce, which is $3 over the Comex board...regard the Comex board with suspicion, its a cooked mkt, and doesnt really represent real world prices...you can go to bullion direct....go to their "nucleo exchange", click on that, then click on silver, scroll down and you'll see various submarkets including 90% coinage, with a bid and ask.

hope this helps, AND start NOW, to go to your banking institution and ask for $100 boxes of nickels, and start stacking them at home. Each nickel is now worth 6.7 cents and sooner rather than later will be debased...so good luck and God bless you, neil

ps...if they look at ya funny at the bank, just tell them you're doing "youth bingo" this weekend, roll your eyes at this 'burden' and hope you wind up with a good teller, dont let them charge you a premium to get YOUR money OUT.

[neilgin1]

Country is wise, listen to him.

[dan53]

Thanks for the replies. It seems that with math you can take different paths and reach the same conclusion. Here's how I have determined the value of the silver in coins...

In the red book (united states coins) you are given the amount of silver in different coins.....

war nickel: 0.05626 oz
most pre 65 dimes: 0.07234 oz
most pre 65 quarters: 0.18084 oz
most pre 65 halves: 0.36169 oz

So if I want to know how much the silver is worth in a 64 quarter, I multiply 0.18084 by the current spot price for silver. If the spot price is $40.00 then you have 40 X 0.18084 = $7.23 for each quarter. (all figures here involve inconsequential rounding)

PS: Thanks for the link to coinflation. I have used them before but its been a couple of years. My computer died and I just got a new one.

[neilgin1]

No problem, Country IS smarter, btw.

just an fyi, for grid down trading purposes, i fully intend to round up the silver content.

so a dime is a tenth of an ounce, a quarter is a a fifth to a quarter ounce, and a half dollar is 3/5ths to a half an ounce....just depends.

in a grid down, FRN-less enviroment, there is LOT of stuff, that can be called "currency"...the question is, where is the market at?

some people might say, but .072 isnt a "tenth", but in that situation...grid down....my reply would be; "trade or no trade?"

its the old Chinese curse, may you live in interesting times; they are here.