Silver Percentage of Coins

[No82s]

I ran into this the other night when assembling an Excel spreadsheet of my own for silver and gold compositions of coins. The calculators posted here and Coinflation both use the silver composition compared to face value of an uncirculated coin in their calculations (.7234 for 90% US). However the commonly used percentage for a 90% US circulated coin is .715 %. This may not be a lot but as the value of silver goes up this spread gets wider in favor of the seller if they used Coinflation. At $30 TOZ the difference in value of a $1000 junk silver bag is $252. I guess I always knew of the difference between the circ and uncirc coins but never realized the calculators were using the uncirc value.

[68Camaro]

Yep...

[beauanderos]

I ran into this the other night when assembling an Excel spreadsheet of my own for silver and gold compositions of coins. The calculators posted here and Coinflation both use the silver composition compared to face value of an uncirculated coin in their calculations (.7234 for 90% US). However the commonly used percentage for a 90% US circulated coin is .715 %. This may not be a lot but as the value of silver goes up this spread gets wider in favor of the seller if they used Coinflation. At $30 TOZ the difference in value of a $1000 junk silver bag is $252. I guess I always knew of the difference between the circ and uncirc coins but never realized the calculators were using the uncirc value.

The .715 is on the high side, unless you're talking about mostly recent coins. If you buy Barbers... you don't get what you paid for. Those bags can be 7 to 12% lighter than 715

[68Camaro]

From the substantial weighings I've done while sorting out coins into acceptable individual and roll weights, any circulated coin prior to about 1955 is suspect for being low weight (less than 715/723), and it is increasingly worse the smaller the coin. Most coins from 1955 and up will satisfy, especially if judging this by a roll weight (and thus averaging a bit).

My rough estimates of the percentage of coins as a function of date which satisfy the commonly accepted full-weight threshold:

61-64: 95%
55-60: 85%
50-54: 70%
45-49: 50%
40-44: 30%
35-39: 5%
prior to 35: <1%

Correspondingly, the lower the percentage, the higher the wear. Pre-30s coins can be easily as worn as what Ray says, or worse.

[Lemon Thrower]

http://www.realcent.org/viewtopic.php?f ... convention

[68Camaro]

http://www.realcent.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=3503&hilit=+convention

Agree - the ultimate best solution is to buy by weight. If, however, you don't or can't for a given transaction, you should adjust your bid accordingly to the age of the coin.

[beauanderos]

http://www.realcent.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=3503&hilit=+convention

Agree - the ultimate best solution is to buy by weight. If, however, you don't or can't for a given transaction, you should adjust your bid accordingly to the age of the coin.

Or just stick with Kennedy halves and rolls of 1964 quarters or dimes, easy enough to find on ebay.

[tractorman]

This gentlemen was nice enough to weigh some silver coins. Not only that, he was nice enough to list them in a terrible place with a terrible description.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/230701300619?ru=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.com%3A80%2Fsch%2Fi.html%3F_from%3DR40%26_trksid%3Dp4712.m570.l1313%26_nkw%3D230701300619%26_sacat%3DSee-All-Categories%26_fvi%3D1&_rdc=1