What Is Junk Silver? The Coins, and How Much Silver Is in Them

What junk silver actually is

Junk silver is United States dimes, quarters and half dollars dated 1964 or earlier, struck at 90 % silver, in circulated condition with no numismatic value above the metal. A worn 1962 Roosevelt dime is junk silver. A 1916-D Mercury dime is not — it is worth many times its silver, and selling it by weight would be throwing money away.

The word “junk” describes the numismatic status, not the silver. The silver in a worn 1962 dime is the same silver as in a mint-state one. What is junk about it is that nobody will pay extra for the date, the mint mark or the strike, so the only thing left to price is the metal — and metal is priced by weight, which is why these coins are traded in bags rather than in flips.

The coins that count, and exactly what is in them

Every figure in this table is derived from the statute that authorized the coin, not from a dealer’s price list. ASW means actual silver weight: the fine silver in one coin, in troy ounces.

Two things in that table are worth stopping on. The first is that the dime, the quarter and the half dollar are exactly proportional: the quarter is two and a half dimes, the half dollar is five. That is not a coincidence of manufacture, it is written into the Coinage Act of 1873, and it is the reason the whole trade works the way it does. The second is that the dollar is not proportional — a Morgan carries about 7 % more silver per dollar of face value than a quarter does, because it was struck to the dollar standard of 412.5 grains rather than to the subsidiary standard. Put Morgans in a bag priced as junk silver and somebody is losing.

Why the trade prices it by face value instead of by coin

Because face value is the one thing you can count without a scale. Since the 90 % coins are proportional, one dollar of face value is 25.0 grams of coin, whatever the mix — ten dimes, four quarters, two halves, or any combination. The arithmetic runs straight through:

• $1 face in any mix of 90 % dimes, quarters and halves = 25.0 g gross
• 25.0 g × 0.900 = 22.5 g of fine silver
• 22.5 ÷ 31.1034768 = 0.723392 troy ounces per $1 face

That is why a “bag” is quoted as $1,000 face rather than as a number of coins, and why an offer is usually expressed as a multiple of face. It also means you can check any dealer’s math yourself with nothing but the face value written on the coins.

0.723392 or 0.715? The two numbers, and when each one is right

0.723392 is the mint specification. 0.715 is a settlement convention. They are answers to different questions, and most calculators pick one for you without saying which.

0.723392 troy ounces per dollar is what the coins contained the day they were struck. The bullion trade routinely uses 0.715 instead for circulated bulk, because coins that spent decades in tills and pockets have physically worn away. Dividing one by the other gives 0.98840, so the convention assumes about 1.16 % of the silver has been rubbed off.

On a handful of coins the difference is nothing. On a $1,000 face bag it is roughly eight troy ounces of silver — real money on both sides of the table. Which number is right depends on what is actually in front of you:

• Uncirculated or lightly worn coins justify the mint figure. Nothing has worn off them.
• Half dollars circulated far less than dimes and quarters. The trade reckons half dollar bags nearer 718–720 than 715 for exactly that reason, so a flat 0.715 undervalues them.
• The wear allowance is applied once. Either you weigh the coins or you use the convention. Doing both counts the same wear twice.
• Neither number applies to the 40 % coins or to silver dollars. A $1,000 face bag of 1965–1970 Kennedy halves is 295.79 troy ounces, not 715.

Our junk silver calculator gives you the switch instead of choosing in silence, and shows both totals side by side.

Four coins that get sorted into the wrong pile

The 1942 nickel is two different coins

Nickels dated 1942 exist in two compositions, and only one of them contains silver. The silver ones carry a large P, D or S mint mark above the dome of Monticello on the reverse — a position the US Mint had never used before. A 1942 nickel without that mark is ordinary copper-nickel. Every 1943, 1944 and 1945 nickel is silver, so the ambiguity exists for one year only, and the mint mark is the only thing that resolves it.

Bicentennial coins that circulated contain no silver

The dual date 1776–1976 reads as special, and the quarters, halves and dollars that circulated with it are ordinary copper-nickel clad. Only the 40 % silver versions struck at San Francisco for collector sets contain any silver at all, and those were sold in sets rather than spent. If a Bicentennial coin came out of circulation, it has no silver in it.

The Susan B. Anthony dollar has never contained silver

It is routinely listed for sale as a “Silver Dollar” because it is a dollar coin and it is gray. It was never struck in silver, in any year and in any format — not in 1979, not in 1981, not in the 1999 revival, and not for collectors. Its ASW is zero.

The 40 % clad coins are a sandwich, and a surface test lies about them

The “40 %” of a 1965–1970 Kennedy half is a net average, not the fineness of any physical part of the coin. The outer layers are .800 silver and the core is roughly .209. A handheld XRF analyzer reads the surface, sees .800, and doubles the true answer. There is no way to test your way out of this one: the number has to come from the specification, which is why our calculators hard-code it and never ask you for the purity of these coins.

Where the figures on this page come from

From the statutes, not from bullion sites. The Coinage Act of 1873 fixed the .900 standard and made the dime, quarter and half proportional; it also states the gold weights in grains, which is why the pre-1933 figures are exact rationals rather than rounded decimals. The Coinage Act of 1965 (Public Law 89-81, 79 Stat. 254) states the 40 % Kennedy half literally: 11.5 grams of coin, 4.6 grams of silver. Modern bullion coinage is at 31 U.S.C. §5112.

We went to the law because secondary sources disagree with each other, and because the difference is not always small. Dealer pages and encyclopaedias were treated as claims to check rather than as authorities; they reconcile with the statute almost everywhere, and where they do not we say so rather than quietly picking a side. The 40 % Eisenhower dollar is the live example: 24.59 g at .400 net works out to 0.316235 troy ounces, while several published tables give 0.3161, a figure that reconciles with no stated weight we can find. We use the computed number and flag the other one here rather than burying it. The statutes themselves are linked, section by section, in our methodology.

So what is a bag worth right now?

That depends on today’s spot price, which is why there is no figure written into this page: a number typed into an article is wrong by the time you read it. Put your face value into the junk silver calculator and it will price it against this morning’s silver, with the time stamp shown next to the number. If you would rather count individual coins — including war nickels, 40 % halves and silver dollars, which do not belong in a face-value calculation — use coin melt value instead. For scrap and sterling by weight, there is the silver calculator.

Melt value is a floor, not a price. It is what the silver in the coins is worth. What a dealer bids sits below it and what a dealer asks sits above it, and the gap between those two is a market of its own — where to sell silver coins works through who takes what. We do not buy, sell or appraise anything — sort your coins before you sell them by weight, because a key date sold as junk is gone for good.