Values for Coins Composed of Silver Explode

Silver coins have been under a microscope of sorts lately, as their values continue to soar to astonishing levels.

A person does not have to be a collector or an investor to know that the silver market has experienced tremendous gains. Even the mainstream media has captured the picture of silver prices surging almost daily to fresh 31-year highs and striving for an all-time record atop $50 an ounce.

As silver topped $46 an ounce on Thursday, not so terribly old U.S. coins that were once worth nickels, dimes and four bits now have coin melt values ranging from several to well more than a dozen dollars.

That has led many to take another look at buying or selling coins the United States Mint produced for circulation prior to 1965. Since all of these coins are composed of 90% silver, their intrinsic or melt values are worth much more than their face values — even for common and worn out coins.

Silver Coin Values

 

Silver coins that have little or no meaning to coin collectors because they are too abundant or are in too poor of condition are often called "Junk Silver Coins."

Those owning junk silver coins can either use them for transactions at face value, or (and definitely the better option) hold or sell them based on their intrinsic melt value. This melt value is based on how much silver each coin would contain if it were to be melted down. For example, Washington quarters dated between 1932 and 1964 each contained 0.18084 ounces of silver when they were first produced. Calculating that against the recent price of silver ($46.26 an ounce) finds that each one of these quarters could be worth as much as $8.37, as shown in the chart above.

It is not too surprising to find that the number of junk silver coin transactions in the secondary market has increased. Looking at the online auction site eBay for last week finds a total of 1,029 listings based on the generic search term of "junk silver coins." This compares to 821 listings during approximately the same time frame last month and only 530 during a one-week period in January. Going back further to April of last year found only 94 listings fitting the "junk silver coins" criteria.

Fine-tuning the search to get more specific details resulted in more interesting information. The chart below shows one-week comparisons for eBay listings including the term "$10 Junk Silver." The term is a valid search as junk silver coins are typically sold in 90% silver coin bags based on the face value of the coins within. As the United States struck these older silver coins with a proportionate amount of silver in them, each $10 face value bag would contain approximately 7.15 ounces of the precious metal no matter what combination of silver coins the bag contained.

$10 Junk Silver Coins Listings

Date Range	# of eBay Listings
April 19, 2010 – April 25, 2010	14
January 11, 2011 – January 16, 2011	25
March 14, 2011 – March 20, 2011	45
March 20, 2011 – April 17, 2011	61

 

As shown in the chart, listings of $10 bags of junk silver has more than quadrupled in the last year.

It should be noted that junk silver coins were typically sold in $1000 face value bags, but as the price of the precious metal has increased, sellers have been offering bags in much smaller denominations to allow for smaller purchase prices. Otherwise, anyone interested in obtaining a junk silver coin bag with a $1000 face value would be looking at an investment of over $33,000 based on the recent price of the precious metal.