I understand the idea of using a % to differentiate between the two, however,a person could have two coins one says .999 and the one beside it says 99.9. consistency would be nice.
Also, being a Canadian, you should actually be aware that Canadian silver, especially from the mint is actually .9999 pure (the purest in the world) not just .999
that extra 9/10,000 does make the difference to me!!
Quote: a person could have two coins one says .999 and the one beside it says 99.9. consistency would be nice.
I've never seen or heard of a coin that says "99.9" on it to designate purity, with or without the "%" sign. Got a picture?
The confusion, to my mind, does not really come about with percentage-fineness, since virtually no-one uses it. Rather, it is the simultaneous use of "999 fine" and ".999 fine" to mean the same thing. Logically, ".999 fine" should mean 0.0999% silver, slightly less than a tenth of a percent.
And yes, you can have two coins the same fineness, one saying "999 fine" and the other saying ".999 fine". The Mexican onza, for example, says "Ley .999" while the Perth MintKookaburra says "1 oz. 999", with the dot after "oz" clearly an abbreviation period, not a decimal point.
I've never heard of scammers making and selling ".999 fine silver" that was really just 0.1% silver.
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
So if a coin has .999 pure Silver on it and you pick it up with your bare hands, does the stuff on you fingers add to the lesser value making it more like .998? AND just who has taken the time and money to prove or disprove the either .999 or .9999 or the .998 or whatever? I'm sure the USA and/or Canadian Mints do not make the sheets of Silver to make coins. They must buy them from somewhere. And who checks to see if they are telling the truth? Imagine if such a company cheats by .002 or even .003. Who would know? how much would they pocket from such a deal?
Quote: An interesting topic In basic math we have our numbers 1-10 and we base our numerical system on these numbers. 1 is 1, 2 is 2. etc. Half of 1 is .5 three quarters of 1 is .75 90% of 1 is .9 Stop me if I'm wrong but this is what they taught me in school.....many many years ago. Has something changed?
90% of 1 is .9 so,
99.9% of 1 is .999.
1 being 100% of course. Mixing % with decimals might have you confused as Confucius say, "He who mixes percents with decimals misses the point."
Quote: I'm sure the USA and/or Canadian Mints do not make the sheets of Silver to make coins. They must buy them from somewhere. And who checks to see if they are telling the truth?
The US Mint supplies the silver to the planchet manufacturers and they do assay random samples of the planchets that come back. (One of the arguments for the elimination of the Annual Assay Commission in 1980 was that it wasn't needed because we no longer produced any coins of precious metal. Now we do. Maybe we should bring back the Assay Commission. They eliminated the Commision as a "cost cutting measure, but the only real expense to the government was about $2,500 for the medals presented to the commission members. The public members paid their own expenses.)
Pure silver, also referred to as fine silver, has actual silver content of 99.9%. Because of its high purity, fine silver is too soft to use in jewelry making and is often mixed with other metals to make it harder.
What Is Sterling Silver?
Sterling silver is an alloy created when copper is added to pure silver in order to make the resulting compound more durable and less soft.
Usually, sterling silver has a purity of 92.5%, meaning that 7.5% of the alloy is made of copper or another metal (usually nickel or zinc).
There is also the so-called coin silver, which is an alloy of lower purity: It usually contains 90% or less silver.
This is right up there with two other posts recently. The nickel , Nickles debate that got locked and the EF, XF debate that should have. I am 99.99 per cent certain that .9999 is the same as we buy and sell as fine silver.or pure silver in the trade.
In England you might look up the Trial of the Pyx. It's like something out of Harry Potter as they determine whether heads should roll if there have been irregularities with coin of the realm. Questioning the fineness of silver is what the trial is all about.
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Posted 07/15/2015 12:40 pm
