Weight Tolerances For Common Junk Silver Coins?

Those were the days, huh? I still remember when silver was $7.00 an ounce, and common silver dollars were $7.00 each at my local coin store (something that my much less educated self didn't think made sense at the time, since they only contained 3/4 an ounce of silver).

Now, though, I lament not buying any of them! Instead, I picked up 10 Silver Eagles--my only big coin purchase back then--for $10 each a few years later, since I thought their higher silver content made them a better deal. Unfortunately, while those and silver dollars were around the same price at the time (in 2005 or 2006), the two coins have long since diverged. The value of the former continues to remain stagnant, while that of the other has shot up drastically.

I've only ever seen 90% silver resold as based on a "x face" percentage, but of course, I'm just a consumer and not a dealer.




Yes, I thought so as well. It was 12x face before this whole "silver shortage" mess started, and then when I came back into town after going on a long vacation it had increased to 12.5x face. I figured that was still better than anyone else (I've seen as high as 15.6x face during trips to local coin stores), so I've been picking up as much junk silver as I can afford.




Thank you for the verification; I greatly appreciate you looking up the tolerances for me. That would definitely mean all of the coins in question fall within the permitted Weight Tolerance. Perhaps the tolerances for the quarter and half-dollar were increased once mintages started getting ramped up in the post-World War II era?

That I do not know. Perhaps it was related to the dime's small size (as in, there was less "wiggle room" for the Mint to work with)? Even an underweight quarter or half-dollar would still be above 6 grams and 12 grams, respectively, but the silver missing from an underweight dime would be much more noticeable if it ever came to weighing it.

I seem to recall reading, too, that during the period of silver coinage, the dime was essentially the economy's equivalent of the quarter today. This would mean that it would be the denomination people would inherently place the most trust in, since they would deal in/ with it more often.