Custom junk-silver-style products

The built-in catalog ships with the six standard US junk silver entries, but plenty of stackers hold the equivalent fractional silver from other countries — Canadian pre-1968 coinage, British pre-1947 silver, Australian and New Zealand pre-decimal coinage, and so on.

None of those are in the standard catalog, but the same calculation method is available on custom products.

This article covers the fields involved and gives worked multipliers for the most common non-US fractional silver.

If you haven't read the broader custom-product overview yet, start with Creating a custom product.

The Junk Silver method is for fractional circulating coinage that was bought, sold, and bagged by face value rather than by weight. The two markers that say "use this method":

If those don't both apply, you want Standard instead. A modern Silver Maple Leaf is technically legal tender (with a $5 face value), but it's a bullion product, sold by weight at a premium over spot — that's Standard.

A pre-1968 Canadian dime is the opposite: face value is the actual price reference and the silver content is computed from it. That's Junk Silver.

For the line between non-US bullion coins (Pandas, Britannias, Libertads) and fractional junk silver, see When to use a custom product instead of the catalog.

When you toggle the Calculation Method to Junk Silver on the New Custom Item form, Weight and Purity disappear and two different fields take their place.

The face value of one coin, in the currency it was minted in. The field label shows a dollar sign, but the math is currency-agnostic — what matters is that your face value and your multiplier are calibrated to the same unit.

A few worked entries:

You enter the face value as a decimal in whatever currency the coin was struck in. The multiplier (next field) is the bit that converts that face value into a silver content figure.

The number of troy ounces of pure silver contained in one unit of face value, for that specific coin alloy. This is the value you'd need to look up (or compute) for the coinage you're setting up. The next section gives the common ones; the section after gives the formula for anything not on the list.

A reference table for the coinages most often held outside the US. All multipliers are oz silver per one unit of face value in the local currency.

Canadian dimes, quarters, halves, and dollars use the same coin weight standards across the silver eras. The multiplier shifts with the alloy.

From 1968 onward Canadian circulating coinage has no silver. The 1967 and 1968 dimes and quarters are split between 80% and 50% versions — sort yours by year and weigh if you need to be precise.

British coinage was pre-decimal until 1971: £1 = 20 shillings = 240 pence. The multipliers below are oz silver per £1 of face value (so a £0.05 shilling × this multiplier × spot gives you the melt per shilling).

From 1947 onward British circulating coinage has no silver. If you prefer to enter face value in shillings rather than pounds, multiply the figures above by 0.05 (since 1 shilling = £0.05): pre-1920 shilling multiplier = 0.169, 1920–1946 shilling multiplier = 0.091. Same math either way — just make sure the face value field and the multiplier use the same denomination.

Both countries used the British pound system until decimalization (Australia in 1966, NZ in 1967) and minted silver coinage to the same weight standards as the UK. The multipliers are identical:

Australia issued a one-year 80% silver 50¢ coin in 1966 (worth a custom product of its own — face value $0.50, multiplier 0.682). Both countries went fully clad shortly afterward.

For coinages outside the common-case table — French, German, Swiss, Mexican pre-Libertad, Russian Imperial, and so on — the multiplier isn't hard to compute. The formula is:

multiplier = (coin gross weight in grams × fineness) ÷ 31.1035 ÷ face value per coin

A worked example: a 1934 French 20-franc silver coin weighs 20.0 g and is .680 fine.

So in the custom product form, face value = 20 (or 1 if you prefer entering one franc at a time), with a multiplier of 0.0219 (or 0.437) to match.

For obscure coinages, the Standard Catalog of World Coins or a reliable numismatic reference site is the easiest way to look up gross weight and fineness for any year and denomination.

Putting it together for the most common non-US case. You hold a roll of 1962 Canadian quarters and want to record them.

The product is now available in the buy form's product picker. At $80 silver, each quarter melts at 0.25 × 0.600 × $80 = $12.00. A roll of 40 quarters melts at $12 × 40 = $480.