231 silver-bearing denomination-years on record
Which ones are silver, and how to know
Canadians do not have a phrase for this the way Americans say junk silver, but the thing is the same: common circulated coins bought and sold for the metal in them rather than for what they are. The rule for sorting them is a date, and it is different for the five-cent piece than for everything else.
The sorting rule
| Denomination | Silver years | Years needing a test | Never silver from |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 cent penny | never | none | 1908 |
| 5 cents nickel | 1908 to 1921 | none | 1922 |
| 10 cents dime | 1908 to 1967 | none | 1968 |
| 25 cents quarter | 1908 to 1968 | 1968 | 1969 |
| 50 cents half dollar | 1908 to 1967 | none | 1968 |
| 1 dollar | 1935 to 1967 | none | 1968 |
| 2 dollars toonie | never | none | 1996 |
“Years needing a test” are the ones where the Mint records both a silver-bearing and a non-silver composition covering the same date. Those coins cannot be told apart by the date alone. Why that happened.
What a dollar of face value holds
This is the number the trade actually uses. Circulated silver is bought and sold by face value rather than by weight, because sorting a bag by date is quick and weighing it coin by coin is not.
| Denomination | Richest standard | Coins per $1 face | Silver per $1 face | $1 face today | $100 face today |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 cents | .925 · 1908 - 1919 | 20 | 0.6941 ozt | $61.63 | $6,163 |
| 10 cents | .925 · 1910 - 1919 | 10 | 0.6929 ozt | $61.53 | $6,153 |
| 25 cents | .925 · 1910 - 1919 | 4 | 0.6935 ozt | $61.58 | $6,158 |
| 50 cents | .925 · 1908 - 1919 | 2 | 0.6911 ozt | $61.37 | $6,137 |
| 1 dollar | .800 · 1935 - 1967 | 1 | 0.5993 ozt | $53.21 | $5,321 |
Why the figures are not identical
Look down the silver-per-dollar column and the 80 per cent figures are close but not the same. Four 25-cent coins hold marginally more silver than ten 10-cent coins, because the Mint’s published weights are not in exact proportion to face value. The gap is around five hundredths of one per cent.
Nobody trades on that difference. The market rounds all of it to 0.6 troy ounces per dollar of face and prices bags on that. This site shows the derived figures anyway, because rounding a number before showing it is how a reference site quietly turns into a summary of one.
The other adjustment the market makes is for wear. A coin that spent decades in circulation weighs slightly less than the day it was struck, which is another reason a buyer quotes a round figure per dollar of face rather than weighing your bag.
What is not silver, and never was
1 cent and 2 dollars have never contained silver in any year the Mint publishes a record for. The 1-cent coin ran on bronze, then plated zinc, then plated steel until it was withdrawn in 2012. The 2-dollar coin has been bimetallic since it was introduced in 1996.
Nor is there any melt trade in the base metals that replaced silver. Nickel, cupronickel and plated steel in coin quantities are worth a small fraction of face value, and no dealer buys them by weight. If a coin is not on the silver list above, its value is a question about condition and scarcity rather than about metal.
One thing worth saying plainly to anyone about to sell a jar: sort it first, and do the sort yourself. It takes a few minutes, it is the same sort the buyer will do, and going in knowing how many silver coins are in the jar changes the conversation entirely.
What these actually trade at
We publish no dealer prices and no catalogue values. Completed sales are what people paid.
Completed sales, newest first, so you are looking at what buyers paid rather than what sellers are asking. Affiliate link: we may earn a commission if you buy, at no cost to you, and it changes nothing on this page.
Price a specific quantity
The calculator takes a denomination, a date and a count, and gives the metal value at the current price.
The list
When the Mint publishes, and when silver moves
An occasional email with two triggers and no schedule. It goes out when the Royal Canadian Mint publishes or revises a circulation coin specification and this site is rebuilt from it, and when the silver price moves far enough to change what a jar of old change is actually worth. The Mint does not publish often, so neither does this.
One address, held so the email can be sent. What is collected and how it is handled is in the privacy notice, and every email carries an unsubscribe link. No catalogue values, no price forecasts, and nothing telling you whether to buy or sell.