At what point does a "silver coin" become silver?

All silver coins are not created equal and many years of experience have shown me that any ambiguity will be exploited by the unscrupulous. It was a long held belief in numismatic circles that a silver coin should be made up from mostly.... well, silver. So .500 fine and above is undoubtedly a silver coin but what about the rest?

At many times during history, our coinage has been debased often with very low silver content. It's common to find "silver" coins mostly from the 1700s which appear to be made from copper because of their debased state. It seems silly to describe such a coin with a fineness as low as 10% as silver doesn't it? Git outta here with your Silber Groschen! They're overwhelmingly not made from silver, it doesn't look like silver yet we're happy to catalog them as such. How would you describe a coin struck in 99% copper-nickel and 1% silver? Trust me, next time the silver price peaks you going to see millions of them, so we might as well start thinking about it now. Less than ethical eBay sellers are quite happy describing those .100 Morello Pesos as "large silver coins". I've even seen them described as "Mexican Silver Crowns!!!!!". I wish they were, I've got hundreds of them!

We do have a word for such alloys - Billon. However it's pretty vague and seems to be used only to describe coins pre 1600. It would seem odd to describe a 1940 Swedish coin or a JFK Half Dollar as billon. It's good to be aware that a coin has some precious metal content as it gives a floor beyond which the price should not fall. The Numista approach of including the silver content is a useful one.

I've solved the problem to my own satisfaction by including modern .400 coins in my mental silver bracket. It makes sense as the value of these coins is largely dependent on their scrap metal content. However I'm very much aware that it's not consistent with sound numismatic practice. I guess what we're lacking is a snappy little word that would describe a non ancient silver coin that really isn't silver. Do you know of one or can you think of one we can adapt? I'd like to go with the delightfully coarse but truthful "bum silver". Yeah it's two words, sue me. Or come up with a better word. Or two. Whatever.

Where do you draw the line? Is a 1% silver coin really silver? If not then why is a 10% one OK or even a .499 one?

I have thought about this topic recently. I have two examples - Dominican Republic, late 19th century coinage in 0,350 silver, and early 19th century German states kreuzer in 0,333.
Since the major alloying element of these examples is copper, and some are distinctly yellow, the term that has occurred to my mind is silver-brass.

Edit to add, I am reminded of a Monty Python routine, from the tale of Dennis Moore, "steals from the poor/give to the rich/stupid bitch!" where the peasants have gotten so many gifts from Dennis that when he throws them a bag of sterling silver flat ware, Terry Jones exclaims, "ugh more silver, won't have it in the house!"

Quote: "pnightingale" So .500 fine and above is undoubtedly a silver coin but what about the rest?
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​Where do you draw the line? Is a 1% silver coin really silver? If not then why is a 10% one OK or even a .499 one?

​Why .500? Some collectors ("silver stackers" come to mind) would consider .500 and .680 fine silver coins to be far too debased. The most pedantic purist might even call .925 sterling silver debased, but that's taking it to the extreme.

To me, it's silver as long as it has the air of a silver coin (for lack of better phrasing). To use your particular .500 standard, this coin might not be pure enough to be considered silver by some, but I doubt you'd call it at first glance, anything but silver:


At the end of the day, the most objective answer is: à chacun son goût.

I mentioned this to a colleague who is is a metal fab specialist, he suggested that the term 'brass' refers to a yellow alloy usually cooper and zinc, and which is a sub-type of 'bronze' which is a class of all majority copper alloys, some of which are more red or yellow than others, including cupro-nickel, berylium bronze, aluminum bronze, phosphor bronze, etc,
So I would like to suggest silver-bronze for numismatic alloy with majority copper, and any minor amount of silver.

Opinion: I think "silver" should refer to 50% or greater actual Ag content.

I think the value should be considered more than the ratio even under 50% the silver was way more valuable than the rest of the coin. If you look at mining they call it silver or gold ore and not gravel or dirt even if you need 20-40 tons or so to make an ounce of metal out of it.

I also would call a coin made out of 20% Gold 80% Silver a gold coin (in reality I would call it an electrum coin).

Personally I would also consider 50%-100% silver alloy coins, below 40% I would call it billon.

The cut of could be the percentage where a smelter would not take your coins because it's not worth firing up the oven but this would fluctuate quite a bit with the silver prices.

I usually say to myself :

* 70% silver and above : "good silver" (bon argent / haut argent)
* below 70% to 40% : "low silver" (bas argent)
* under 40% : "billon" (billon)

Nothing mathematical or nothing scholar but I feel good with this.
I got two albums full of various coins in pvc holders. I did not even tried to clean the "billon". All the "bad silver" were a bit green. There were 2 roman antoninianii : one fully green but I managed to remove the green, and one easier to clean (45% both). The "good silver" (5 Francs for instance) was sometimes greenish but mostly unaltered by the PVC.

Quote: "Choucas"​I usually say to myself :
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​* 70% silver and above : "good silver" (bon argent / haut argent)
​* below 70% to 40% : "low silver" (bas argent)
​* under 40% : "billon" (billon)
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​Nothing mathematical or nothing scholar but I feel good with this.

​I feel comfortable with those parameters personally as well. +1!

I was able to buy a .160 silver; or rather, billon coin (using the 40% frontier) from the Swiss canton of Vaud cheap, that the seller mislabeled as "copper" because of it's colour and verdigris:

https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces18600.html

I only consider the coin to be silver if there's at least 50% or greater silver content.

Quote: "druzhynets"​I only consider the coin to be silver if there's at least 50% or greater silver content.

Same. 50% is where I draw the line between "is (mostly) silver" vs "contains silver".

I always thought billon was a term for a fluctuating silver content coin, where the percentage of silver in the coin changed year to year to reflect the change in silver price. So in years where the silver price was low you might have 40% silver content, and on years where the silver price was high the same coin might only have 20% silver content.

I've seen low silver percentage coins listed as "silver content" coins, and that's fine with me. But in terms of the numista catalogue, the coins are listed as silver with the percentage after them so the bullion value of your collection can be totaled up. We had issues recently because the USA war nickels weren't adding to the bullion value of the collection because the referee had the metal listed as "Copper, Silver, Manganese" As soon as he stepped down as referee and the metal was changed to "Silver (0.35)" they showed up in the bullion value of your collection.

Quote: "Idolenz"​I think the value should be considered more than the ratio even under 50% the silver was way more valuable than the rest of the coin. If you look at mining they call it silver or gold ore and not gravel or dirt even if you need 20-40 tons or so to make an ounce of metal out of it.
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​I also would call a coin made out of 20% Gold 80% Silver a gold coin (in reality I would call it an electrum coin).
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​Personally I would also consider 50%-100% silver alloy coins, below 40% I would call it billon.
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​The cut of could be the percentage where a smelter would not take your coins because it's not worth firing up the oven but this would fluctuate quite a bit with the silver prices.

​That is a significant point. the silver to copper price ratio has been about 5:1 since many years. thus in a coin of 83% copper and 17% silver the silver is half the value of the coin.

as for the refining pot, any fraction of silver is welcome, because it all goes in a bin, and the fire is not started until the bin is full, so there may be 20 karat and 12 karat and 4 karat metal all in there together.

I’ve always kept my standards low, I really enjoy the Mexican pesos from the 60’s, and those only have 10%. For me as long as it’s double digits I’ll refer to it as silver. Below that, I’ll take it by a case to case basis.

I think we can all agree that those "in the know" will understand that a coin described as being silver may not actually be completely made of silver. Take for example eBay were there is currently a Gold Bitcoin Token for sale at over $1,700.00 AUS. It is described as being "gold" yet it clearly shows on the token itself (should you look) that it is "1 Troy Oz 999 fine copper", and should you care to scroll down to other featured tokens for sale you will find many more just like this one for around $40.00. A mistake by the Seller, or an obvious ploy to deceive?

The term "silver" is nowadays just a common slang term for any silver-colored coinage the same as saying you have a pocket full of coppers. The supposed "gold" Bitcoin above is just another example.

Therefore it would be my 2 cents here to say that we might actually just have to be more descriptive of how we describe our coinage. i.e.: If describing a silver coin, we may (or should) add the actual silver content. If selling a gold Bitcoin token for $1,700.00 perhaps it should have (less than 1% gold) in it's description somewhere.

But I wonder if we are perhaps being somewhat too politically correct. I do think that many actually do describe their silver coins and gold coins along with the actual percentage. It's really only a few who might wish to deceive that may make the "honest mistake" of leaving it out only to then go with their saving come-back of "buyer beware". I find myself still smiling when some fellow reaches into his pocket and pulls out change only to tell me he only has "silver" or he only has "coppers" (I work in a shop). It's a lovely turn of phrase. A little old fashioned maybe, but much nicer than "I'll just use plastic thanks".

Interesting question you make, last time I scrapped a load of coins I went to Birmingham silver company, the best price offered for scrap silver in the U.K., they discounted all the European coins at less than 50% silver as worthless," not worth anything mate" was there answer to scrap value.
all though not completely true 50% silver content would be a good benchmark for calling it silver or not maybe?..

they call this the "Silver markka"
https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces1528.html