page_title: Silver as an investment
section_title: Coins and rounds
hierarchical_section_title: Silver as an investment / Investment vehicles / Coins and rounds
caption_attribution_description: American Eagle. Design by Adolph Alexander Weinman Removed background, cropped, and converted to PNG with Macromedia Fireworks. This image depicts a unit of currency issued by the United States of America. If this is an image of paper currency or a coin not listed here, it is solely a work of the United States Government, is ineligible for US copyright, and is therefore in the public domain in the United States.Fraudulent use of this image is punishable under applicable counterfeiting laws. As listed by the United States Secret Service at money illustrations, the Counterfeit Detection Act of 1992, Public Law 102-550, in Section 411 of Title 31 of the Code of Federal Regulations (31 CFR 411), permits color illustrations of U.S. currency provided:1. The illustration is of a size less than three-fourths or more than one and one-half, in linear dimension, of each part of the item illustrated;2. The illustration is one-sided; and3. All negatives, plates, positives, digitized storage medium, graphic files, magnetic medium, optical storage devices, and any other thing used in the making of the illustration that contain an image of the illustration or any part thereof are destroyed and/or deleted or erased after their final use. Certain coins contain copyrights licensed to the U.S. Mint and owned by third parties or assigned to and owned by the U.S. Mint [1]. For the United States Mint circulating coin design use policy, see [2]; for the policy on the 50 State Quarters, see [3]. Also: COM:ART #Photograph of an old coin found on the Internet
context_page_description: Silver may be used as an investment like other precious metals. It has been regarded as a form of money and store of value for more than 4,000 years, although it lost its role as legal tender in developed countries when the use of the silver standard came to a final end in 1935. Some countries mint bullion and collector coins, however, such as the American Silver Eagle with nominal face values. In 2009, the main demand for silver was for industrial applications, jewellery, bullion coins, and exchange-traded products. In 2011, the global silver reserves amounted to 530,000 tonnes.
  Collectors of silver and other precious metals who collect for the purpose of investment are commonly nicknamed stackers, with their collections dubbed as stacks. The motivations for stacking silver varies between collectors.
  Millions of Canadian Silver Maple Leaf coins and American Silver Eagle coins are purchased as investments each year.
context_section_description: Silver coins include the one ounce 99.99% pure Canadian Silver Maple Leaf and the one ounce 99.93% pure American Silver Eagle. Coins may be minted as either fine silver or junk silver, the latter being older coins made of 90% silver. U.S. coins 1964 and older (half dollars, dimes, and quarters) are generally accepted to weigh 24.71 grams of silver per dollar of face value, which at their nominal silver content of 90%, translates to 22.239 g of silver per dollar. All U.S. dimes, quarters, halves and 1 dollar pieces contained 90% silver since their introduction up until 1964 when they were discontinued. The combined mintage of these coins by weight exceeds by far the mintages of all other silver investment coins.
  All United States 1965-1970 and one half of the 1975-1976 Bicentennial San Francisco proof and mint set Kennedy half dollars are "clad" in a silver alloy and contain 40% silver.
  Junk-silver coins are also available as sterling silver coins, which were officially minted until 1919 in the United Kingdom and Canada and 1945 in Australia. These coins are 92.5% silver and are in the form of (in decreasing weight) Crowns, Half-crowns, Florins, Shillings, Sixpences, and threepence. The tiny threepence weighs 1.41 grams, and the Crowns are 28.27 grams (1.54 grams heavier than a US$1). Canada produced silver coins with 80% silver content from 1920 to 1967.
  Other hard money enthusiasts use .999 fine silver rounds as a store of value. A cross between bars and coins, silver rounds are produced by a huge array of mints, generally contain a troy ounce of silver in the shape of a coin, but have no status as legal tender which makes them lose favorable VAT status in those countries where lower or zero-rate VAT exists for silver coins. Produced in a wide variety of different designs, ranging from reproductions of existing coin designs to wholly original shapes and patterns, rounds can be ordered with a custom design stamped on the faces or in assorted batches.
caption: American Silver Eagle bullion proof coin
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