[nlh]

A very excellent question and totally reasonable thing not to know (congrats on being one of today's lucky 10,000!)

I'm speaking from the perspective of US coins because that's what I specialize in but this generally applies to coins all over the world as well:

Prior to (and including) 1964, US 10c, 25c, 50c, (and when they were made, $1) coins were made of 90% silver. We made A LOT of these, so in terms of outright rarity, most are not rare. Today they're referred to as "junk silver" because in terms of collectibility, they're junk, but the 90% silver content means there's some inherent precious metal value (as of this moment on Jan 30, 2026, they have ~approximately~ 60x their face value in silver content, eg $6, $15, $30, and $60 in silver respectively.)

So that's their basal value that fluctuates with the silver market. But the next layer is actual rarity / collectibility -- if a given coin is desirable enough that it surpasses its metal content, you get a different set of values.

Now to your actual question: Do they get smelted/melted down? The answer is...sometimes. They trade somewhat like financial instruments, based on the assumption that you could melt them down (and there's a cost to doing so), so that's how people value the various silver coins. In reality, there's usually enough demand from people who want to hold physical silver in various forms that they don't actually need to be melted down.

There's obviously a lot more to it, but that's the 5c version ;)

[adastra22]

Is that more or less than the spot price? I would have assumed that they trade higher, though maybe the non collectibles trade are only a little bit higher.

[seszett]

My experience, I sometimes buy gold coins to make jewelry. I do that because at least here in Belgium, there's no VAT on coins but there is VAT on the other forms of gold that are more commonly used for that. For professionals it's not a problem because they pass VAT but for an individual it's a 20% difference. Also I'm in Antwerp so it's really easy to just bike to a place that sells gold if I want to.

In my case I buy old French 20 francs coins as they are quite "cheap": 1% above spot price of their gold content (they are 90% gold).

Other more recent coins, like Chinese or Canadian ones, sell at a much higher premium (17%, 20%) so I always wonder a bit who they are for. It's unlikely they can be resold for that much of a premium. At least the shops I use just buy them for their price in gold.

[nlh]

Also a very good question and the answer is also...it depends. The "premium" (delta to spot) on 90% silver (aka "90%") varies with supply and demand. At this very moment with the meteoric rise of base silver, 90% is selling for less than spot. But there have been times when it trades above spot.

The reason is that silver itself is traded on the various international commodity exchanges and those traders are not the same supply & demand sources as the little guy(s) who likes keeping some old silver coins in their garage. So as those supply/demand curves shift, the premium over/under spot price changes as well.

[culi]

I appreciate you sharing your knowledge! Your layers concept makes sense but I guess I'm just surprised at how large of a layer the market price of precious metals can be—even for "junk silver" coins

[vel0city]

> that's the 5c version

Is that 5¢ copper or zinc?

[ReptileMan]

Isn't smelting a coin for the metal a crime?

[voxic11]

No, not in general anyways. There are specific regulations on smelting pennies and nickels (and it's specifically nickels, not half dimes).

So you can smelt any silver coins minted by the US except for the WW2 silver nickel.

[fragmede]

So is speeding. There might be some crazy radiation related super science way to determine if a lump of silver came from a specific collection of coins, but once it's melted down, and the impurities driven out, silver is silver and you can't really tell that it came from coins.

[tylervigen]

Great explanation, but your reference to the "todays 10,000" xkcd made me think of this: https://xkcd.com/2501/