this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2024
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Nah, these coins are minted for collection and investment purposes and are not meant to use as direct payment (although you can because they hold a nominal value). It doesn't make sense for any government to use material that is 100 times more expensive than the value they want to attach to it.
Sovcit just payed of $0.25 of their debt with a $28 coin because they are incredibly smart.
That's exactly why they stopped minting silver coins in the 1960s though. Because they started being worth more in silver than their value. Still true about pennies, I think.
There were actual coins made out of silver that are not considered bullion coins like Morgan Silver Dollar or the Peace Silver Dollar. Those were made for everyday use and they contained around 0.75 troy ounces of pure silver.
This leads me to believe that the 0.9 troy ounce coin is some sort of special minting because that would be a pretty heavy coin for such a low value (around 28g). But maybe times were just different back when the gold standard was still in effect, idk.
I'll have to admit that I base my thought process almost entirely on my recent discovery that I actually possess a valuable coin and the bit of background reading after that discovery.
I'm pretty sure that the quarters weren't that pure, I don't know. I do know people were melting them down (or at least were suspected of melting them down, I don't know if they actually were), so they changed the composition. My grandfather collected coins and I sort of vaguely remember all of this from him.
I do have a ton of silver dimes and quarters in a drawer though. I should probably just sell them because I was keeping them around as a 'just in case' thing but the value of silver is not exactly shooting up and I really don't care about coin collecting beyond the design of coins in various countries being interesting from an artistic sense.