What Is Junk Silver? A Guide to 90% Silver U.S. Coinage
"Junk silver" is bullion-market slang for worn, common-date U.S. dimes, quarters, and half dollars struck before 1965, back when those coins were made of 90% silver. The name has nothing to do with the coins being damaged or low-quality in a collector sense -- it refers to the fact that these particular coins carry no meaningful numismatic premium. They're bought and sold purely for their silver content, by face value, rather than graded and priced individually like a rare date would be.
Why 90% silver coins exist at all
From the earliest years of U.S. coinage through 1964, dimes, quarters, and half dollars (along with the pre-1935 silver dollar) were struck in a 90% silver, 10% copper alloy at fixed weights set by law. That consistency is exactly what makes junk silver simple to price today: because every coin of a given denomination contains almost exactly the same amount of silver regardless of date or mint mark, dealers can quote bags by face value instead of sorting and grading each coin.
The Coinage Act of 1965
Rising silver prices in the early 1960s pushed the metal value of a dime above ten cents, and the public began pulling silver coins out of circulation to hoard rather than spend. Congress responded with the Coinage Act of 1965, which replaced silver in dimes and quarters with a copper-nickel clad sandwich starting that year. Half dollars were reduced to 40% silver through 1970 before silver was removed from them entirely in 1971. Every coin struck before its denomination's cutoff date is what the market now calls junk silver.
How much silver is actually in it
Because the pre-1965 alloy and weights were fixed by law, the silver content per denomination is a known constant:
| Denomination | Pure silver content |
|---|---|
| Dime | ~0.0723 troy oz |
| Quarter | ~0.1808 troy oz |
| Half dollar | ~0.3617 troy oz |
Because those three figures scale consistently with face value, $1 face value in any mix of pre-1965 dimes, quarters, and half dollars works out to almost exactly the same total: about 0.7234 troy oz of pure silver. That's the number dealers actually price against -- a $1 face-value bag, whether it's ten dimes or four quarters, contains roughly the same amount of silver either way.
Junk silver vs. a rare date
The "junk" label only applies to common dates in circulated condition. A worn 1964 Roosevelt dime and a worn 1916-D Mercury dime -- one of the key dates in that series -- both contain the same 0.0723 oz of silver, but the 1916-D is worth vastly more as a collectible than as bullion. Before selling a pre-1965 coin into a junk silver bag, it's worth a quick check against a coin-value guide for scarce dates, doubled dies, or other varieties -- exactly the kind of exception the "junk" pricing convention assumes you've already ruled out.
Why stackers buy it
Because it's priced purely on silver content with essentially no numismatic premium, junk silver is often the lowest-cost way to buy physical silver -- lower than bullion rounds or bars from a branded refiner, which carry manufacturing and packaging costs baked into their premium. The trade-off is practical: sorting and counting worn coins is less convenient than a stack of uniform 1 oz rounds, and very large purchases are typically sold in standardized $1,000 face-value bags rather than smaller units.
Source: Coinage Act of 1965; U.S. Mint historical coin specifications.
