I Finally Tried the Silver Every Stacker Recommends

For years I’ve heard people in the stacking world say the same thing: buy junk silver. Not everyone says it, but enough people do that I finally wanted to know what the fuss was about. Because here’s what I couldn’t figure out. I already stack silver. Rounds, bars, Eagles. Why would I want worn-out, less pure coins on top of that?

So I went to my local coin shop, Oz Coin & Bullion in American Fork, Utah, and bought a sampling. A Barber quarter, a Barber half, a Standing Liberty quarter, a Mercury dime, a Walking Liberty half, and a Franklin half. I already had a Morgan and a Peace dollar, so that rounded out the set. Super friendly staff, by the way. They also run a mint next door, oz-mint.com, that takes custom orders if yours is big enough, and I picked up one of their Walking Liberty rounds with their mint mark on it. I just really like that old eagle design.

This article covers what junk silver actually is, why 1965 is the dividing line, the simple math dealers use to price it, the stories behind each of these coins, and where they fit next to regular bullion. The short answer to “who is this for” is: not everybody, but maybe you.

Why it’s called junk silver

I think junk silver is a terrible name. It sounds like trash, and these coins are anything but.

All “junk” means is that the coin has no special collector value. It’s too common or too worn for a coin collector to care about. What’s left is the metal. If you have a 90% silver U.S. coin from before 1965 with no rare date and no special condition, the silver in it is the whole story.

Some people call it constitutional silver instead, and that name has nice logic behind it. The Constitution says money is gold and silver coin, and these coins were made when the United States actually made money that way. It’s a lot more respectful than “junk.”

What changed in 1965

In the early 1960s there was a coin shortage. Silver prices were rising, and people noticed that the coins in their pockets were worth more as metal than as money. So they started hoarding them. At the same time, the government was running low on silver.

Congress responded with the Coinage Act of 1965, signed by Lyndon Johnson in July of that year. Dimes and quarters lost their silver entirely, and the half dollar dropped from 90% to 40% silver. The rest of the silver came out of the half in 1970.

That makes these coins the last generation of American coins that were worth their face value in metal. Everything after is a stand-in.

Here’s the funny detail. Most of these coins were pulled out of circulation by ordinary people who figured out they were worth more than face. The silver didn’t vanish. It got stashed in drawers and coffee cans, and that’s where the bags of junk silver you can buy today come from.

The math: face value times 0.715

I’ll keep this short. These coins are roughly 90% silver and 10% copper, and each one holds a specific amount of pure silver:

Dime: 0.0723 troy oz
Quarter: 0.1808 troy oz
Half dollar: 0.3617 troy oz
Morgan or Peace dollar: 0.7734 troy oz

From that comes one useful rule. One dollar in face value of dimes, quarters, or halves (ten dimes, four quarters, or two halves) contains 0.723 troy oz of silver when new. Dealers usually use a slightly lower number to account for wear: 0.715.

What threw me off at first is that junk silver is priced by face value, not by the ounce. I’m used to buying whole ounces. With junk, you don’t say “give me seven ounces.” You say “give me ten dollars face.” And that’s the whole system:

Multiply the face value by 0.715 to get troy ounces.
Multiply the ounces by the silver price to get the melt value.
Whatever you pay above that is the dealer’s premium.

To keep the example easy, say you want $10 face. Ten times 0.715 is 7.15 oz. If silver is $60 an ounce, 7.15 times 60 is $429 of melt value. That’s what the metal is actually worth, and everything you pay above $429 is premium.

One caveat about my own purchase: I didn’t buy these the way a typical bag buyer does. I bought them to fill out a set, picking specific designs in decent shape, which means I paid more than melt. That’s the collector side. A bag of circulated, common-date dimes and quarters is the stacker side. Both are fun, but they are not the same purchase, and I think a lot of the confusion around junk silver comes from mixing the two up. Some junk is more junk than others.

The coins I picked up

Standing Liberty quarter

Mine is a 1930, which is a fun year for this coin because it’s the last one. The series ran 1916 to 1930. Hermon MacNeil designed it with Liberty striding forward, shield raised, holding an olive branch. He saw it as Liberty stepping forward in defense of peace.

Two stories here. The original 1916 version showed Liberty bare-breasted, and in 1917 the design changed so she wears a chain-mail vest. That 1917 redesign was MacNeil’s own work. His complaints were about the changes the Mint made to his 1916 design, not the chain mail.

Second, the dates on the early coins were raised, and they wore off in circulation. By 1924, quarters were coming back to the Mint with the date completely rubbed away. So in 1925 the Mint recessed the date instead of raising it, which is why a 1930 like mine still has a readable date.

As for why the series ended: no quarters were struck in 1931 because of the Depression, a 1931 House Coinage Committee memo called the Standing Liberty an “unsatisfactory design,” and then the George Washington bicentennial came along. The Washington quarter took over in 1932. The coin in my hand is the last of its line.

Barber quarter and half

Charles Barber, the Mint’s chief engraver, designed these. The Barber dime and quarter were struck from 1892 to 1916, and the half dollar from 1892 to 1915. They’re kind of famous for being unloved. I’ll admit I wasn’t even familiar with them until I picked these up.

The backstory: in 1891 the Mint ran a design competition that went so badly that the director handed the job to Barber, its own engraver. Some artists at the time did not like that at all. And yet here we are over a century later, and these are a lot of fun to hold. Heavy, plain, and serious.

Mercury dime

Fun fact: it’s not Mercury. The name is a mistake. That’s Liberty wearing a winged cap, a symbol of freedom of thought. The series ran 1916 to 1945, and it’s one of those coins where the nickname is more famous than the real name, even though the nickname is wrong.

Walking Liberty half

This might be the most familiar and best-looking coin of the bunch. It ran 1916 to 1947, and if you stack American Silver Eagles, you already own this design. It’s been on the front of the Silver Eagle since 1986. The half dollar is the original that your Eagle was copied from, and it’s a neat way to connect pieces in a stack.

Franklin half

Struck 1948 to 1963, with Benjamin Franklin on the front, which the Mint director at the time pushed for. On the back is the Liberty Bell, crack and all. The Commission of Fine Arts hated the cracked bell, but it went on the coin anyway.

Morgan and Peace dollars

These two are famous on their own. The Morgan goes back to 1878. The Peace dollar arrived in 1921 to mark the end of the First World War, and it was the last silver dollar the U.S. put into circulation. The silver for those first Peace dollars came from the Pittman Act melt, when the government melted down hundreds of millions of old silver dollars to sell to Britain.

When I lay all of these out together, I don’t see junk. I see a timeline of American money, and each one is a little bit of history.

Where junk silver fits in your stack

This is probably the question you came here for. If you already own bullion, where does a pile of old coins fit?

Here’s how I think about it. Regular silver bullion (rounds, bars, Eagles) has one job. It’s the main body of the stack. It’s how you pack the most silver into the least hassle for the lowest premium. You buy it by the whole ounce, it’s pure, and it’s easy to count.

Junk silver has a different job. It does a few things bullion doesn’t.

It’s very divisible. A dime is a tiny amount of silver. A one-ounce round is a big chunk. If you ever wanted to trade for something small, you can’t really cut a round in half. Well, you can, but you wouldn’t want to. You can hand over a dime.

It’s widely recognized, at least by people in this space. A quarter looks like a quarter. Anyone who knows silver knows what a pre-1965 quarter holds, and nobody needs a test kit or a scale to accept it.

Premiums can be low, especially for common-date coins. Dealers will tell you it trades close to melt in normal markets, but be careful with that. Premiums can jump or fall with demand, and smaller purchases cost more per ounce because of handling. It’s also hard to buy single coins online, since junk is usually sold in rolls or bags. That’s why I went to a local shop and picked out the ones that stood out to me, which I’d recommend if you’re just dipping a toe in.

So here’s how I’d put it. Bullion is the foundation. Junk silver is a different tool for a different job, with the bonus of some history in your hand. And I’d go one step further: if you can only buy one thing, buy bullion first. That’s the same message as in my other videos. Boring bullion builds the base. Then add a slice of small, fun pieces. Junk silver sits somewhere between collecting and stacking, and it fills that space nicely.

Who it’s for, and who it isn’t

Junk silver might be for you if:

You like the small-unit idea, whether you’re thinking about worst-case scenarios, bartering, or just having something you can break down.
You like history and enjoy the hunt.
You want something you can hand to your kids and say, “This used to be real money.”
You like to keep it simple: no certificate, no capsule, no purity checks.
Any of these designs simply resonates with you.

It’s probably not for you if you want the cheapest, simplest way to pile up a lot of silver in a hurry. The weight is real. A full bag runs about 55 pounds. It’s harder to count, you have to do the math, and sorting through mixed dates gets cumbersome. Bullion is much more straightforward.

Things to watch out for

Know your percentages. Kennedy halves from 1965 to 1970 are only 40% silver. War nickels from 1942 to 1945 are 35% silver. Neither is the same as 90% coin, and they’re priced differently.

Don’t clean your coins. It can be tempting, but cleaning damages coins that might have collector value, and altered surfaces raise questions when you go to sell. That’s especially true if you’ve got a rare date.

Look for key dates. If you have time, whether at a coin shop or going through a bag you bought online, check the dates. A 1916-D Mercury dime, for example, can be worth far more than melt.

Counterfeits. Some dealers say low-face-value coins aren’t worth a counterfeiter’s time, but I wouldn’t take that as a guarantee. It’s a much bigger concern with Morgan and Peace dollars, where the coin is worth well above its silver content. As always, buy from a shop you trust.

Check your state’s sales tax rules. They vary, and because some of these coins may not be treated as bullion, you could end up paying tax on them.

Where I land

Junk silver isn’t a replacement for bullion. It’s a companion. Bullion is still the base of my stack, and junk is the part that’s easy to divide, easy to recognize, and comes with a story. I skipped the common Washington quarters this time because they didn’t grab me the way these older designs did, and this won’t be the last time these coins show up on the channel. If you’re just getting started, get bullion first. Once that base is built, picking up a few old coins for the design and the history is perfectly fine. Pick one up and you’re holding something a person in the 1920s might have used to buy lunch, and I think that’s pretty cool.

This is not financial advice.