Silver Coin Melt Values: Every US Silver Coin

As of July 18, 2026, with silver at $56.01 per troy ounce, a pre-1965 90 percent silver quarter is worth $10.13 in melt value, a silver dime $4.05, and a Morgan or Peace dollar $43.32. Melt value is simply the coin's pure silver content multiplied by the spot price.

Melt value (also called intrinsic value or bullion value) answers one question: if a coin were melted down, what would the recovered silver be worth at today's market price? The formula is actual silver weight (ASW) in troy ounces x the silver spot price. ASW is fixed by the coin's specifications, set by the United States Mint: a 90 percent silver coin's ASW is its gross weight times 0.90, converted to troy ounces at 31.1035 grams per ounce. Because the specifications never change, the only moving part in a melt value is the spot price itself.

The melt values in the table below are all computed from the same live spot price of $56.01 per troy ounce, so every figure on this page is internally consistent. The table updates as the silver market moves.

Coin specifications (weight, composition, ASW) follow US Mint standards as catalogued by NGC's Coin Explorer and PCGS CoinFacts. Click any coin for its full history, specs, and a melt value table at different silver prices.

Junk silver is priced by face value, and the arithmetic is elegant: $1 of face value in 90 percent coins always weighs 25 grams gross, whether it is ten dimes, four quarters, or two half dollars. At 90 percent silver, that is 22.5 grams of pure silver, which converts to 0.7234 troy ounces per $1 face value. Silver dollars are the exception: a Morgan or Peace dollar was struck heavier than $1 of subsidiary coinage and contains 0.7734 ounces on its own.

In practice, dealers quote circulated 90 percent coins at 0.715 ounces per $1 face value instead. The difference is honest wear: dimes and quarters that circulated for decades each lost a small amount of metal to handling, and 0.715 is the bullion industry's conservative average for mixed circulated coins. A $1,000 face value bag is therefore traded as 715 ounces of silver, not 723.4. Use 0.7234 for uncirculated or lightly worn coins and 0.715 when buying or selling typical circulated junk silver.

Our junk silver calculator lets you switch between both multipliers and value any face amount or coin count at the live spot price.

How much a silver dollar is worth starts with which series it belongs to, because the date range determines the silver content. This silver dollars value chart covers every US dollar coin by year: the 90 percent Morgan and Peace dollars, the 40 percent silver Eisenhower collector issues, the no-silver clad Eisenhowers, and the modern one-ounce Silver Eagle. Every melt value below is computed from the same live spot price of $56.01 per ounce.

The one trap in the values-by-year chart is the Eisenhower dollar: coins pulled from circulation are copper-nickel clad with no silver at all, while the 40 percent silver versions were sold separately as S-mint collector issues from 1971 to 1976. The Eisenhower dollar melt value page has the full date-by-date breakdown, and the Morgan and Peace pages cover collector premiums by date for the classic dollars.

From the Coinage Act of 1837 until 1964, every circulating US dime, quarter, half dollar, and dollar was struck in an alloy of 90 percent silver and 10 percent copper. The copper was added purely for durability; pure silver is too soft for pocket change. These are the coins collectors call junk silver or constitutional silver: Mercury and Roosevelt dimes, Washington quarters, Walking Liberty and Franklin halves, the 1964 Kennedy half, and the Morgan and Peace dollars. The Coinage Act of 1965 ended the era: rising silver prices meant the metal in a dollar of quarters would soon be worth more than a dollar, hoarding had created a national coin shortage, and Congress switched dimes and quarters to the copper-nickel clad composition still used today. The cutoff date matters more than the design: any US dime or quarter struck from the Coinage Act of 1837 through 1964 is 90 percent silver, which is why date checking is the entire authentication process for junk silver. Our junk silver guide covers how these coins are bought, sold, and priced by the bag.

The 1965 act did not remove silver from the half dollar immediately; it cut it to 40 percent. Kennedy half dollars minted from 1965 through 1970 use a silver-clad sandwich: outer layers of 80 percent silver bonded to a core of about 21 percent silver, averaging 40 percent across the 11.5 gram coin for an ASW of 0.1479 troy ounces. That is less than half the 0.3617 ounces in a 1964 Kennedy, which is why the two trade at very different prices despite looking nearly identical. Congress removed silver from the half dollar entirely in 1970, and the 1970 issues were sold only in collector sets rather than released to circulation. The 40 percent halves are the cheapest widely available US silver coins per coin, and dealers sell them in bags priced by face value just like 90 percent coins, using a lower per-dollar silver factor. See the Kennedy half dollar melt value page for a date-by-date breakdown.

Nickel was a strategic war material, so from October 1942 through 1945 the Mint struck the Jefferson five-cent coin in an emergency alloy of 35 percent silver, 56 percent copper, and 9 percent manganese. Each war nickel contains 0.0563 troy ounces of silver, the smallest silver content of any US coin, yet still worth more than face value whenever silver trades above about $1 per ounce, and many times face value at modern prices. The Mint marked them deliberately: war nickels carry a large mint mark above the dome of Monticello on the reverse, including the first P mint mark ever used by Philadelphia, specifically so the silver coins could be identified and pulled after the war. Because the alloy tones dark and the coins circulated hard, war nickels carry the lowest premiums in the junk silver market. Full history on the war nickel melt value page.

Melt value is the floor, not the price. Every silver coin trades at melt plus a premium, and the premium varies with three things. First, collectibility: scarce dates and mint marks (a 1916-D Mercury dime, a 1893-S Morgan, a 1932-D Washington quarter) are numismatic coins whose prices are set by rarity and condition, not silver content; melt value is irrelevant to them. Second, product demand: even common-date coins carry higher premiums when retail demand for physical silver spikes, as bags of junk silver did in 2020 and 2021. Third, form factor: half dollars and dollars usually command slightly higher premiums per ounce than dimes and quarters because supply is thinner. As a rule, common circulated junk silver trades within a few percent of melt, silver dollars a little above that, and modern American Silver Eagles carry the highest premiums of all. Our coin premium tracker shows typical premium ranges by product.

Three steps: find the coin's ASW in the table above, find the live silver spot price, and multiply. Worked example at the current spot of $56.01: a Franklin half dollar holds 0.3617 troy ounces, so its melt value is 0.3617 x $56.01 = $20.26. A roll of 40 silver quarters ($10 face) holds 10 x 0.7234 = 7.234 ounces, worth $405.17. For anything more complicated, the junk silver calculator handles face value and per-coin math with live prices, and the melt calculator covers sterling, scrap, and gold as well.