Can you tell 50% and 80% Canadian circulating coins apart?

Is there a way to differentiate 50% silver and 80% 1967 Canadian coins apart?

 

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Only way I have found it is to run them through a tester. I have a tester which I bought on EBay primarily to sort copper pennies from zinc ones. You put in a sample coin and it sorts for matches so if you put in a known 80% (from a different year) it will sort them. It also works on silver dimes and quarters, although there is a simpler way to sort those.

 

Doesn't that just rely on the coins weight difference to sort them? I'm not sure how it would differentiate between two coins of the exact same dimensions and weight?

You could always conduct a specific gravity test OP but that's going a bit overboard imo.

 

No, it does not depend on weight. It looks at composition.

 

Gotta link to it?