Weight of common gold and silver coins Hello all. I am new to this forum. When I first started investing in gold I thought about how I would verify the authenticity of 1 oz. gold and silver coins I purchase from private sales. I did some checking on the internet and found the familiar guidelines as to appearance, thickness, diameter and weight. I had some time this morning, so I weighed out whatever coins were close at hand using my trusty Durascale. I posted the results as attachments. Included in the list are * Krugerrand * Maple Leaf * USA Eagle * USA Silver Eagle * USA Silver Dollars of the late 1800's and early 1900's Hopefully this is helpful to those who are new to precious metal investments and are seeking an easy reference to help "keep it real" when buying. Ciao, Hunter
Welcome to the neighborhood, Hunter! I don't collect gold, but common gold weighs less than rare gold? Otherwise, it would all cost the same. J/K! Chris
Welcome Hunter, thanks for the info. For those who aren't aware, a pound of gold is as heavy as a pound of feathers.:yes:
Tokenhunder thanks for the post just remembrer weight will vary with coin and of course the scale. With modern bullions typically you have around 5% tolerance of the stated mint weight and as a word of caution with silver issues just because it meets the weight/size test doesn't make it run (Lead-tin/copper alloy with silver plating has very similar density as silver)
Hello TokenHunter. Remember that all those coins are supposed to weigh one troy oz not a avoirdupois oz. One troy oz would weigh 1.09714286 regular or AV oz. juding from your weights posted on your sheet (unless they where all fakes, which I doubt) your scale weighs a bit too high. You should calibrate the scale so that it weighs on point. Its not off by much. But when weighing things like gold even small variances can mean big dollars. If you do not have a calibration weight you can buy them off ebay or amazon for 5 bucks or less. [h=2][/h]
OK, here's the deal. Precious metals are normally weighed in Troy weights. A Troy ounce is 31.1035 grams. Cheese, feathers and other items of daily commerce are weighed in Avoisdupois weights. An Avoisdupois (Av) ounce is 28.3495 grams. We sometimes see sellers on e-bay trying to sell ounces of coins using the Av scale. This could give them an edge of about 9% (hmmm about what the CoinStar change machines charge). Just for fun, and to make matters worse, a Troy pound has only 12 Troy ounces while an Av pound has 16 Av ounces. So........an ounce of gold weighs more than an ounce of cheese, but a pound of cheese would weigh more than a pound of gold. Whatever happened to "A pint's a pound, The world around"? BTW a good list of coin weights can be found at: http://www.treasurerealm.com/coinpapers/USCoins/silvercoins.html
Its pretty darn stupid how they have soooooooooo many types of oz huh :/ Just have the entire world use the same measuring systems for everything. All this AV oz or Troy oz and pounds or kilos, meters and yards stuff is completely erratic.
Don't really care about yards or pints (I'm in Continental Europe) but wouldn't this topic make more sense in the "Bullion Investing" forum? Christian