Are you talking about the older, vintage collectables 1929 and before ? Most of them - Liberties (1838-1907) and Indians (1908-1929) - had about 0.24 oz pure gold.
Ah, that one... it's minted to traditional half eagle specifications and is 90% gold, 10% copper, and contains .24187 troy oz. of gold (almost a quarter of an ounce). Not to be confused with 1/10 oz. american gold eagle coins which also have a nominal denomination of $5 which contain 1/10 of a troy ounce of gold. Er not sure about the math here... but I'm reading the traditional specifications of half eagles being 8.359 grams.. not sure of gram to troy ounce conversion... I ended up with slightly less gold than that. But as the difference is a few hundreths of an ounce at most lol I suppose it's not too significant. I like the figure of approximately 1/4 an ounce, is a nice ballpark and makes the math easier lol... Ok that's what I'm coming up with... as far as I understand all the $5 gold commemoratives minted from 1986 to the present stick with the traditional half eagle specifications. They made be slightly different though. The $10 gold commemoratives (so far have only been 2 since 1984, the 1984 Olympic commemorative and the 2003 Wright Brothers Commemorative) are minted to traditional eagle standards and have almost a half an ounce of gold.
Hey, thanks guys I came up with: 31.10 Grams= 1 troy oz 8.235 grams divided by 31.10= .26479 .26479 X .90= .23831 of a troy oz (just under 1/4 0z) Seems close enough to rate $10. ????
Well $10 gold coins contain almost 1/2 an ounce (.48735 oz.). Gold eagles contained this as did the two modern $10 gold commemoratives (1984 Olympic and 2003 Wright Brothers, to date the only 2 modern gold eagle commemoratives). Not to be confused with the 1/4 ounce American Gold Eagle coins which also have a face value of $10. In the case of the commemoratives the nominal face value is pretty much traditional... these are the face values coins with these specifications have tradionally had, often since the denominations were ever minted. For bullion coins the nominal face values are pretty much there just as an excuse to call them coins rather than medals... you wouldn't think it would matter much, but that's a big part of the reason they sell, for both coin collectors and bullion investors.
Oh boy! Here's another opportunity for me to do some math! According to my Red Book a half eagle weighs 8.359 grams. The half eagle is 90% gold so it contains 0.90 X 8.359 grams = 7.523 grams of gold. We all know that 1 troy ounce = 31.103 grams. So the gold content of a half eagle (in ounces) is: 7.523 grams / 31.103 grams/ounce = 0.24187 ounce (which is exactly what the Red Book says).
The easy way to remember it is that a $20 Double Eagle has almost an ounce of pure gold (0.967 oz), and everything pro-rates from there. So a $10 eagle has about a half ounce, $5 about a quarter ounce, etc. Easy to do math in head like that - estimate melt value in a heartbeat.
That's pretty much how I do my math on the gold content of these lol... I know it's slightly less than that, but close enough... double eagle about an ounce, eagle about half an ounce, half eagle about a quarter ounce, quarter eagle about an eight of an ounce. Numismatic premium will cover the slight amount it's off. The mint keeps its modern gold commemoratives to the traditional half eagle (and ocassionally, eagle) standard to keep the math relatively easy. On the bullion coins, no math needed, they outright tell you exactly how much gold (or silver, or platinum) is in there.
