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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;-jeffB, post: 1538370, member: 27832&quot;]There are two things going on here.</p><p><br /></p><p>First, &quot;$1 FV silver&quot; generally refers to some combination of dimes, quarters, and halves. Uncirculated silver dollars (excluding, as you say, Trade Dollars and older issues) contain about 7% more silver than the corresponding face value of uncirculated dimes/quarters/halves.</p><p><br /></p><p>Second, the weight-loss-through-wear issue is a bit complex. I started to do some empirical investigation, but sort of dropped the ball:</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="http://www.cointalk.com/t154492/" class="internalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.cointalk.com/t154492/">http://www.cointalk.com/t154492/</a></p><p><br /></p><p><a href="http://www.cointalk.com/t144944/" class="internalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.cointalk.com/t144944/">http://www.cointalk.com/t144944/</a></p><p><br /></p><p>General points:</p><p><br /></p><p>1) It seems like you don&#039;t start to see serious weight loss until you get down into the single-digit grades. Everyone seems to agree on this.</p><p><br /></p><p>2) There&#039;s disagreement as to whether the early stages of wear come from metal being worn away, or just flattened into the coin. I strongly believe the former; Doug strongly believes the latter. I think if the metal were just being squashed down, we&#039;d see evidence on the legends and other sharp high points -- mushroom-caps where the metal has been beaten down. On coins I&#039;ve examined closely, I almost never see that. And since the high points cover a small fraction of the coin&#039;s surface area, removing a thin layer of metal just from them doesn&#039;t take away much of the coin&#039;s mass, explaining why you don&#039;t see much weight loss in higher circulated grades.</p><p><br /></p><p>3) Weight loss with wear is much more pronounced in smaller denominations. That&#039;s because weight comes from the <i>volume</i> of metal in a coin, but wear happens at the <i>surface</i> -- and smaller objects have more surface area relative to their volume (the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square-cube_law" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square-cube_law" rel="nofollow">square-cube law</a>). So, yeah, silver dollars lose a smaller fraction of their weight than do half dollars, and dimes lose a lot more.</p><p><br /></p><p>I really should get organized and write something up about this. But I&#039;m pretty sure it doesn&#039;t belong in the &quot;newbie flyer&quot;. <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie1" alt=":)" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" />[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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