I just noticed today at a local coin shop, a tub of very random foreign coins marked at $0.30 each, or 4 for $1. A very quick glance through found some decent condition pre-1900 coins, and several I would swear are silver. In fact, there appeared to be quite a lot of silver in there, to my untrained eye. Does anyone know of a convenient online foreign silver coin cheat sheet I could print off and take back with me? Or should I just make some offer on the whole tub, knowing there really is a LOT of worthless stuff in with any gems? Advice appreciated...
Just look them up on www.worldcoingallery.com Type in the country, look up the KM# by date & denomination, and viola you have the silver content.
Lol... thanks. Thats good if I have the coins at home, where I can look them up. But I am hoping to find something I can print off and take in, and spend a few hours going through the tub with a quick reference paper at hand of what I am looking for...
i agree with cazkaboom, and i liked your idea of printing off a sheet. just an idea, depending on how many coins he/she has, offer 20 cents a coin for the whole lot that way if it doesnt have silver you dont loose to much and you get some new coins for a collection.
It sounds like a great deal to me so if it were me I'd just buy any ones I thought were silver and the ones that were would more than pay for those that are not. Any time that happens to me I try to buy them as quick as possible because I'm afraid they're going to realize what they're about to give away and change their mind. I actually got five silver coins today in this exact situation.
If you are not familiar with foreign and/or silver coins, just assume the dealer knows more than you do. I see tons of people selling old Cu-Ni coins as silver, often Swiss 5, 10 and 20 rappen coins. Unless they are in good condition without damage, they are likely just coins from a $5 per pound junkpile.
Just some thoughts for the OP to consider: Assuming this thread has some greater inclination to cull world coins for silver more than collecting the coins themselves... Perhaps even more importantly than knowing whether a coin contains silver or not, is knowing how much silver it actually contains. Ask yourself why are you trying to accumulate and store all these coins, because they may just contain a trace of silver. Many nations have, over the years, repeatedly adjusted their circulating coins silver content, frequently, until they had removed all precious metals composition. It may not be worth the time and effort of collecting all the lists of weights and dates you'd need just to warrant picking a few coins for a seeming bargain on silver. Similarly mentioned in an earlier post, it is probably already determined to be in the dealer's advantage given the price asked, or the price is set so the dealer his/herself doesn't need to go to the effort of sorting the coins, again due to the complexity of figuring out all the compositional weights. If you are after silver, I suggest just saving your money and buying something like a well know bullion coin from any reputable world mint, or buying those world coins selling as bullion like old Mexican pesos and onzas for instance. These have notations like "0.720" stamped on some to indicate PM content, but you still need to know about ASW and for which dates and denominations how much is present to base your determination of good/bad pricing when you find the coins for sale. Mexico too is an excellent example of constantly adjusted metals compositions until there was none remaining in their circulating coins. Another abundant Mexican silver coins with a fairly high silver content and large diameter size, is the '68 Olympic coin. Many of the online bullion dealers like APMEX and Provident Metals sell such coins in categories sorted by countries, check them out for an idea of what to look for and what tends to sell to bullion buyers who may buy such items as silver investment. edited: typos.
I second this on the people mistaking coins for silver. I always see auctions for Mexican 5 and 5 centavos from the late 30s or 40s as silver, when in actuality they don't have a bit of silver in them. On the other hand, the Mexican 25 centavos from the early 50s are a great silver coin to find in junk bins because they don't look silver. They are 30 percent, but you'd never know by looking at them. I find these all the time.
While many 19th century world coins can contain silver, many nations debased their coins to a low % of silver or even to using copper-nickel alloys. Offhand I would assume the dealer at your local coin shop has already cherry-picked what silver there was and what is left is probably not worth very much. You could make an offer on the whole lot, buy a Krause 19th century catalog and expand your knowledge of world coins from that era though
