Canada Bullion Coins 1970 to Date

Like many mints around the world, the Royal Canadian Mint discovered about 1970 that they could make oodles of money by minting spiffy coins and selling them at grotesque profit margins. Canada does not have a corner on this market. America, Britain, South Africa and many other countries have figured this out, too. Some small island nations make minting coins for collectors a primary cash industry.

These coins are beautiful pieces of art, and very collectible. The problem comes when buyers think that they can easily make up for the fact that they are usually overpriced.

We have a separate appraisal page for Canadian silver dollars. It appears at this link. This page applies to modern coins with face values higher than $1 Canadian.

The first step in evaluating these coins is to compute their intrinsic precious metal value. This is sometimes called the melt value, and it is the value you get when you take a blow torch and melt the coin into a puddle of silver, gold, or platinum.

To compute the melt value, multiply the precious metal content in troy ounces by the current price of the metal. You can find current silver, gold, and platinum prices at kitco.com and other sites on the web. Use the listing below to find the troy ounces of precious metal in your coin.

There are four quantities in the listing below. The first is the face value of the coin in Canadian dollars. The second is the type of precious metal: silver, gold, or platinum. The third is the metal content in troy ounces. The fourth and last item in the list is the type of coin, either (1) a commemorative coin with a pattern that depicts someone, something, or some event, and (2) a Maple Leaf bullion coin with a large maple leaf pattern.

$5 silver 0.723 Commemorative coin
$10 silver 1.445 Commemorative coin
$15 silver 1.000 Commemorative coin
$20 gold 0.529 Commemorative coin
$20 silver 1.000 Commemorative coin
$100 gold 0.250 Commemorative coin, 1976 only 27 mm diameter
$100 gold 0.500 Commemorative coins, 25 mm diameter
$175 gold 0.500 Commemorative coin
$200 gold 0.504 Commemorative coin 1990, 91, 92
$200 gold 0.550 Commemorative coin
$5 silver 1.000 Maple leaf coin
$1 gold 0.050 Maple leaf coin
$2 gold 0.067 Maple leaf coin
$5 gold 0.100 Maple leaf coin
$10 gold 0.250 Maple leaf coin
$20 gold 0.500 Maple leaf coin
$50 gold 1.000 Maple leaf coin
$1 platinum 0.050 Maple leaf coin
$2 platinum 0.067 Maple leaf coin
$5 platinum 0.100 Maple leaf coin
$10 platinum 0.250 Maple leaf coin
$20 platinum 0.500 Maple leaf coin
$30 platinum 0.100 Maple leaf coin
$50 platinum 1.000 Maple leaf coin
$75 platinum 0.250 Maple leaf coin
$150 platinum 0.500 Maple leaf coin
$300 platinum 0.500 Maple leaf coin

Once you have the melt value you are basically done. That is the value of the coin. If you feel generous, you can add additional value for non-coin aspects such as fancy packaging, proof minting, certificates of authenticity, and plastic protectors. Most collectors add less than $10 for such acoutrements. When buying or selling these coins, you usually pay a small percentage (5% to 15%) to the dealer for handling the transaction.
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