Medal World Troy Pound and Half Pound Coins 1980 to Date

The US dollar is so weak these days, gold and silver are on the rise to unheard-of prices. If you would like to buy some gold or silver, be careful! There are plenty of shysters out there who would love to get their hands on your money.

Coins with one troy ounce of silver are usually silver art rounds shown on this CoinQuest page. They come in many different, often beautiful, patterns.

Remember this: for coins made out of silver, there are 12 ounces in a pound, not 16. Most of the time, the seller does not emphasize this fact. Instead, they hawk the price of a one-ounce piece and multiply it by 16 to get a price for a one-pound piece. That's wrong. They should multiply by 12, not 16.

When dealing with precious metals: gold, silver, platinum, and palladium, the measures used are troy measures. Troy weights are different that normal grocery store weights, which are officially called avoirdupois measures.

To find the value of a one pound silver coin, go to kitco.com and find the price of one troy ounce of silver, then multiply that price by 12. This will be the value of a one pound silver coin.

When you see an inscription:

ONE OUNCE 0.9999 FINE SILVER

the 'ounce' measure is understood to be troy ounces, the word 'troy' is never mentioned. If you go to a web site such as kitco.com, you will find values of precious metals quoted like this:

LONDON GOLD FIX: $1620 USD, 1033 GBP, 1188 EUR

this gives the current price of one troy ounce of gold in US dollars, Great Britain pounds, and euros. Again, the word 'troy' is not used explicitly; it is understood.

If you deal in ounces of gold or silver, everthing is fine. Dealing in pounds is tricky, because there are 12 troy ounces in a troy pound.

So: stick with ounces. With ounces, the 'troy' part is understood by all parties and you should be able to buy or sell the precious metal at or near the current price. Commissions for the transactions must be paid to the buyer or seller, but these should reasonable percentages. They are necessary to keep the dealer in business.

By the way, be sure the inscription on the coin says what it is made of. In our main picture there is a coin made of 12 troy ounces of fine silver. Fine silver is 99.9% silver. Sterling silver is 92.5% silver, and 7.5% other metals, like copper. Our secondary picture shows a coin marked 'one pound.' It could be most anything. In this case, the coin shown is one pound of silver-coated copper.

Coins not made by the US government can have just about any pattern on them, even patterns that look like real US coins. For other patterns, see this CoinQuest page about silver art rounds.
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