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Last updated: August 11, 2026 · By White Metal Resources Editorial
Quick answer: Coin silver is a silver alloy of 900 parts silver and 100 parts copper per thousand, written as .900 fine or 90 percent silver. The name reflects its origin: silversmiths in early America made hollowware and flatware by melting Spanish and later United States silver coins.
The .900 standard sat 25 points below the .925 sterling silver benchmark and 99 points below .999 fine silver. Coin silver flatware and hollowware are widely marked COIN, PURE COIN, DOLLAR, or D, and were made in the United States from roughly 1830 through the 1880s.
Melt value is a straight arithmetic. Multiply the piece's weight in grams by 0.900 to get pure silver, divide by 31.1035 for troy ounces, and multiply by an example spot price. A 100 gram coin silver piece at an illustrative 30 dollars per troy ounce holds about 86.81 dollars in silver content.
Short on time? The essentials
- Coin silver is a silver-copper alloy at .900 fineness, or 90 percent silver by weight. The other 10 percent is copper, added for the hardness a spoon or a tea pot handle requires.
- The word "coin" is literal. American silversmiths from the late 1700s through the mid-1800s often bought bulk silver by melting Spanish colonial reales and United States silver coins, which were struck to .892 or .900 standards depending on the era.
- The mark COIN, or PURE COIN, or the letter D for DOLLAR, or the word STANDARD all denote the same .900 alloy on antique American silver. Some Baltimore pieces also carry a numeric "10.15" or "11" pennyweight mark tied to Maryland's assay rules.
- Coin silver is not sterling. Sterling is .925 fineness, first officially standardized in the United States by Tiffany in 1851 and made statutory by the Stamping Act of 1906. Coin silver predates that shift.
- Major American makers who produced coin silver include Paul Revere in Boston, Samuel Kirk and Son in Baltimore, Jabez Gorham in Providence, and Charles Lewis Tiffany in New York. The trade sat across dozens of cities and hundreds of shops.
- Melt value is a computation, not a quote. Grams of pure silver equal total weight in grams multiplied by 0.900. Troy ounces equal grams of pure silver divided by 31.1035. Dollar value equals troy ounces multiplied by an example silver spot price.
- A 100 gram American coin silver spoon set at an illustrative 30 dollars per troy ounce carries about 86.81 dollars in silver. The same weight in sterling holds about 89.22 dollars, a gap of roughly 2.7 percent by pure silver content.
- Collector premiums for identified early American coin silver by a named maker can run well above melt. That premium is qualitative and depends on maker, form, condition, and provenance, not on the metal weight alone.
- Anonymous or worn coin silver from unidentified regional makers usually trades close to melt at scrap buyers. The alloy is the same as a signed Kirk piece, but the market treats maker identification as most of the value.
- Coin silver is not eligible for a self-directed silver IRA. IRA silver has to sit at .999 fineness or higher, covered separately in our silver IRA fineness explainer.
Anyone who inherits a box of old American silver spoons runs into the same puzzle. The spoons are heavy, they look like sterling, but the mark on the back is not the familiar STERLING or 925. It reads COIN, or PURE COIN, or a small letter D. That mark denotes coin silver, and its story is older than most people expect.
This page walks through what coin silver actually is, why the trade used the name, how to spot it, and how to compute its silver content at any given spot price. The aim is a single reference for readers holding coin silver by inheritance or by chance and asking what the pile is worth.
What coin silver is
Coin silver is a silver alloy at 900 parts pure silver per thousand parts total, with the remaining 100 parts made of copper. Written as a fineness, that is .900 fine. Written as a percentage, that is 90 percent silver and 10 percent copper by weight.
The copper is not a shortcut or a filler. Pure silver by itself is soft enough to dent under normal handling and it wears fast in a spoon bowl or on a tea pot handle. Adding 10 percent copper hardens the alloy enough for daily service without changing the surface color in a visible way.
The .900 standard is the same fineness the United States Mint used for silver dollars, halves, quarters, and dimes from 1837 through 1964. That is the historical source of the name. American silversmiths sourced their working metal from actual coinage for decades before industrial silver refining reached mass scale.
Where 900 sits on the fineness ladder
Every silver alloy carries a fineness number that expresses how many parts per thousand of the piece are pure silver. Fine silver at .999 is the industry cap for practical purposes. Sterling silver at .925 is the most common decorative standard in the English-speaking market. Coin silver at .900 sits one rung below sterling.
The chart below places coin silver in the full ladder of common silver standards, alongside German 800 silver, sterling, Britannia silver at .958, and fine silver. Silver plate is shown at zero because the body of a plated object is base metal with only a thin silver layer on the surface.
Two practical takeaways sit in that chart. First, coin silver is real solid silver, not plate. Every gram of a coin silver object carries 0.900 grams of pure silver you can weigh and price. Second, coin silver is close to sterling on the fineness scale but not identical. The 25 point gap is small in absolute terms and shows up in the melt math later on this page.
Why coin silver got the name
The name is not a stylistic choice. Colonial and early republican American silversmiths bought their working metal in coin form because coins were the most reliable bulk source of silver in a young economy. Spanish colonial reales, Spanish milled dollars, and later United States silver coinage were the shop's raw material.
A working silversmith would weigh out a stack of coins, melt the stack in a crucible, cast the melt into an ingot, and hammer or roll the ingot into flatware, hollowware, or a hinged form. The finished piece carried the same silver content as the coin stack that fed it, which under United States coinage of the period was near .900 fine.
Public silver mining in North America was small before 1859. That year, the Comstock Lode in Nevada opened as a major American silver source, and refined bulk silver became more widely available to industrial buyers. Silversmiths outside the largest cities kept sourcing from coin melts well into the late 1860s.
The United States Coinage Act of April 2, 1792 set the silver content of the dollar at 371.25 grains of pure silver in a coin weighing 416 grains, close to .892 fineness. The Act of 1837 revised the standard to .900 fine silver, which remained in force through 1964. The .900 mark on antique silverware traces to that revised standard.
The COIN, PURE COIN, and DOLLAR marks
American coin silver is not stamped with a modern 925 numeric or a small lion mark. The maker's mark is usually the shop name or an initial, and next to it sits a purity mark drawn from a small vocabulary. The most common purity marks are listed below.
The mark COIN, sometimes written COIN SILVER, is the plainest form and denotes .900 alloy melted from United States coinage. The mark PURE COIN carries the same meaning, with the word "pure" added to distinguish the piece from base metal or from a lower silver-copper mix.
The letter D on a spoon or fork usually stands for DOLLAR, another way of stating the piece was melted from silver coinage at the dollar standard. Some Baltimore silversmiths used a numeric pennyweight mark instead, tied to the Maryland assay office, such as "10.15" for 10 pennyweight 15 grains of pure silver per Troy ounce.
The word STANDARD by itself, without further modifier, was also used by some New York and Boston makers to denote the .900 coin silver alloy. All of these marks predate the American sterling standard, which most large firms adopted only after Tiffany's 1851 sterling shift and the Stamping Act of 1906 made .925 the statutory quality mark.
Coin silver vs sterling silver
Coin silver and sterling silver are close cousins, not the same alloy. The two differ by 25 parts per thousand on the fineness scale. That gap is small but it matters for melt value and for marking rules.
Sterling silver is .925 fine, or 92.5 percent silver and 7.5 percent copper. The sterling standard traces to English silver reform in the twelfth century and became the dominant decorative standard in the American trade after Tiffany adopted it for its New York silver in 1851.
Coin silver is .900 fine, or 90 percent silver and 10 percent copper. It was the working American standard for silverware from roughly 1800 through the 1880s, when most major firms had migrated to sterling. Coin silver flatware and hollowware fell out of new production before the Stamping Act of 1906 codified sterling as the .925 legal minimum for goods sold as "sterling" in the United States.
By weight of pure silver, a 100 gram coin silver piece holds 90 grams of pure silver. The same 100 gram weight in sterling holds 92.5 grams of pure silver. That is a 2.7 percent difference in pure silver content. Melt value tracks that gap directly, before any dealer spread.
How to identify coin silver in hand
The identification test starts with the marks on the back of the piece. Turn a spoon, fork, or tea pot handle over and look for stamps near the maker's name. American coin silver almost always carries one of COIN, PURE COIN, DOLLAR, D, or STANDARD as its purity indicator.
The absence of the word STERLING is a strong tell. A piece stamped only with a shop name, with no fineness numeric and no STERLING, and dated by style to the pre-1880 American trade, is almost certainly coin silver. The .900 alloy is the default for that period.
The presence of the numeric 925 or the word STERLING rules out coin silver. A piece with either of those marks was made to the sterling standard, not the coin standard. Coin silver production had largely ended in the American trade by the time the numeric 925 came into wide use.
English hallmarks with a lion passant and a date letter denote English sterling at .925, not American coin silver. Continental European marks such as 800, 813, or 835 denote lower silver standards used in Germany, Scandinavia, and other European jurisdictions, again not coin silver. The COIN family of marks is specific to the American trade.
The melt math at .900 fineness
Melt value is a computation, not a quote. It equals the weight of pure silver in the piece, in troy ounces, multiplied by the silver spot price of the day. Any published "melt value calculator" is running the same arithmetic, and the number changes minute to minute as spot silver moves.
For a coin silver piece of any weight, the formula is a three step chain. Weigh the piece in grams. Multiply by 0.900 to get grams of pure silver. Divide grams of pure silver by 31.1035 to get troy ounces. Multiply the troy ounces by the silver spot price per ounce to get dollar melt value.
A worked example makes the chain concrete. A single coin silver teaspoon weighing 25 grams holds 22.5 grams of pure silver. That is 0.7234 troy ounces. At an illustrative silver spot of 30 dollars per troy ounce, the melt value of the spoon is 21.70 dollars.
A worked example on a 100 gram spoon set
Coin silver spoons and small hollowware pieces are often sold as a group. The math scales with weight. A set of four coin silver teaspoons that weigh 100 grams together is priced from the same formula as one 25 gram spoon.
Picture an inheritor who finds a set of four American coin silver teaspoons in a parent's flatware drawer. The spoons are stamped with a shop name and the word COIN on the back. Total weight of the four spoons on a kitchen scale is 100 grams.
- Fineness of coin silver: .900, or 90 percent pure silver by weight.
- Grams of pure silver in the set: 100 grams multiplied by 0.900 equals 90 grams of pure silver.
- Troy ounces of pure silver: 90 grams divided by 31.1035 grams per troy ounce equals 2.8935 troy ounces.
- Illustrative silver spot price for the example: 30 dollars per troy ounce.
- Illustrative melt value of the set: 2.8935 troy ounces multiplied by 30 dollars equals 86.81 dollars in silver content. A refiner or scrap buyer pays some percentage below that pure melt number to cover assay, refining, and margin.
Substitute a different spot price to reprice the set. At 20 dollars per ounce the melt is 57.87 dollars. At 40 dollars per ounce the melt is 115.74 dollars. If the spoons carry an identified early American maker's mark, the collector value can sit well above the pure melt number.
Figures are illustrative, not a quote from any specific dealer and not a promise of future silver prices. Spot prices are examples, not forecasts. This is not tax or investment advice. Consult a licensed advisor for personal decisions.
The same computation applies to a tea pot, a sugar bowl, or a set of flatware. Weigh the piece or the pile on a scale that reads to the tenth of a gram, apply the 0.900 multiplier, convert to troy ounces at 31.1035 grams per troy ounce, and multiply by the day's spot silver price.
A five step check for a piece of antique silver
The steps below turn the general identification rules into a repeatable check for a single piece. Follow the same five steps for every item in a lot and no coin silver will get sorted into the wrong pile.
- Turn the piece over and read the marks. Look on the back of a spoon or fork, on the underside of a tea pot foot, or on the bottom of a bowl. Coin silver almost always carries a shop name plus one of COIN, PURE COIN, DOLLAR, D, or STANDARD in a small stamped mark.
- Rule out sterling and continental marks. If the piece carries the word STERLING, the numeric 925, an English hallmark with a lion passant, or a continental European numeric such as 800, 813, or 835, it is not American coin silver. It is a different silver standard covered in the hallmarks guide.
- Rule out silver plate. Look for the words PLATE, PLATED, EPNS, EP, TRIPLE PLATE, QUADRUPLE PLATE, or A1. Any of these means the body is base metal with a thin silver layer on the outside. A coin silver mark and a plate mark do not appear on the same piece.
- Weigh the piece on a scale that reads to the tenth of a gram. A kitchen scale or a jeweler's scale is enough. Record the weight in grams. A single teaspoon usually weighs 20 to 30 grams. A tea pot can weigh 400 to 800 grams. Total weight is the input to every melt computation that follows.
- Compute the pure silver content. Multiply the recorded weight in grams by 0.900 to get grams of pure silver. Divide grams of pure silver by 31.1035 to get troy ounces. Multiply troy ounces by the day's silver spot price per troy ounce to get the illustrative melt value in dollars.
Anyone comfortable with the five steps can price a mixed lot of American silver in a single sitting. Any piece stamped only with a shop name and no purity indicator should be treated as unmarked and cross-checked against a known maker reference before it is priced as silver at all.
Melt value at three example spot prices
The chart below prices a 100 gram silver object at three example spot prices, for three different alloy families. Coin silver at .900 sits below sterling at .925 and below fine silver at .999, at the same weight and the same spot price.
The 20, 30, and 40 dollar figures are picked as round examples to make the arithmetic obvious. To price a coin silver piece against the real market on a given day, replace 30 with the live silver spot price from a public quote source. Then multiply that spot price by the pure silver content in troy ounces, which is total weight in grams times 0.900 divided by 31.1035.
Early American makers who worked coin silver
Coin silver was the American silversmith's default alloy for most of the country's first century. The trade was scattered across dozens of cities, and a full list of shops runs into the hundreds. A handful of names sit at the front of the collector market and are worth knowing.
Paul Revere of Boston, born January 1, 1735 and died May 10, 1818, ran a working silver shop for decades. His output includes flatware, ladles, tea pots, and cups, all in coin silver at the standard of the era. Revere pieces with a confirmed maker's mark trade at a heavy multiple over pure melt.
Samuel Kirk of Baltimore, born February 15, 1793 and died July 6, 1872, founded the shop that became Kirk and Son. From 1815 the firm produced only .900 coin silver flatware and hollowware. Kirk did not adopt the .925 standard until 1886 and did not use the STERLING word mark until 1914. Signed Kirk coin silver is a core coin silver collector market.
Jabez Gorham founded the Gorham firm in Providence, Rhode Island in 1831. The shop's first significant output was coin silver spoons. Gorham later became one of the largest American sterling silver producers, but its coin silver era output from the 1830s and 1840s survives in the collector trade.
Charles Lewis Tiffany founded Tiffany and Company in New York on September 18, 1837. Early Tiffany silver was made at the coin standard by outside silversmiths retained by the firm. Tiffany's 1851 decision to adopt .925 sterling as its house standard pulled much of the American silver trade with it over the following decades.
The named shops sit in a much larger field. Colonial and early republican records show roughly 500 identified silversmiths at work in the American colonies and states between 1634 and 1776. Many of the pieces in the coin silver market carry a small mark from a smaller regional maker rather than one of the famous names above.
Coin silver marks and periods, at a glance
The table below rolls up the common American coin silver purity marks with an approximate period of use and a plain-English meaning. Regional practice varied, so treat the periods as guides rather than as hard cutoffs.
| Mark | Meaning | Approximate period of use | Fineness denoted |
|---|---|---|---|
| COIN | Made from melted American silver coinage at the .900 standard | Roughly 1830 through 1880 | .900 |
| PURE COIN | Same as COIN, with "pure" added to distinguish from base or debased alloys | Roughly 1830 through 1870 | .900 |
| DOLLAR or D | Made at the United States silver dollar standard, .900 fine | Roughly 1820 through 1860 | .900 |
| STANDARD | The working shop standard of the day, in practice .900 coin silver | Roughly 1820 through 1860 | .900 |
| Pennyweight number, such as 10.15 or 11 | Assay mark stating pennyweights of pure silver per troy ounce, common in Baltimore | Roughly 1814 through 1830 | .900 to .917 depending on the number |
| STERLING or 925 | Sterling silver at .925, the post-coin-silver American standard | 1851 and later, dominant after 1880 | .925 |
Sources: Wikipedia summary of the Silver standards and Fineness articles; historical notes on Samuel Kirk and Son of Baltimore and on the Gorham Manufacturing Company; Coinage Act of 1837 as summarized by public United States Mint history references. Regional practice varied and periods are approximate. Checked August 2026.
The presence of a pennyweight mark instead of the word COIN is a strong signal that a piece originated in Baltimore or the mid-Atlantic states. That mark is a Maryland assay-office feature and rarely appears on New England silver.
Where collector premiums do and do not appear
The default is that a piece of unmarked or lightly marked American coin silver trades close to melt at a scrap buyer. Coin silver premiums appear in three narrower situations. The premiums are qualitative and vary with the market, so they are stated as tiers rather than as specific dollar figures.
The first situation is an identified early American maker's mark. A Paul Revere teaspoon, a signed Samuel Kirk hollowware piece, or an early Gorham spoon can trade at a heavy multiple over pure melt. The premium comes from provenance, from the maker's reputation, and from the small surviving population of confirmed pieces.
The second situation is a large or unusual form. A coffee pot, a tea urn, a ladle, or a matched flatware set in original condition carries more collector interest than a single worn spoon. The premium in this tier is modest for common shops and grows for signed makers.
The third situation is early presentation pieces and inscribed silver. A tankard or a cup with a period engraved inscription that ties the piece to a named person, a church, or a public event carries a real collector premium. Inscription damage or later engraving cuts that premium quickly, so unaltered original inscriptions are worth more.
Any dealer pitching a common coin silver spoon at multiples of melt price, framed as a rare investment item, is running a script the underlying market does not support without proof. The Federal Trade Commission has published general consumer guidance on inflated pricing in "rare" and "historic" collectibles (source: Federal Trade Commission, Consumer Advice: Investing in Bullion and Bullion Coins).
The default check is to price the piece against melt first. Treat any premium above that as a claim the seller has to justify with a specific maker attribution, a specific form, or a specific provenance.
Limits and caveats to keep in mind
Every melt figure on this page is a computation from a stated silver spot price, not a quote from a dealer and not a forecast. Silver prices move continuously during market hours, and a number that fits a specific day belongs on that day only. All dollar figures here use example spot prices of 20, 30, or 40 dollars per troy ounce, picked as clean round numbers rather than as predictions.
Dealer and refiner buy prices sit below melt by design. Any commercial buyer needs a spread on the transaction to cover assay, sorting, refining, insurance, and margin. A single-piece walk-in usually sees a wider spread than a large lot delivered on a shipped order. Sellers should call two or three local coin dealers and one refiner and compare quotes on the same day.
Coin silver marking practice varied across regions and periods. Not every piece with a small letter D is a coin silver piece, and not every piece without a purity mark is coin silver either. A signed reference guide or a specialist auction house can confirm attribution on a piece the seller cares about.
Collector premiums for identified early American coin silver are qualitative, not quantitative, on this page. Real market prices for specific makers, forms, dates, and inscriptions depend on published auction results and on specialist dealer inventory. Anyone with a signed early piece should check completed public auction sales before quoting a value.
Coin silver is not eligible for a self-directed silver IRA. Silver held for retirement follows a separate fineness rule that we cover in the silver IRA fineness explainer. Coin silver is fine to own personally, in any quantity, at any time.
Coin silver questions, answered
What is coin silver?
Coin silver is a silver alloy at .900 fineness, or 90 percent silver by weight, with the remaining 10 percent copper for hardness. The name reflects its origin. American silversmiths of the early and mid 1800s often produced their working stock by melting Spanish and United States silver coins, which were struck at .900 fine.
What does the COIN mark on a spoon mean?
The mark COIN on the back of an antique American spoon or hollowware piece denotes coin silver at .900 fineness. It states that the piece was made from silver coinage-quality metal at the United States dollar standard of the day. Marks like PURE COIN, DOLLAR, D, and STANDARD carry the same meaning.
Is coin silver worth more or less than sterling silver?
By pure silver content alone, coin silver at .900 is worth about 2.7 percent less than sterling silver at .925 at the same weight and the same spot price. By collector premium, an identified early American coin silver piece by a named maker can trade well above unsigned modern sterling of the same weight.
How do I calculate the melt value of coin silver?
Weigh the piece in grams. Multiply the weight by 0.900 to get grams of pure silver. Divide grams of pure silver by 31.1035 to get troy ounces. Multiply the troy ounces by the day's silver spot price per troy ounce. The result is the illustrative melt value in dollars, before any dealer spread.
Was coin silver only made in the United States?
The term "coin silver" is specific to the American trade for silver at the .900 United States coinage standard. Other countries used their own local silver standards for silverware, such as sterling at .925 in England, .800 or .813 in much of continental Europe, and various local numerics in Scandinavia. Coin silver is an American term.
When did American silversmiths stop making coin silver?
Most large American firms had shifted to sterling by the 1880s. Tiffany moved to .925 sterling in 1851. Samuel Kirk and Son of Baltimore kept the .900 coin standard until 1886. The Stamping Act of 1906 made .925 the statutory minimum for goods sold as sterling in the United States, effectively closing coin silver as a new-production standard.
Can coin silver go into a precious metals IRA?
No. The Internal Revenue Code sets the fineness minimum for silver held in a self-directed IRA at .999, referenced to the delivery standard of a regulated futures contract. Coin silver at .900 sits well below that line. It can be held personally without restriction, but it cannot sit inside a self-directed IRA account.
Should I sell coin silver for scrap or keep it as an antique?
That decision depends on the maker's mark, the form, the condition, and personal preference. Anonymous or badly worn coin silver usually trades close to melt at scrap buyers and refiners. Identified early American coin silver by a named maker often carries a real collector premium that a specialist dealer or an auction house is better positioned to unlock than a scrap buyer.
Sources
- Wikipedia, Fineness (millesimal fineness definition, common silver standards including .900 coin silver, .925 sterling, .958 Britannia, .999 fine). Checked August 2026.
- Wikipedia, Silver standards (American coin silver at .900, historical use of coin melting as the raw material source, Baltimore pennyweight marks). Checked August 2026.
- Wikipedia, Samuel Kirk (biography 1793 through 1872, S. Kirk and Son of Baltimore, .900 coin silver until 1886, first STERLING mark 1914). Checked August 2026.
- Wikipedia, Gorham Manufacturing Company (founded 1831 in Providence by Jabez Gorham, coin silver spoons as first main product). Checked August 2026.
- Wikipedia, Tiffany and Company (founded 1837 by Charles Lewis Tiffany, adopted .925 sterling standard for its silver in 1851). Checked August 2026.
- Wikipedia, Coinage Act of 1792 (established United States Mint, initial silver dollar standard near .892 fineness before the 1837 revision to .900 fine). Checked August 2026.
- Wikipedia, Comstock Lode (major American silver deposit made public in 1859 in the Virginia Range of Nevada, industrial-scale silver refining source). Checked August 2026.
- Wikipedia, Paul Revere (biography January 1, 1735 through May 10, 1818, Boston silversmith working the coin silver standard of the period). Checked August 2026.
- Federal Trade Commission, Consumer Advice: Investing in Bullion and Bullion Coins. Checked August 2026.
- Cornell Legal Information Institute, 26 U.S.C. section 408 (silver fineness rule for IRA metals at .999 minimum). Checked August 2026.
