Which US coins are silver?
Dimes, quarters and halves dated 1964 or earlier are 90% silver. Halves from 1965 to 1970 are 40%. Nickels are only silver for three wartime years, and the mint mark tells you which.
In the Buck index
Roosevelt DimeUnited States · 1946–1964 · Silver (.900)$4.98 to $5.79
Washington QuarterUnited States · 1932–1964 · Silver (.900)$13.53 to $16.01
Kennedy Half DollarUnited States · 1964 · Silver (.900)$19.64 to $25.32
United States 5 cents "Wartime Silver Nickel" (1942–1945)United States · 1942–1945 · Billon (.350 silver) (56% Copper, 35% Silver, 9% Manganese)$3.50 to $5.00
The rule is a date, and it is the single most useful thing to know about American change.
Dimes, quarters and half dollars dated 1964 or earlier are 90% silver. From 1965 they are copper-nickel clad and worth face value. The Coinage Act of 1965 drew that line because silver had become worth more than the coins were, and people were melting them.
Everything else is a footnote to that sentence, but the footnotes are worth money.
The full list
| Coin | Silver years | Content |
|---|---|---|
| Roosevelt dime | to 1964 | 90% |
| Mercury dime | 1916 to 1945 | 90% |
| Washington quarter | to 1964 | 90% |
| Kennedy half | 1964 | 90% |
| Kennedy half | 1965 to 1970 | 40% |
| Franklin half | 1948 to 1963 | 90% |
| Walking Liberty half | 1916 to 1947 | 90% |
| Morgan and Peace dollar | to 1935 | 90% |
| Jefferson nickel | mid 1942 to 1945 | 35% |
| Eisenhower dollar | some 1971 to 1976 | 40%, collector issues only |
Cents have never been silver. Ordinary nickels have never been silver except during the war. There is no silver in anything struck for circulation after 1970.
The half dollar exception people miss
Kennedy halves kept silver for six years after everything else stopped. 1964 is 90%. 1965 through 1970 are 40%, with a silver core under copper-nickel outer layers. From 1971 they are clad like everything else.
A 1967 Kennedy half found in change is worth several dollars of silver, and almost nobody looks.
The wartime nickel
From late 1942 to 1945, nickel metal was needed for armour plate, and five-cent pieces were struck in a copper, silver and manganese alloy that is 35% silver. To make them easy to withdraw afterwards the Mint put a large mint mark above the dome of Monticello on the reverse, including a P for Philadelphia, the first time Philadelphia ever marked a coin at all.
That big letter over the dome is the tell. Buck prices these at about $3.50 to $5.00, anchored to the silver in them rather than to a price guide, which is why the number moves with the spot price.
How to check without a date
Two quick tests, neither of them destructive.
- The edge. A clad dime or quarter shows a copper stripe around the rim. A silver one is uniformly grey all the way through. Stack a few and the copper sandwich is obvious.
- The sound. Dropped on a hard surface, silver rings for noticeably longer than clad, which clunks. It is a real difference and coin dealers use it, though it takes hearing both to calibrate.
Weight is the third check: a silver quarter is 6.25 g against 5.67 g for clad.
What "junk silver" means
Common-date circulated silver coins with no collector premium, traded purely for their metal. A "face value" bag of 90% US silver contains about 0.715 troy ounces of silver per dollar of face. That is the arithmetic behind every silver coin price you will see quoted, and it is why a 1964 dime is worth roughly two dollars rather than ten cents.
