Coin Tools

How the coin tools fit together

The tools on this page fall into four groups. The first group identifies a coin: the What's My Coin Worth? Finder and the Is My Coin Silver? Checker. The second group works out what a coin is made of: the Coin Metal Content and Melt Value Calculator, the Junk Silver Calculator and the US Coin Weight Chart. The third group handles quantities of ordinary change: the Coin Roll and Counter Calculator and, again, the weight chart. The fourth group is about chance: Flip a Coin, Flip Multiple Coins and the Coin Flip Probability Calculator. The Coin Collection Tracker sits alongside all of them and records what you own. Three more tools cover the cases the others cannot: What Coin Is This? identifies a coin from its color, size and portrait when the date is unreadable, the Error Coin Checker helps you tell a real mint error from damage and the Paper Money Serial Number Checker looks for star notes and fancy serial numbers on bills.

Most people arrive with a single question, such as whether a 1964 quarter is silver or how many quarters are in a roll. Each tool answers its own question on one screen, but they are built to hand off to each other. The finder sends you to a coin's own page, which lists its metal. The silver checker gives a troy ounce figure that the melt calculator and junk silver calculator then turn into totals. The weight chart lets you count coins you have not bothered to count by hand and the roll calculator turns that count into rolls and face value.

Identify first, then measure

Start with the What's My Coin Worth? Finder whenever you are holding a coin you cannot place. You choose the denomination, type the date and pick the mint mark, or leave the mint mark on "Not sure" if the letter is worn or missing. The result links to the coin's page with its mintage, composition, rarity notes and the varieties worth checking for that date. Only after you know exactly which coin you have does it make sense to weigh it, test it for silver or look up its metal content.

The Is My Coin Silver? Checker is the shortcut for the most common question about older change. It needs only the denomination and the year and it covers the edge cases that trip people up: the 1942 nickel that may or may not be silver, the 40% silver Kennedy halves of 1965 to 1970 and the Eisenhower dollars that were silver only in their San Francisco collector versions.

Metal content, melt and junk silver

The melt value calculator lists the grams of silver, copper, nickel and zinc in each major type of US coin, from the 10.89 gram copper large cent to the 155.517 gram five-ounce America the Beautiful silver coin. It shows metal content without any price at all. If you want a melt figure, you type in the spot prices yourself, so the result is only as current as the numbers you enter.

The junk silver calculator is a faster way to handle a pile of old silver coins. Instead of choosing coins one at a time, you enter the total face value of your 90% silver dimes, quarters and halves, your 40% Kennedy halves and your 35% war nickels, plus a count of Morgan and Peace dollars. It works because every 90% silver dime, quarter and half dollar holds exactly the same amount of silver per dollar of face value: 25 grams of coin alloy and 22.5 grams of pure silver.

The two calculators agree with each other. A single 1964 quarter in the melt calculator shows 0.1808 troy ounces of silver. Entering a face value of $0.25 in the junk silver calculator gives 0.1808 ounces too.

Weighing and counting ordinary change

The US Coin Weight Chart lists the standard weight of every common US coin in grams and ounces and how many of each make a pound. Its counter turns a weight into a coin count, so a bag of cents can be counted on a kitchen scale. It also has a sorting use: a 1982 cent that weighs 3.11 grams is copper, one that weighs 2.5 grams is zinc.

The Coin Roll and Counter Calculator takes over once your coins are counted. Enter loose coins and full rolls for each denomination and it adds up the face value and the total number of coins. Its reference table gives the standard count per roll, so you know that 40 quarters, 50 dimes, 40 nickels and 50 cents each make one full roll.

Flipping coins and the math of chance

Flip a Coin gives a single fair toss with running statistics. Flip Multiple Coins tosses up to 100 at once and shows how likely the exact result was. The Coin Flip Probability Calculator answers the questions behind both: the chance of exactly, at least or at most a given number of heads and the chance of a streak. Used together they make a simple probability lesson. Flip ten coins a few times, note how often you see exactly five heads, then check the calculator, which gives 24.6%.

What the tools do not do

None of the tools fetches market prices and none estimates what a coin will sell for. Metal figures are for new, unworn coins at their standard weight, so circulated coins hold slightly less. The finder and the silver checker cover regular US Mint coinage, not tokens, medals, patterns or foreign coins. The tracker stores your checklist only in the browser you use, which keeps it private but means it does not follow you to another device.

Frequently asked questions