How We Price Silver Coins

Where the numbers come from

Listings come from eBay's official Browse API: one search per coin type in the UK every day (and in the US for American coins), plus any other country a visitor asks for. Prices are the seller's asking price plus the cheapest postage, converted to pounds with the European Central Bank's daily rates. They are asking prices, not sold prices.

The silver price is spot silver in US dollars per troy ounce from gold-api.com, refreshed every 30 minutes and converted to pounds. We keep each day's price for the charts.

Silver content

Bullion coins and bars: the mint's published fine silver weight (1oz, 2oz, 30g for Pandas since 2016, 100g, 10oz, 1kg).
Old British coins: by the date in the title. Up to 1919 they are 92.5% silver; 1920 to 1946 50%; from 1947 none, so post-1946 coins are left out. Weights: crown 28.28g, half crown 14.14g, florin 11.31g, shilling 5.66g, sixpence 2.83g, threepence 1.41g. When a title has no date we go by the monarch: Victoria and Edward VII coins are sterling; George V coins with no date are counted as 50% silver, the cautious figure.
Silver by weight: the weight in the title times 50% (pre-1947) or 92.5% (pre-1920).
US coins: 90% silver at the US Mint's standard weights.
Lots: we read the quantity ("x10", "tube of 25", "lot of 5") and multiply.

Price per ounce, melt value and premium

Price per ounce = total price including postage ÷ ounces of pure silver in the listing. Melt value = ounces × today's silver price. Premium = how far the price is over the melt value. Together they let you compare a single coin with a tube of 25 or a bag of half crowns.

Going rate and deal score

For each coin type and condition (bullion/uncirculated, proof, circulated, graded) the going rate is the median price per ounce of the Buy It Now listings, needing at least 3. The deal score is how far a listing is under or over the going rate for the same coin and condition. Auctions show the current bid and get no score, because the final price isn't known.

A listing 35% or more under the going rate is marked "too good to be true?" and kept out of the best deals. Buy It Now listings priced under 75% of their silver value are left out altogether: they are almost always fakes, wrong weights or mistakes.

What we filter out

Silver-plated and "layered" copies, replicas, tokens and medals, coin jewellery and holed coins, empty boxes, capsules, albums and certificates on their own, gold versions of silver coins, and post-1946 British cupro-nickel coins.

Sellers

Trusted: eBay Top Rated, or 98%+ positive feedback with 50+ ratings. Check seller: under 97% positive. New seller: under 10 ratings. "Safe deals only" hides the last two and anything marked too good to be true.

How we make money

We are an eBay Partner Network affiliate: if you buy after clicking a link, eBay may pay us a small commission. It costs you nothing and doesn't change which listings we show or how we rank them.