The purpose of this thread is to establish a set of conversion factors for common coins to silver coins. Your input is appreciated; that's why I've put my thoughts here.

I'm assuming a certain amount of knowledge about the metal value of US coins; it's fairly common knowledge in this circle that pre-1982 pennies are worth something like twice their face value in metal (currently over 2.5 cents), and that nickels are similarly more valuable (currently 6.3 cents, or 25% more than face). A good online guide to this value is http://www.coinflation.com/. If anyone has a question, ask here and I'll answer, though perhaps basic questions about metal value of coins would merit its own thread.

I've been thinking I ought to work up a system of values for ordinary coins, for a post-collapse trading system. For me that means primarily US coins. So if you want to make change for, say, a pre-1964 US quarter (a "silver quarter"), you'll have an idea of how many nickels, post-1964 quarters, post-1964 dimes, pre-or-post 1982 pennies, etc you'll give them.

While I don't suppose we'll be able to quantify how many eggs or omelettes or hours of carpentry an ounce of silver will buy, it should be possible to establish conversion factors for current non-silver coins to silver coins. The only real problem is determining the value of a metal like copper or nickel relative to the value of silver. Do you look up the estimates for how much of each metal is available on the planet, and go from that ratio? What about how useful each metal is--copper is way more useful than nickel in that respect, especially in a post-collapse kind of world.

Another approach would be to use historical values for the metals--perhaps even values from the early days of the US, or at least the days right before we left the gold standard.

I'll look at this latter approach tonight, having found my Red Book, the definitive book on US coins.

It wasn't until the mid 1800's that copper coins were reformed and standardized; before this, Spanish coins were still legal tender, and things varied a lot. Also it wasn't until 1866 that the nickel 5-cent piece was first minted. So we'll use this period as our "starting point" for this set of proposed relative values.

First, a look at the silver coinage of the time. The familiar 90% silver 10% copper composition was already in use. Roughly in the timeframe we're looking at (late 1860's to early 1870's), the silver dimes, quarters, and half-dollars had their weights adjusted slightly, which weights remained stable until silver coinage fell out of use in the United States. So this will be a fairly easy comparison. A "dollar" at this time was 22.5 grams of silver (which is a little screwy, since a dollar was originally defined as 24.057 grams of pure silver) and 2.25 grams of copper; you'd get that with 2 half dollars, 4 quarters, 10 dimes, or any combination thereof which equaled $1 face value. During this period these coins were the "Seated Liberty" design.

Before the familiar Lincoln penny, there was the "Indian Head" penny, originally in copper-nickel, and then in 1864, in the familiar 95% copper 5% zinc (well actually 5% tin/zinc) composition, the same used in the Lincoln penny until 1982. The weight was the also same as the pre-1982 Lincoln penny, so for our purposes, it was the very same coin. So by this standard, a dollar in silver coins is worth 100 pre-1982 pennies, which is handy because that's the numbers stamped on them.

In this timeframe, just after the US Civil War (er, I mean the War of Northern Aggression), the nickel had just come into circulation, having supplanted the 3-cent piece of similar composition, and replaced the silver half-dime. The Shield Nickel was 5 grams of 75% copper and 25% nickel, just the same as the current nickels are. We'll call this alloy "cupronickel" from here on in. So by this standard, a nickel (be it a Jefferson, Buffalo, Liberty Head, or Shield) is worth 1/20th of a dollar in silver, or 5 cents. Again, convenient because that's how it's labeled.

Now, that was easy. This will not be easy. Let's see how much current issue dimes and quarters are worth by this standard. I'll leave out the Sacagawea and Presidential Dollars (same composition and weight) because the manganese in them complicates things.

Current "clad" Dimes, Half-dollars, and Quarters are still proportional; that is, the composition is the same (75% copper, 25% nickel, just like the Nickel coin is), and the weight is proportional to the face value so that a dollars' worth of these coins has the same amount of metal however you count it. But the value stamped on them isn't proportional with respect to the Nickel coins. Think about it. A Dime weighs not quite half as much as a Nickel, but has twice the face value. Typical US Government smoke and mirrors inflation. A "dollar" in clad coinage is 22.7 grams of cupronickel; by our previous calculations, a dollar in silver coins is worth 100 grams of cupronickel. So a clad dime is actually something like a 2-cent piece (actually 2.27 cents), a clad quarter is a 6 cent piece (5.67 cents more specifically), and a half-dollar is an 11.34 cent piece, or approximately a half-quarter ("ha'quarter"?).

For tonight, the post-1982 penny math eludes me, because of the high zinc content. I'll get to this shortly enough.

So, to summarize, with this scheme (Civil-War-era US coin values), a "dollar" is defined as $1 face in US silver dimes, quarters, or half-dollars; there are 100 pre-1982 pennies to the dollar, and 20 nickels, these bearing their face value. Clad coins are valued as follows: dime, 2 cents; quarter, 6 cents; and a half-dollar is worth 12 cents but probably worth calling half a silver quarter. For clad coins, you need 50 (or more exactly, 44) dimes, 18 quarters, or 9 half-dollars to equal about a dollar.