Weight Tolerances from Mints & Producers of Silver products

[BackyardBullion]

Howdy all - I have been busy filming a (what I think to be) really interesting topic for my video tomorrow. 

As a prelude to the video I wanted to share my findings on this interesting subject.

Weight Tolerances from Mints & Producers of Silver products

It is well known that mints and makers of silver products (like myself!) have certain levels of tolerance when producing coins. The bigger the outfit the tighter the tolerance. The Royal mint is who I have focused on in my video but I would imagine to some degree it is the same for all mints and makers. 

First I will use my own 1 oz Silver Forum bars as an example. They are all at least 1 oz. Not a single bar weighs less than 31.1 grams of silver. Some weigh considerably more (up to about 33.5 grams!). And the reason for this is that it would take me a lot longer in time and energy as well as cost more in lost graphite crucibles to create all the bars at exactly 31.1 grams. So I have a tolerance and over all the average worked out to be 5%. That means that across 200 oz of forum bars I am giving away nearly 10 oz of silver! 

Madness you might say! Well - the extra costs and time it would take to reduce this further outweighs the cost of the silver I am giving away. So I build it into the cost of doing business. 

The same is true of the Mints of the world. The difference is that they have much better technology and skills to be able to create their coins and rounds to be as accurate as possible. But there is still a tolerance. 

I took a sample of 25 Britannias from my melting fodder and weighed them all to find out how much free silver I had. 

Now, I know that the calibration of my scales is going to be an issue for some of you more scientific types out there - but I have done my very best to accurately calibrate them. They are as good as they are going to be. Another facinating topic is how do we actually know what a kilogram weights - have a look at this facinating video if you have time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKCBeDeVxkg

But that is a topic for a whole other time. 

Of the 25 britannias I weighed, on average I would say I had about 0.1 grams of silver extra per coin. Some were bang on 31.1 grams, but I had one which was 31.28!

So, here is the interesting theme of my video (which I will post a link to tomorrow) is - can you ever use that free silver or financially gain from having it there!!??!

A dealer is going to buy that off you as if it was 1 oz of silver. A forum member will pay for 1 oz of silver. 

But...

If you bought 1000 Britannias and your average gain was 0.1g per coin...you end up with 100g of free silver!

Let's assume you can buy the britannias at exactly spot price. You melt them all down and end up with your 100g of free silver. Then you find someone to buy it at exactly the same spot price. You have 100g extra silver and you have made money!

Add an extra "0" to the number of britannias you buy and you end up with 1kg of free silver!

Now of course the argument is going to be it will cost you more than the volume of free silver to melt it down in time and resources but nevertheless it is an interesting premise!

Video to follow tomorrow but it would be great to hear your thoughts!

 

[BackyardBullion]

As an afterthought - if the Royal Mint makes 1,000,000 silver britannias they are giving away 100kg of silver

[BackyardBullion]

Another afterthought

The US mint made 47,000,000 US eagles in 2015

That is 470kg of free silver. 

We are talking @mr-dead stacking now. 

[ilovesilverireallydo]

1 minute ago, BackyardBullion said:

As an afterthought - if the Royal Mint makes 1,000,000 silver britannias they are giving away 100kg of silver

Wonder what would happen if you tried this on Gold? Much more worth the effort I would suspect, but doubt you will get even  .1gm extra gold per coin... 

[BackyardBullion]

Just now, ilovesilverireallydo said:

Wonder what would happen if you tried this on Gold? Much more worth the effort I would suspect, but doubt you will get even  .1gm extra gold per coin... 

They have a lot higher tolerance on gold. 

[kimchi]

An absolutely fascinating topic, look forward to this one (though all your vids I've seen so far have been informative)

There was a thread on this very thing very recently on here. When I first bought and checked my Kooks on scales I got a bit of a surprise at the latitude on silver and ended up writing to the Perth Mint, who indeed confirmed the situation.

[mr-dead]

I think we need to get back into coin clipping

 

 

[caloundracats]

I would have thought the major mints would have got this down pat so as to not give away any silver. Different for individuals of course without the benefit of high tech equipment.

Suppose they factor this into their prices on the higher side of course.

Look forward to your video on the subject.

[captaincavemanjay]

5 hours ago, kimchi said:

An absolutely fascinating topic, look forward to this one (though all your vids I've seen so far have been informative)

There was a thread on this very thing very recently on here. When I first bought and checked my Kooks on scales I got a bit of a surprise at the latitude on silver and ended up writing to the Perth Mint, who indeed confirmed the situation.

I Had a similar surprise, i ended up getting a second set of weights and recalibrated the scale, as i trusted the seller but doubted the extra.

[sovereignsteve]

3 hours ago, mr-dead said:

I think we need to get back into coin clipping

 

 

good idea, we could start with the plain edge "sovereigns", thinking 1937, 2017 SOTD etc

[sovereignsteve]

5 hours ago, BackyardBullion said:

Now of course the argument is going to be it will cost you more than the volume of free silver to melt it down in time and resources but nevertheless it is an interesting premise!

I like off the wall thinking like this, we need free thinkers.

[BackyardBullion]

 

[kimchi]

16 hours ago, captaincavemanjay said:

I Had a similar surprise, i ended up getting a second set of weights and recalibrated the scale, as i trusted the seller but doubted the extra.

Me too