What does term "fine silver" mean?

[Golden Oldie]

I have some medallions that have the term fine silver on the edge. What % silver are these things?

 

Pat

[MorganMan]

Fine silver is usually referred to as pure silver, or 99.9 or similiar.....

 

However, that does NOT mean that jewelery with that on it is pure silver...it was also a marketing gimmick....

 

MM

[RWB]

"Fine" silver or gold is .9999+ pure metal. "Proof" silver or gold is 1.000 pure metal.

 

Collectors commonly call coin silver ".900 fine" meaning that it is .900 silver and .100 alloy.

[michael]

I have some medallions that have the term fine silver on the edge.

 

 

THIS MEANS IT IS 99.999% PURE SILVER

 

WHAT THE OTHER .001 IS I DONT KNOW

[Golden Oldie]

Thanks for the info.

They are not jewelry, they are big heavy medallions that I bought back in the 1980s from an art gallery in Chicago.

I don't have a proper scale to weigh them but I'll see what I can jury rig to get approximate weight.

 

 

[Coin]

I have some medallions that have the term fine silver on the edge.

 

 

THIS MEANS IT IS 99.999% PURE SILVER

 

WHAT THE OTHER .001 IS I DONT KNOW

 

The same .001 % stuff in Ivory soap probably !

[gold_fever-migration]

Fine silver does indeed reflect 99.9% purity, however, "proof" does NOT mean 100% as far as I know.

[RWB]

For assayers at the US Mints and Assay offices, "proof" gold or silver was certified 1.000 fine. This is mentioned hundreds of times over many decades of operation.

[mmissinglink]

"Fine Silver" is definitely not .9999 fine and proof silver is definitely not 1.0 pure in terms of how coin collectors use the term.

 

"Proof" is merely a type of finish. There are perhaps millions of proof clad coins produced collectively by all mints every year throughout the world that don't have any gold or silver in them.

 

Fine silver means .999 pure silver or above though this may not be the case 100% of the time.

 

I have a 1964 silver medal that has the initials "FS" on the edge and I believe the medal to be .999 fine silver but a coin shop that did an acid test on a scraping of a similar silver medal claims that it is Sterling silver. It is possible that the fella doing the test didn't know the difference between bright red (.999 pure) and dark red (.925 pure) or the acid may have been an old batch.

 

Bottom line: it is my understanding that fine silver (often abbreviated "FS") is .999 pure or higher.

[RWB]

"Proof" gold or silver was used in validating assays of metal. The term has nothing to do with coins made with mirror-like surfaces usually called 'proof coins."

[brg5658]

Geeze, this 6.5 year old thread comes back to life...

[RWB]

Voodoo.