A pocket reference every collector eventually memorizes. Until then, bookmark this.
For 170 years, silver jingled in ordinary American pockets. Then it vanished in a single legislative stroke. Here is the complete field guide to where it was, where it lingered, and where it hides today.
From the first federal issues of the 1790s through 1964, U.S. dimes, quarters, half dollars, and silver dollars were struck in 90 percent silver alloyed with copper for durability. That includes every Morgan (1878 to 1921), every Peace dollar (1921 to 1935), every Mercury and Roosevelt dime through 1964, every Washington quarter of the era, and every Franklin half.
Rising silver prices made the metal in coins worth more than their faces, and the Coinage Act of 1965 answered by removing silver from dimes and quarters entirely, replacing it with the copper-nickel clad sandwich still in your change today. The public noticed immediately, and silver coinage vanished from circulation with remarkable speed as savers pulled it aside, a live demonstration of the oldest law in monetary economics.
Two families bridge the eras. Kennedy half dollars of 1965 through 1970 kept a reduced 40 percent silver content, about 0.148 troy ounces each. And during World War II, the war nickels of 1942 to 1945 carried 35 percent silver to conserve nickel for the war effort, marked forever by the oversized mint mark placed above Monticello, the only circulating U.S. nickels ever to contain silver.
Since 1986 the American Silver Eagle has carried a full troy ounce of .999 silver as a bullion coin, and the Mint sells silver proof sets and commemoratives directly to collectors. But no silver has been struck for ordinary circulation since the sixties; today it arrives only when you ask for it.
Date first: a dime, quarter, or half dated 1964 or earlier is 90 percent silver. Then the edge: solid silver-gray means silver; a visible copper stripe means clad. For halves, remember the 1965 to 1970 forty-percent window, and for nickels, look for that big wartime mint mark. The full pricing math for everything you find lives in How Junk Silver Value Is Calculated.