Canadian $1 Silver, Proof, 1971-2002
 

Canadian $1 Silver, Proof, 1971-2002 50 % silver, anyone familiar with these?

Re: Canadian $1 Silver, Proof, 1971-2002
 

I have one, 1980 Arctic Territories, polar bear. It cost about 20% over spot, but I got it because it had the date 1980 on it. :cool: It's still in its original plastic capsule, but the edges have some very slight yellow/brownish toning, hard to notice though. It's very pretty. I asked the guy in the coin shop if this was a sandwich, he looked it up in the coin catalog and said no, just 50% alloy.

He sais that even a 25% silver alloy with copper has a white color when polished. As you can probably tell, I'm not much into numismatics and don't even have a coin catalog. I have plenty of other 50% coins, mainly Czechoslovakian, as these are the most common where I live. I have never noticed a coppery color in them. Instead, they appear sorta bluish to me after polishing, including this one. But I think I can spot the copper in the inner part of the 40% Kennedy sandwich (and that's just 20.9% silver).

Oh, and I thought they switched the composition to sterling in 1992:

http://personal.telefonica.terra.es/...a/en/serie.htm
http://www.coinscan.com/technical/numasp.html