Ever wonder how pure silver (…or gold) is transformed into those shiny coins we all love?
Creating silver bullion coins involves a 5-step process…during this process, strikers take special care to ensure purity, texture, weight and other important aspects of making a quality silver coin.
Continue reading for a breakdown of this process. To see it in action and for further explanation, check out the video below from the Endeavour Series and Northwest Territorial Mint (…and enjoy the funky background music too!)
5 Steps to Making Shiny Silver Coins
1. Melting
The first step in this process is to melt 99.9% pure silver in a furnace burning at about 2000 degrees. Once melted, the molten silver is poured into these cylindrical billets. When solidified, one of these billets weighs 810 ounces.
2. Extrude
Once the ‘billets’ are formed, they are then taken to an extruder where it’s forced through to create a long, thin strip. As the strips come out, workers check both sides for any scratches. After it cools, the strips are cut into smaller lengths.
3. Blanks
Once the silver strips are cut into more manageable pieces, they are then sent into a press that punches the silver strip into 1-oz rounds. These ‘blanks’ as they’re called are each weighed to ensure the final coin will weigh the correct amount.
4. Burnish
This essentially cleans the blanks and gives the silver coins that signature shine we all know and love. Blanks are cleaned using these very small 6 mm balls (…almost like a b-b) called ‘satellites’ that rub the coins and make them shiny.
5. Strike/Press
Next, minters take the burnished blanks and press the coin’s final design in. These designs are initially etched into a steel die, which is then used to press the design into the silver blank. Once the coins are pressed, silver coins are ready for shipment.
Check out this interesting video for more information. While the particular coins featured in this video are not for sale to the general public, this is the general process mints use to make shiny silver (…and gold) coins.
The silver bullion is going to break through all benchmarks for the year and ill tell you why. Silver is now trading at about $34 which is significantly lower than its inflation adjusted all time highs. We all know that both the domestic and international markets have been having a lot of trouble lately.To top it off the use of Silver in manufacturing has increased, What this means is that the amount of silver that is unrecoverable has increased and supplies are depleted (because of the prohibitively high price of extracting silver after its been used in manufacturing applications). This means only one thing silver may become a stronger safe heaven for investors trying to hedge a falling market. I was skeptical at first myself but the indicators are all pointing in the right direction on this one