I've had someone email me yesterday with a very interesting question. I hope someone has the answer to it! You know how the silver coins are 'legal tender' - does that mean they are worth their weight or the denomination on the coin. e.g. is the 1oz silver coin only a $1 or does it just mean the coin can be used for legal money based on its silver value? I bet that the answer is straight forward. Thanks for your help, JRB
A legal tender coin is worth its weight in silver. So if its a 1 ounce coin, that would mean its value is that of 1 ounce of silver plus some for numismatics, but the absolute minimum value is that of spot price for 1 ounce. The fact that it is legal tender simply means that if you were daft enough, you could use it to pay for part of a Mackers burger ... and if the teller was STOP - Hammer time! she would gladly accept it and simply exchange one of her $1 coins for it and keep it Edit: Dont be afraid! I don't have torrets ... it's just the Boss messin' with me... what i meant to say was if the teller was SAVVVIE ... :lol:
another naive question: what about Mexican Libertad, does not have a face value on it, what will happen to it?
Wait wait... A coin that is used for legal tender is worth whatever is stamped on the coin. For example, the 1 oz gold coins from Perth Mint are Australian legal tender to the value of $100. Of course, you'd be crazy to use the coin as legal tender when the actual metal is worth almost 18 times that price.
It means the coins are "money" to the value of whatever is stamped on the back. They are also a commodity to the value of whatever the spot price is. In addition to that, they actually sell for whatever the market is prepared to pay for them. A 1oz Kookaburra, for example would currently be: Legal tender value = $1.00 Metal value = $38.50 Market value = $46.00
I believe that it's legal tender value is whatever the spot value of the metal is at that time. I guess the Mexicans are way ahead of the west in this regard ...
I took 15 into the ANZ to get changed into AU the other day....thieves wanted $8 AU to change it over plus another $8 to change my 10!!!!!
Well I am heading off to the UK, I can offer a better exchange rate than that without the fees! However postage would be a problem!
Yippie you are confusing even me. The legal tender is not spot at all. Legal tender means that the face value of the coin must be accepted as form of payment in the country that the coin is legal tender in. So a 1 ounce coin with a face value of $1 is only legal tender as $1. if what I think you are saying is true then you could walk into your news agent with a 1oz kook and buy $38.40 (current spot) worth of goods. That is not correct. So to say the absolute minimum value is spot is not correct. If it is being sold as 1oz of silver then it is worth what someone is willing to pay for it and what one is willing to sell. If it's used as currency then it is worth $1 no more no less.
From what I understand, if you offer legal tender to pay off a debt and it is turned down then the debt is cancelled. If you offer silver coins and they are turned down then the debt still stands. You cannot offer to pay with one million 1 cent coins though, there are limits to the amount of coins that can be offered in payment of debts. Also you can pay all your taxes and council debts with legal tender including the shiney 1 ounce coins or even the 1966 50 cents, however they are only accepted at face value.
That's not actually correct (in Australia at least): debts created via private transactions can be offered to be settled with any form of payment and the debt is only extinguished when the payment is accepted. (The alternative would be if I owed you $50 and said "I'll give you a $50 note", you agreed and then I said "Hey, I only have to offer you a $50 note but I don't have to actually give it to you, so I don't owe you anything now". Coins (in Australia) actually cease being legal tender in certain quantities. More than $5 in 5c, 10c, 20c and 50c is not legal tender. More than $10 in any quantity of coins is not legal tender either. Again, one party to a private transaction may accept them if they want to, but it isn't required. Businesses aren't even required to accept physical currency if they don't want to either.
ANZ charge $24 to transfer s to UK and Lloyds, RBS etc charge around 12 to receive them plus ANZ charge a conversion fee. Thieving scum is too polite.
Since 1982 the Mexican Libertad has also been issued as a silver coin. In contrast to the gold coin, the silver version is not accepted as legal tender in Mexico. Hugo Salinas Price, president of the Asociacin Cvica Mexicana Pro Plata (Mexican Civic Association Pro Silver) in Mexico City, has been fighting in favour of the reintroduction of silver as a nationally accepted means of payment for years. In 1979 the Mexican parliament passed the legislative proposal of former Mexican president Jos Lpez Portillo to re-establish the silver Libertad as legal tender. The new law, however, had a constructional flaw. Portillo's law worked on the principle that every Libertad silver ounce could be exchanged at the current market value by the central bank, Banco de Mexico, into paper currency. For two years the Mexican population used the silver Libertad as currency in its daily transactions. In December 1981 the law was abolished. The constructional flaw in accepting silver as an official Mexican currency was due to the lack of a nominal, irreducible value that should have been featured on the coin. This important clause was omitted from Portillo's law. Nowadays, the Asociacin Cvica Mexicana Pro Plata campaigns for the inclusion of this clause in a new legislative proposal. Should Hugo Salinas Price's campaign be successful, the value of each minted coin in circulation as currency would fluctuate according to the current silver price and could be exchanged into paper money by the Banco de Mexico. Source: http://www.goldmoney.com/gold-research/gold-coins-the-mexican-libertad.html
Thanks Hilaire9, didn't I read somewhere that Mexico has one of the only two or three dedicated silver mines in the world? It would make sense for them to have silver as a currency rather than selling it for fiat money.
I've always wanted to take an ounce of silver into a store and buy something with its legal tender value, but of course never would due to the loss i'd make. Would be funny just for the reactions
