Home » Shop » Australia Shaped Silver Clad – 1 Troy oz

Australia Shaped Silver Clad – 1 Troy oz

$0.00 AUD

Out of stock

SKU: COL51OZMAPSILVER-8E Category:
Compare

This is a highly unusual item being a silver coated ounce of metal in the shape of Australia with state boundaries marked.

The photographs were difficult to make given the reflective nature of the metal.

Overall it is in nice condition and although we suspect that it was probably originally sold as a tourism item we have been unable to locate any similar examples.

The age is unknown as is the manufacturing source.

As a collectible it really is wonderful and not something that your friends are likely to have. 

SKU

Design

Stamped text is:One Troy Ounce 100 Mills Silver Weight:

1.00 troy oz. (31.1g)Content: Silver 1 troy oz. One troy ounce = 480 grains, or 31.10 grams. There are also 20 pennyweights to a troy ounce. A troy pound contains 12 troy ounces (over 13 avoirdupois ounces) and is equivalent to 373.24 grams. 32.15 troy ounces = 1 kilogram.

History

Items like this map are clad in 0.999 silver. But how thick is the cladding? Part of the problem is that “100 Mills” has absolutely no legal or technical meaning – they may as well be stamped “100 Carrots”. The designation of ‘Mil’ (with one letter ‘l’) is a term used in engineering to mean 1/1000 of an inch – but if the cladding were actually 100 mils thick, that would be 1/10 inch or about 2.5mm; seeing as a 1oz bar of pure silver is only about 2.5mm thick, that would mean that one of these ‘100 Mills’ bars would have to be clad in 2 ounces of silver. One look at the items weight says that this can’t be so. The manufacturers would go broke very quickly. If we take that the term  ‘Mill’ is actually short for ‘Millionth’ of an inch, it starts to look more realistic. The thickness of cladding would then be 0.0001 inches (0.0025mm) and this is about standard for an electro-plated item. Each side of the bar would then require 1/1000 of an ounce to plate, so the whole bar would take 1/500 oz. 

At current prices (AUD$30/oz) that means that each bar contains about 6 cents worth of silver.

Shopping Cart
X