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Question - What is a Troy Ounce of Silver? |
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What is a Troy Ounce? Determining an accurate measure of weight has important implications in all types of financial transactions. By having a standard measure of commodities such as pounds and ounces or grams and kilograms, it is possible to buy sell or trade goods with some degree of certainty that the transaction will be fair and equitable. If there were no uniform weight scale, a butcher would have to guess how much to charge for every cut of meat. |
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One day you might get lucky and get a big steak for $5.00 and the next time you might get a much smaller piece for the same $5.00. To make sure that all customers are treated fairly, the Avoirdupois Ounce was adopted by the United States as their standard weight scale. One Avoirdupois ounce is equivalent to 28.349523125 grams or 437.5 grains. It takes 16 of those ounces to make a pound. The Avoirdupois weight scale is not the only type of measure of weight. There are quite a few others that have various degrees of acceptance, both in the United States, and throughout the rest of the world. Many European countries rely on the metric system to measure distances and calculate weight and volume. Meters, grams and liters are standardized measurements. Another unique measure that pertains to measuring the weight of precious metals is the Troy Ounce. While it is primarily used to determine the weight of silver and gold, it also is used for platinum and related metals which include rhodium, ruthenium, osmium, palladium and iridium. One Troy Ounce is equivalent to 31.1034768 grams or 438 grains. One Troy Ounce is almost 10% heavier than one Avoirdupois Ounce. If you were to stack ten 100 Troy Ounce bars of silver on one end of a teeter-totter and ten 100 Avoirdupois bars of silver on the opposite end, the Troy Ounce side would swing down to the ground because it is heavier and the forces of gravity pull it down. One of the more confusing aspects of trying to compare the relative weights of the two types of scales is that each has a different definition of what makes up a pound. When you buy a pound of flour, you know that you are getting 16 ounces of the product. When you buy a pound of silver, you are getting just 12 Troy Ounces. Therefore, when someone says to you what weighs more, a pound of sugar or a pound of silver, the technically correct answer is a pound of sugar. Just look at the calculation. 1 Pound of Sugar = 16 Avoirdupois Ounces x 28.3495 grams = 453.592 grams 1 Pound of Silver = 12 Troy Ounces x 31.1035 grams = 373.242 grams This is all very interesting, but what does it really mean? Simply, when buying or selling silver, gold or other precious metals, make sure that you are buying based on the standard Troy Ounce Scale. If you are foolish enough to put 10 pure 1 ounce silver coins on a small Avoirdupois scale, and pay the silver spot price per ounce based on the weight shown on the scale, you will be paying for more than 10 ounces of pure silver. You want to find an accurate price of silver and not be ripped off. Like the old saying goes, you have to compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges. Related article: - Silver Hallmarks |
By Buysilvercoins.org.uk Thursday, January 05, 2012 - Site map - Privacy policy |