What Coin Is This? Visual Identifier

How the identifier narrows it down

Three things separate almost every US coin: its color, its size and what is on the front. Color tells you the metal family. Copper and bronze cents look brown or orange, silver and clad coins look white or gray and the modern dollar coins have a golden, brassy tone. Real gold coins are smaller and much heavier than they look.

Size does most of the remaining work. US coins have held to a handful of standard sizes for more than a century, so "a bit smaller than a quarter" or "bigger than a half dollar" rules out most series at once. The portrait settles the rest. Each modern denomination has its own face and the older coins fall into a few clear styles: a head of Liberty, a full figure of Liberty, or a Native American headdress.

Getting the size right without a ruler

Lay your coin next to a modern coin. A dime is 17.9 mm, a cent 19 mm, a nickel 21.2 mm, a quarter 24.3 mm, a golden dollar 26.5 mm and a half dollar 30.6 mm. Anything bigger is a large silver dollar at 38.1 mm. Old large cents from before 1857 are a little bigger than a quarter, between a golden dollar and a half dollar. The three-cent silver and the first gold dollars are tinier than a dime.

If your coin falls between two sizes, choose "Not sure" for the size step and let the color and portrait narrow the list instead.

Colors that fool people

Old silver coins can tone to gold, blue or almost black, so a dark coin with a silver-coin design is still silver. Cents struck in 1943 are gray zinc-coated steel and will stick to a magnet. Modern cents can corrode to gray or spotted brown. The golden dollars of 2000 on often darken to a brown, almost bronze color with handling. Gold-plated novelty coins look bright yellow and weigh much less than real gold.

When the color looks wrong for the design, trust the design and the size first, then use the "Is it silver?" checker or a kitchen scale to confirm the metal.

What to do once you have the series

Open the series page and find your date in the table, or go straight to the "What's my coin worth?" finder and type the year and mint mark. Each coin page explains how many were made, whether it is silver, the value band, the varieties to check for and how to read the mint mark.

If nothing matches, your coin may be foreign, a token or a medal rather than a US coin. Look for a country name, a denomination such as "ONE PENNY" or "25 CENTS" and the word LIBERTY, which appears on almost every US coin.

Frequently asked questions