How much is a Maple Leaf worth?
Specification
| Gross weight | 31.103 g |
|---|---|
| Fineness | 999.9 (99.99%) |
| Fine gold content | 31.1 g |
| Fine gold, troy oz | 1 |
| Diameter | 30 mm |
| Mint | Royal Canadian Mint |
| Country | Canada |
| Face value | C$50 |
| First issued | 1979 |
About this coin
The first mass-market .9999 coin, and still the purity benchmark. Its softness is a genuine practical issue: Maple Leaves mark easily and a visibly damaged one can be harder to sell at full premium, which is why they are usually kept in their original plastic.
The purity arms race started here
In 1979 the Royal Canadian Mint did something slightly scandalous by the standards of the day: it struck a bullion coin with no alloy at all. Three nines at launch, four nines by 1982, and the occasional showpiece at five. Every pure-gold coin in this list - the Buffalo, the modern Britannia, the Philharmonic - exists because the Maple Leaf proved buyers would pay for purity itself. The RCM has never let the lead go quietly, adding radial machined lines and a micro-engraved privy leaf that make the modern coin one of the hardest in the world to counterfeit.
The handling problem purity buys
The cost of no alloy is no hardness. Maple Leafs pick up rim nicks and hairlines from treatment an Eagle would never register, and worn examples are the most commonly discounted mainstream coin at buyback counters. Keep them capsuled or in mint tubes and never stack them loose. Bought carefully and kept sealed, the Maple Leaf combines a lower typical premium than the American coins with instant recognition at any counter in North America.
How this size compares
| Fine gold | 31.103 g |
|---|---|
| In troy ounces | 1 ozt |
| In pennyweights | 20 dwt |
| Equal to | 4.25 gold sovereigns |
| Bars per kilo | 32.15 of these make one kilo of gold |
Questions people ask
- How much is a Maple Leaf worth today?
- Its gold content is worth $4,125.39 at the current spot price of $4,125.39 per troy ounce. That is the melt value - it contains 1 troy ounces of fine gold. A dealer will pay under this figure when buying and charge over it when selling. Maple Leafs are as close to pure bullion in coin form as the mainstream market gets.
- How much does a Maple Leaf weigh?
- 31.103 grams gross at 999.9 fineness, which is 31.1 grams of actual gold. The gross weight is what your scale reads; the fine weight is what it is worth.
- Who makes the Maple Leaf and is it legal tender?
- It is struck by the Royal Canadian Mint in Canada, first issued in 1979. It carries a face value of C$50, which is symbolic - the gold in it is worth many times that.
- What are the fine lines radiating across my Maple Leaf?
- Security machining, not damage. The radial lines and the tiny micro-engraved maple leaf (with the year readable under magnification) are anti-counterfeiting features the RCM added to the bullion series. Their absence on a recent-date coin is a warning sign.
- Do scratches lower what a buyer pays for a Maple Leaf?
- On melt value, no - gold is gold. In practice, heavily marked pure-gold coins sometimes get quoted a dollar or two under clean examples because they resell less easily. Capsules cost cents; the habit pays for itself.
- How current is this valuation?
- It is calculated live from the spot price, currently $4,125.39 per troy ounce from swissquote, read at 18:45 UTC. Nothing on this page is a cached daily figure.