How much is a Half-ounce Eagle worth?
Specification
| Gross weight | 16.966 g |
|---|---|
| Fineness | 916.7 (91.67%) |
| Fine gold content | 15.553 g |
| Fine gold, troy oz | 0.5 |
| Diameter | 27 mm |
| Mint | United States Mint |
| Country | United States |
| Face value | $25 |
| First issued | 1986 |
About this coin
Half the gold of a full Eagle at rather more than half the premium. Fractional coins cost the mint almost as much to strike as full ounces, and that fixed cost is why the percentage you pay over spot rises as the coin gets smaller.
The middle child nobody stocks
Walk into a coin shop and ask for a one-ounce Eagle and they will reach under the glass. Ask for a half-ounce and, more often than not, they will offer to order one. The half is consistently the lowest-mintage size in the Eagle family - most years the Mint strikes fewer halves than any other denomination - because it sits in an awkward spot: too expensive to be the casual gift the tenth-ounce is, not the round number the full ounce is.
That scarcity occasionally makes specific dates collectible, but do not confuse rarity in the shop with value on the scale. A common-date half trades on its 15.55 grams of gold, and the melt figure on this page is the honest centre of any quote you should hear.
When the half makes sense
The premium over melt usually lands between the full ounce (cheapest per gram) and the small fractionals (most expensive per gram). If your goal is the most gold per dollar, buy ounces. The half earns its place when you want the Eagle name and its instant resale, but in pieces small enough to sell one at a time rather than all at once - dividing a holding without paying tenth-ounce premiums for the privilege.
How this size compares
| Fine gold | 15.552 g |
|---|---|
| In troy ounces | 0.5 ozt |
| In pennyweights | 10 dwt |
| Equal to | 2.12 gold sovereigns |
| Bars per kilo | 64.3 of these make one kilo of gold |
Questions people ask
- How much is a Half-ounce Eagle worth today?
- Its gold content is worth $2,062.70 at the current spot price of $4,125.39 per troy ounce. That is the melt value - it contains 0.5 troy ounces of fine gold. A dealer will pay under this figure when buying and charge over it when selling. Half-ounce Eagles are the family's scarce size, but scarcity here is about stock, not value.
- How much does a Half-ounce Eagle weigh?
- 16.966 grams gross at 916.7 fineness, which is 15.553 grams of actual gold. The gross weight is what your scale reads; the fine weight is what it is worth. Multiplying the gross weight by the spot price would overstate this coin by about 9.1%.
- Who makes the Half-ounce Eagle and is it legal tender?
- It is struck by the United States Mint in United States, first issued in 1986. It carries a face value of $25, which is symbolic - the gold in it is worth many times that.
- Why is the half-ounce Eagle so hard to find in stock?
- Because dealers order what sells fastest, and the half sells slowest of the four sizes. The US Mint regularly strikes fewer half-ounce coins than any other Eagle denomination. It is a stocking gap, not a value signal - common dates still trade on melt plus an ordinary premium.
- Is the $25 on the coin worth anything?
- It is genuine legal tender, so technically yes - and using it that way would be the worst transaction available to you, spending hundreds of dollars of gold as twenty-five. The face value exists to make it a coin in law rather than a medallion, which affects how it is taxed and imported in some countries.
- 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.