Learn — Coin Basics, Told Properly

JarSort

Learn

Coin basics, told properly.

Short guides for people who inherited a jar of coins and a pile of questions. Every guide is built the same way: the standard first (the table, the numbers), then the story (where the odd rule came from), then what it means for your jar. Read them, or listen — every guide is also recorded in the same two voices.

Illustration: a digital scale with a large silver coin on its pan and a stack of coins beside it

Guide 2 · Read or listen · 3 min 21 sec

Reading a scale for coins: the five-gram nickel that checks your scale

What coins should weigh in grams, what g, ozt and dwt on your scale actually mean — and the pocket-change calibration check that tells you whether the scale is lying.

Illustration: a vintage brass balance scale weighing silver coins against brass weights

Guide 1 · Read or listen · 5 min 26 sec

Troy ounce vs. regular ounce: why your silver coin “weighs wrong”

One ounce is not one ounce. The heavier ounce, the lighter pound, an 800-year-old French fair — and the kitchen-scale trap that makes good coins look fake.

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Coming next

The silver edge test — sixty seconds, no tools: the stripe that tells silver from clad.
Never clean a coin — the kindest-looking way to cut a coin’s value in half.
Mint marks — the tiny letter that can multiply a coin’s price.

A new guide ships with each site update, and the topics come from real questions coin owners ask — including the ones asked in the JarSort threads on Reddit.

Or skip straight to your coins: sort your first coin — free.