What weight of silver coin is best for a wedding gift?

For an Indian wedding gift, the 50g 999 silver coin is the standard weight. It costs ₹6,000–₹8,500 depending on finish, sits in a velvet pouch, and reads as a substantial-but-proportionate gift across most family registers. For closer relatives (siblings, first cousins), a 100g coin is the next tier up. For wider circle (colleagues, distant family), 20g is appropriate.

What is the right silver coin for Dhanteras?

Dhanteras coins are typically 10g, 20g, or 50g, in 999 silver, with Lakshmi-Ganesh on the obverse and a lotus mandala or the buyer's family name on the reverse. The 20g is the most-bought weight in NCR — affordable enough to buy fresh every year, substantial enough to add to the puja-shelf collection. The 50g is the heirloom-grade Dhanteras coin, bought for the first home or for a milestone year.

Should the silver coin be 999 or 925?

For coins, 999 is the right grade. Coins are not handled daily — they live in the puja shelf or the locker — so the structural disadvantage of 999 (it is softer than 925) does not apply. The cultural and melt-value advantages of 999 do: it holds the day's spot rate cleanly, it carries the full hallmark, and it reads as pure silver to the recipient who inherits it forty years later.

Can I customise the reverse of a silver coin?

Yes. The standard reverse is a lotus mandala, but most studios will engrave a custom motif at no extra cost on 50g+ coins — typically the family name in Devanagari or Roman script, a wedding date, the recipient's initials, or a small family crest. Custom dies for repeat orders are amortised across the coin run; one-off engraving is hand-cut and adds 3–5 days to delivery.

Where is the BIS hallmark on a silver coin?

On standard hand-pressed coins, the BIS hallmark row (lotus logo, fineness, assayer mark, year) is stamped on the rim. On larger cast coins (100g+), the hallmark sits on the underside, alongside the studio's identifying mark. Every coin ships with a paper hallmark certificate that cross-references the rim or underside stamp. If the certificate and the stamp don't match, the piece is not legitimately hallmarked.

Issue 16 · Summer 2026Series · Buying Silver

NThe Journal

Buying6 minute read · 1,640 words

सिक्का · On silver coins

The silver coin, decoded.

Twenty-gram, fifty-gram, hundred-gram. Lakshmi-Ganesh on the obverse, the family name in script on the reverse. A buyer's guide to the silver coin that has anchored Indian gifting for four centuries.

Paridhi Negi · Founder16 May 2026

Editorial · three silver coins · 20g 50g 100g · Lakshmi-Ganesh obverse · raking light on brass tray

01 · Three weights, three uses

How NCR families pick a coin weight.

Silver coins in India come in three working weights. Twenty grams. Fifty grams. One hundred grams. There are smaller coins (5g, 10g) and larger ones (200g+), but the vast majority of the gifting cycle clusters around these three weights, and most NCR families learn the differences early.

The 20g coin is the everyday Dhanteras coin and the small-relative gift weight. It costs around ₹2,400 in 999 silver, fits comfortably in a velvet pouch, and is the right register for a junior cousin's wedding, a colleague's house-warming, or the family's annual Dhanteras buy. Most households accumulate a small pile of 20g coins over the decades — one or two added every Diwali.

The 50g coin is the wedding-gift standard. It costs ₹6,000–₹8,500, reads as substantial without being heirloom-scale, and is the most-bought silver coin weight in our studio. It sits well in the puja shelf, holds engraving cleanly (family name in Devanagari script around the rim, monogram on the reverse), and is the weight a maternal uncle would typically gift at a niece's wedding.

The 100g coin is the milestone weight. It costs ₹11,400–₹14,500, is the right register for a silver-jubilee gift, a first-grandchild commemoration, or a once-in-a-decade Dhanteras for the head of the family. The 100g coin is also the weight at which investment-grade considerations begin to matter — it holds melt value with high fidelity, and ten of them in the locker is a meaningful silver position.

20gEveryday Dhanteras · ₹2,400 · cousin or colleague gift
50gWedding standard · ₹6,000–₹8,500 · maternal uncle to niece
100gMilestone weight · ₹11,400–₹14,500 · silver jubilee, grandchild
200g+Heirloom · numbered cast · ₹23,000+ · once-in-a-decade

02 · The stamp

Lakshmi-Ganesh on the obverse, family on the reverse.

The canonical silver coin stamp in India is Lakshmi-Ganesh on the obverse — the goddess of prosperity on the left, the elephant-headed god of beginnings on the right, both seated on lotus pedestals. This pairing has been the standard for Diwali and Dhanteras coins for at least four centuries; the Mughal-era silver rupee carried the same iconography in some Hindu kingdoms.

The reverse is where families personalise. The default reverse is a lotus mandala — eight petals around a central seed, the visual shorthand for purity and abundance. But most 50g+ coins are commissioned with a custom reverse: the family surname in Devanagari script around the rim, the household monogram in the centre, sometimes the wedding date or the year of commissioning.

We engrave the reverse by hand on every 50g+ coin we make. The digital proof is shared with the customer before the engraver starts. Letters in Devanagari take roughly twice as long to cut as Roman script because of the matras, but the result reads as belonging to the family in a way that printed text never quite does.

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Most households accumulate a small pile of 20g coins over the decades — one or two added every Diwali. By the third generation it is a fortune.

See the coins · Dhanteras collection

Lakshmi-Ganesh coins in 20g, 50g, and 100g — engraved on the reverse with your family name.

Each coin BIS-hallmarked 999 silver, weight slip in the velvet pouch, certificate signed by the assayer.

See Dhanteras collection→

03 · The family-inscription tradition

Why coins are engraved with the family name.

The family inscription on a silver coin is a North Indian habit that consolidated in the 19th century, when zamindar households began commissioning numbered coin runs for their children's weddings. The inscription was practical (the silver could be traced back to the issuing family if the coin was lost or stolen) and symbolic (the household's name was now on something that would outlast the household by generations).

The tradition continues. We engrave roughly two-thirds of the 50g+ coins we make with a family inscription. The most common pattern is the surname in Devanagari around the rim, with the year of commissioning in numerals at the six-o'clock position. Some families add a small motif — a tulsi leaf, a peacock, the family's kuldevi symbol — at the four-o'clock and eight-o'clock positions.

A few families ask us to engrave a Sanskrit shloka instead. The Lakshmi Ashtottara opening line, the Ganesha bija mantra, or a short verse from the Bhagavad Gita are the most common choices. The engraver charges by the number of characters; a short shloka of 18–24 characters adds roughly ₹600 to the coin's making charges.

04 · What to ask before you buy

Six questions for the studio counter.

If you have not bought silver coins before, six questions are worth asking at the counter before you commit. The honest studio answers all six without hesitation; the opaque studio gets evasive on at least two.

(1) What is the weight, on the studio's jeweller's scale, in front of me? The weight should be verified at point-of-sale on a 0.01g scale. The scale should be calibrated and certified.

(2) What is today's IBJA spot rate for 999 silver, and how is the metal-value line calculated on the bill? The honest bill quotes the IBJA rate and shows the metal-value line as weight × rate.

(3) What are the making charges for this coin, and what do they cover? Making should be itemised — die preparation, press operation, engraving, finishing — not bundled into a single percentage.

(4) Where is the BIS hallmark stamped, and what does the hallmark certificate cite? The four-mark row (BIS logo, fineness, assayer mark, year) should be visible on the rim or underside. The certificate should match.

(5) How long is this quote locked for? A reputable studio locks the customer's quoted rate for 14 days from quote date. Anything shorter is unusual.

(6) What is the return / exchange policy on hallmarked coins? Most studios accept unworn, uncirculated coins within 30 days against new orders, valued at the current spot rate. Outright cash returns are rare on bullion-style products.

End of piece

1,640 words · 6 minutes

Author

Paridhi Negi

Founder, Nazarana Silver. Trained in product design at NID. Writes a few times a year — on silver, ceremony, and the difference between a souvenir and a gift.