Thread: Silver Eagles, are they coins?

Are any of the special commemorative coins issued by the Mint "coins"? Yes, they are. One term for them is "Non Circulating Legal Tender". Are they "collectable"? That is for each person to decide.

For those of us old enough to remember a time before the Mint made bullion coins, we recall the heavy lobbying that occurred to get the Mint to issue bullion, and the sponsors of that legislation were adamant that the coins have legal tender status (a face value).

I see bullion as a means of trade or of storing value/wealth. If it is issued by a government and has legal tender status, especially if it has a face value, then it is a coin in my opinion. There are lots of gray areas, however. Consider the Maria Teresa taler dated 1780 - still minted by Austria, no stated face value and no legal tender status in the issuing country in modern times (as far as I know), but it is condsidered a coin.

Whether or not a coin is "worthy" of collecting is a matter of personal opinion, but the fact remains that Silver Eagles are widely owned as money/investment/wealth, and they are collected.

P.S. - if circulation is the defining criteria of a coin, then do obsolete coins stop being coins when they stop circulating? Are Morgan dollars no longer coins because they no longer circulate?

Originally Posted by CoinOKC

I wonder how the governmental auditors view this situation. When the repositories are audited, do they count the amount of Silver Eagles as individual dollars or do they count them as having a value equal to their current worth on the silver market?

Neither, they count them at the "official" value of silver, do the same thing for gold. And this you are going to find really surprising, the "official" value for silver is something like $1.35 oz. and gold is around $36 oz. if memory serves. Those prices are established by law.

That is how it used to be anyway. They may have changed it when the strategic silver stockpile ran out a few years ago. I'd have to search the US Code to find out. Conder may know for sure.

Ok I think I've got it - here goes,

American Eagle bullion coins are not coins but hunks of bullion created to look like coins, act like coins, and be like coins for one sole purpose, the mints justification under the law, but in our understanding of coins in a more practicable way no bullion coin is really a coin because it will never be traded at anywhere near, or ever at the stated face value. Additionally it was never intended to be traded at the stated face value - Any coin that cannot be traded at face value other than proofs, (which are copies of real business strike coins) cannot legitimately be called coins because they are not used as such and were not intended to be used as such.
This may be a matter of semantics also:
Can a house be a "home" if no one ever lives there? No, it is a house or dwelling but not a home. So it may be finally (I'm sure you'all hope) that to be a coin it must be used as such and useful as such in daily commerce on an ongoing basis and generally understood for this intended purpose recognized as such with out interpretation as such.
Perhaps if we lived a long time ago an American eagles would have been more practicably a coin. We had tokens, specie, dust, fragments, beaver pelts and beads and when you presented something as a form of payment there was room for negotiation and then the chunk of silver could reasonably be expected to be worth more than it's stated value by all parties present. No more though - we have lost the abilities to dicker with merchants. Try going into a modern grocery store and paying with lump of quartz laced with some gold in it and they would run you out of town, or lock you up, or both.
We cannot pay at retail store with anything other than (not including plastic and paper of course) commonly accepted and regularly encountered U.S. coins that are familiar to 9.9999 out of 10 persons.
If it looks like a duck, acts like a duck, sounds like a duck but cannot be shot and eaten like a duck it ain't a duck.
So finally, a U.S. Eagle is not a coin because it cannot regularly be interpreted to be a coin, used as a coin, looked at like a coin, understood to be a coin, it is not a coin!
Ben, yes, I have too much time on my hands Peters

But the specific dollar amount makes it very easy for government to steal the coins if desired and pay only that value and not what the coin is worth. That is exactly what they did in the 1930's.

But in the 30's when they did that the coins WERE only worth the face value. It wasn't until later after most of them had been turned in that they raised the official value of gold and made them worth more than face value.

They (Silver Eagles) Are not monetized, For a coin to be a circulating coin and have value it must be ordered by one of the 12 Fed Banks and payed for before it enters circulation.

I was wondering how long it would be until someone noticed that. The government always maintained that the 1933 double eagles were never "monetized" and were therefore not really coins because they had never been distributed by the Federal Reserve. The gold and silver eagles have never been distributed by the Fed either so they have never been "monetized" either so by the governments own argument they must not be coins.

Of course this begs the question Is it possible to be legal tender without being monitized? The Coinage Act of 1965 makes them legal tender, but are they "monetized"?

And this you are going to find really surprising, the "official" value for silver is something like $1.35 oz. and gold is around $36 oz.

Pretty close, last I knew silver was $1.29, but they may have raised it at some point and I din't notice it. Gold has had an official price of $42.25 since1972.

For those of you that think they are not coins and you call yourself a coin collector, I guess you'll just have to send them to me. I think they are collectible coins.

From the US Mints own website in regards to the ASE....
"Above all, as legal tender, they're the only silver bullion coins whose weight and purity are guaranteed by the United States Government."

In my mind, if they are produced as legal tender then they are infact a coin.

Dave

Originally Posted by Conder101

I was wondering how long it would be until someone noticed that. The government always maintained that the 1933 double eagles were never "monetized" and were therefore not really coins because they had never been distributed by the Federal Reserve. The gold and silver eagles have never been distributed by the Fed either so they have never been "monetized" either so by the governments own argument they must not be coins.

And thus perhaps illegal to own based on that - at least according to the mint's own point of view. Too bad the lawyers in the current case aren't aware of that little fact. It could prove to be a winning argument.

Gang, forget all this technical BS about what makes a coin......ask yourself one question..... if you were to go down to you local corner store could you spend this coin as $1 and the answer is yes..... therefore, it is money and more specifically a coin. Forget the fact that it is bullion, forget the fact that it has an intrinsic value more than whats stamped on the coin. The fact is, you can spend this as $1, therefore it is currency in the form of a coin. If it quacks like a duck and acts like a duck and looks like a duck.... then it must be a coin!

Yes, they are coins; they are legal tender, you can spend them for $1 worth of goods and services if you choose. The fact that almost nobody does, because their intrinsic value exceeds their face value, does not disqualigy them as "coins."

Interestingly enough, I actually was paid with one as if it were a dollar, when I had a paper route (in 1990). Whether the person was just being generous or actually believed the coin to be worth only a dollar, who can say... but as I looked at the coin he insisted "that's one of the new dollars; it's worth one dollar." I didn't argue the point! Was in my collection for quite a long time (I've since sold it for significantly more than a dollar... not much more; since it was circulated I could only get melt value for it.)

Originally Posted by jaceravone

if you were to go down to you local corner store could you spend this coin as $1

Really ? OK, tell ya what I'll do. You take an ASE to a store of your choice and just try to spend it. I'm betting they refuse to take it.

If they do however happen to have a clerk on duty who is sharp enough to recognize the ASE for what it is and takes it - then I'll pay you for it.

If on the other hand though they refuse to take it - no harm no foul. But report back Joe

Originally Posted by GDJMSP

Really ? OK, tell ya what I'll do. You take an ASE to a store of your choice and just try to spend it. I'm betting they refuse to take it.

If they do however happen to have a clerk on duty who is sharp enough to recognize the ASE for what it is and takes it - then I'll pay you for it.

If on the other hand though they refuse to take it - no harm no foul. But report back Joe

Well if they refuse to take a half dollar, Sacagawea dollar, president dollar, etc. because they don't recognize it as a legitmate coin, or they just don't want to take it... does that disqualify them as being legitimate coins? They fact is, those coins are legal tender, and it is legal to use them as circulating coins. Whehter or not people actually use the coins and whether or not people actually accept them is neither here nor there... the fact is, if it's legal tender for its face value, and you can use it to pay for things, it's a coin, period.

According to all applicable laws regarding what is and is not a legal tender coin, I could legally take an ASE and exchange it for $1 worth of goods and services. That is fact, not opinion. (Nothing says the person I try to pay has to accept it, but they'd be a fool not to, since it's intrinsically more valuable than $1, even ignoring numismatic value!). If you want to play semantics about whether or not that makes it a "coin," feel free, but that it's legal tender is unarguable.

Originally Posted by bhp3rd

They (Silver Eagles) Are not monetized, For a coin to be a circulating coin and have value it must be ordered by one of the 12 Fed Banks and payed for before it enters circulation.
Ben Peters

Monetize:
tr.v. mon·e·tized, mon·e·tiz·ing, mon·e·tiz·es 1. To establish as legal tender.
2. To coin (money).

Sec 102 of the coin act of 1965:
All coins and currencies of the United States regardless of when coined or issued, shall be legal tender for all debt, public and private, public charges, taxes, duties and dues.


Draw your own conclusions.......

Not to throw a monkey wrench in all of this, but what about platinum coins. Gold and Silver are in the US Code as being proper metals along with copper and nickel to produce legal tender. No where have I found that Platinum is a valid metal to produce a coin for legal tender?

Dave

The platinum coins are made legal tender by the same law that makes the gold and silver ones legal tender.

Originally Posted by jaceravone

If they're not coins, then WTH have I been doing for the past 22 years!

LOL. Don't feel bad Joe. If you want, you can just eliminate any and all headaches about whether or not they are coins, and just send them to me.

Phoenix