We all know that coins lose weight in circulation. A circulated Morgan can lose about half gram. Now consider all the billions of coins were minted and multiply by say 0.2 gram lost weight for each coin. That's millions of ounces of silver and other metals....gone. But wait...there's no such thing as gone. Matter either preserves or transforms, but no atom is lost (well, some are, but let's not get that deep into physics). Take just 500 million Morgans, say lost 0.2 grams each. That's about 3 million ounces gone. Where did it go?
And an awful lot of those 500 million Morgans didn't circulate or were melted why there's so many ms Morgans
Not a very good example! Approximately 270 million were melted under the Pittman Act and the bullion was sent to England for distribution in India. There was at least one other instance of a "meltdown" if I recall correctly, so by the time the Treasury Department got around to releasing Morgan dollars in the mid-20th century, there were only 180 million or so left. Chris NOTE: Someone please correct my numbers if I'm off a bit. I'm trying to recite them from memory, but you know how that goes.
A not so old discovery... "Researchers had disagreed over whether gold particles seen in eucalyptus leaves were merely wind-blown or truly represented ore traces transported by roots." http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...old-eucalyptus-leaves-mining-geology-science/
See also "sweating coins". If you gather all that dust in one place at one time, it's a lot. If you spread it around over decades, across counters, cash drawers, shop floors, sidewalks, roads... it goes unnoticed.
You're a bit off. At the time of the Pitman melting they had coined somewhere around 530 million morgans. They melted about 270 million, but then in 1921 coined 86 million more 1921's, so about 346 million Morgans were left.
Whose to REALLY know how many Morgans are left? How would one determine accountability since the great meltdowns? I doub't much that any are left in Federal Reserve Vaults. Probably the only surviving Morgans are now in the hands of Coin dealers and private collectors. Dave
I would imagine that more than a few Morgans have been melted since 1980, and probably still are although to a lesser extent.
I have read that in historical times when gold coins would circulate that there were people who would polish them with an abrasive cloth and then burn the cloth to recover the gold they rubbed off.
The OP isn't talking about melting coins down, but where this "rubbed" silver goes. IMO, most of the silver rubbed on skin and inside people's clothing. So most is probably in the dump, down the drain, and 6 feet under.
Its pretty much everywhere, but in such small quantities that recovery is not feasible. I did read a story about someone "mining" for gold and diamonds in the diamond district of New York and making an average recovery of something like $70 a day. Just by hunting on the streets there.
Beautiful example! But then, we can see traces of that rubber on the road surfaces. Right? I used to race in SCCS Solo 2 National Events where, between rounds, competitors could walk the course to try and remember it (drivers are NEVER allowed to pre-drive a course), and you literally had to scrape the tire rubber off of your shoes! As for the silver, a lot got worn off from handling but I would guess that a lot more got worn off in slot machines. in minute amounts. Certainly not like the "Paint Your Wagon" days where gold dust fell between the cracks of the saloon floor.
Conder, Once again, I was not as explicit as I should have been. My reference to the "mid-20th century" was intended to refer to the availability in the 60's and later. There was another melt of 52 million in 1943 & 1944 for the war effort as well as some 10 million damaged and mutilated coins that were melted from 1945 to the early 60's. According to Leroy Van Allen in the VAM Book, as of 1960, there were 174,314,287 held in the Treasury and 8,376,508 held in Reserve Banks. Chris