I know that the US Mint melts old coins. Do they keep records of the dates (if readable) that are melted as to let the public know how many of each year is still in circulation?
Yes, the mint has hundreds of employees reading dates and mint marks before sending the coins into the melter.
I don't think the mint ever melted coins. Dealers send bulk silver coins to smelters and not the mint.
I think he was joking. As far as I know there are no such records. It would be too expensive to do so.
I was joking. However, the US mint does remove and melt worn coins from circulation. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/31/5120.html
Don't have any info on current coins but in "Getting Your Two Cents Worth" by Kevin Flynn, on page 12 he reports the number of Business Strike and Proof 2 cent pieces that were melted each year. Not the year of the coin, just what year the coins were melted. Year Number Melted 1871 3,073,329 1872 3,483,433 1873 1,689,140 1874 1,674,201 1875 1,059,218 1876 1,269,340 1877 1,134,469 1878 1,921,931 1879 1,890,313 1880 281,220 1881 81,347 Total 17,557,941 The author cites the Record of Minor Coins Redeemed 1871-83 from the National Archives. So, yes someone did at one time keep track of the number of pieces melted, but not by year or mint mark.
Who is responsible for removing the coins? I don't think it is the mint. Maybe the Federal Reserve? Does anyone have experience with this? I know I have a couple mutilated coins that I took to my bank to have replaced and they said they don't do that. Some were smashed and one had a bullet hole from being used for target practise. They won't fit into rolls so the bank suggested I just go ahead and use them to pass them on. If the banks don't remove coins then who does?
Just like currency, banks are supposed to pass the defective pieces to the Federal Reserve, who deal with the Mint. My best advice is to find a better bank.
Most people would be surprised just how few coins are melted by the issuer. This is especially true in this country. Back in the days they were silver it wasn't so costly to melt them and when they were worn or damaged they were destroyed and recoined. Of course they didn't keep records of the dates but generally the dates can be deduced from when they were melted. For instance there was some melting of subsidiary silver coin in the 1940's and '50's. It's likely these were largely heavily worn barber coins skewed strongly to the earlier dates. If you know what's in circulation it's not tough to figure what gets the axe. Most mints do keep careful records of what they make and what they melt. As a rule of thumb it's been only in modern times that issuers have melted vast numbers of coins and these are almost always base metal coins. Usually it's caused by a change in the monetary system or steep inflation. Mints wouldn't even bother to recall silver coin since people wouldn't turn in good silver anyway. Now days the mint hates melting clad but accepts it in any quantity by weight. They pay about 96c per dollar on delivery in New York which is why they hate it; it's expensive for clad junk, especially damaged clad junk. Most of what they actually get comes in by truckload from municiple incinerators and large counting houses. This is a tiny fraction of production however. An awful lot of defective coins just get thrown in the garbage and somebody is out a quarter.
The Mint melted silver coins by the millions after the reduction in weight during the 1850s. The Mint melted copper coins (Half Cents, Large Cents, Small Cents, Two Cents) by the millions in the 1870s. The Mint melted Silver Dollars by the hundreds of millions under the Pittman Act beginning in 1918.
But in most cases the coins had been demonetized or the change in the monetary system had pretty much wiped out the face value of the coins. So they didn't have to worry about the resulting metal being worth less than the coins. Unlike most countries, all our coins are still legal tender at their full face value and until recently melting down of the base metal coins would have resulted in a loss with the metal being worth less than the face value of the coins. But this was profitable since they could make more coins from the silver than the number of pieces melted. For the most part this was also profitible since the copper from one large cent would make three small bronze cents. And that was mostly politics.
