Hi, I have heard that much of the junk silver had been melted down. Do you think that the values of these coins may prove higher due to this melt? If so, what catagories do you think were most affected, dollars, halfs, quarters, dimes. Thanks for your comments.
The melting took place many years ago and it still has yet to have much of an impact on the prices of common date, circulated 90% silver coinage. The price of the stuff continues to be tied to the spot price of silver. However, having said that, people do seem to be willing to pay a slight premium these days for the older coins (ie Barbers, walking Liberty, Standing Liberty, etc.) over the more recent issues (ie Kennedy halves, Roosevelt dimes, etc.) than they were say 20 years ago. When I was a kid back in the early 80s a well worn Barber half sold for the same price as a shiny 1964 Kennedy half. Not any more.
Whatever amount of Morgans still in the storage vaults when the Mint ended the release in 1964, are rumored to have been melted.
Better make that 1980 - the date of the last GSA sale. And at that sale the last of the Morgans in the vaults were sold, none were left to be melted.
I was talking about the 1000-coin bags that had been in storage since the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th.
I don't remember seeing any mention of massive silver melting in the mint reports of '64 and '65 but it's not impossible. There was massive melting again in '68 and '69 when the FED started removing the silver from circulation. They recovered about 20% of what had been in circulation in 1964. Then the melt of '79/ '80 got about 20% of what remained. They started melting again a couple years ago but it's difficult to tell how extensive this is. The refinerys are advertising for business so there must not be the kind of backlog there was in the past. One senses that a lot of the 300 million ounces targeted for the ETF's might be refined coin so the current melting might not be insignificant. It's really not US coins that concern me since rare coins won't be melted And collectors will continue to hold millions of the types of coins that are being melted. I'm worried about almost everything else. In many cases most of the surviving mintage of some world coins is in the US and prices are low as well as demand. The Spanish 100P of the '60's for example was melted by the Spanish government but few people collect such coins. This means that they won't sell and are likely to end up in a refinery. if this situation lasts for very long there are quite a few such coiins that could be nearly wiped out. Then there are tokens and medals. The demand for these tends to be exceedingly weak now days and this goes many times over for the more modern ones. Something like a mardi gras doubloon in silver just won't attract a buyer willing to pay a premium despite mintages that tend to be under a dozen and a high attrition as well as beautiful designs and execution. There are lots of 20th century coins, tokens, and medals that will be almost unavailable at any price in the future. Most will be base metal but many will be silver and gold as well.
I still don't think as much silver coinage has been melted as people think. It's true, a lot of it trades as melt, but in reality most of it just keeps trading hands as melt without actually being melted at all. I bet if we took a poll here, less than 1% of us have actually taken our junk silver to a refiner and had it reduced to bar form. We just sell it to others who do the same, keep selling it. Guy~
Well I don't think it was a massive melt of stored Morgans in the 60s, but when the Mint stopped releasing Morgans in 64, there are some of the remaining dollars rumored to have been melted.
That is very possible since hundreds of millions of dollars were melted under the Pitman Act of 1918. I know that they had to make new hubs and dies for restriking Morgans that year because the old, original dies had been destroyed in 1910.
