In 1965 the US Mint began producing coins using clad plachets rather than 90% silver plachets because of the price of silver. The 1965, 1966, and 1967 coins were produced with no mint marks to reduce hoarding. How did the lack of mint marks on these coins prevent hoarding?
You see... there you go looking to apply logic to government... some folks never learn. Creating coins of a lesser metal content and producing them by the billions just wouldn't be enough to stave the ravenous appetite of collectors and hoarders... however, the obvious solution is that there's no point in keeping a coin if you don't know for sure which mint location it came out of.
Lets say for a moment that Philadelphia and Denver each minted 10 million dimes in 1964, and there were 1 million collectors that same year. Each collector should want a dime from each mint to complete their sets. Meaning two million dimes of the 20 million production were hoarded. 10% of the total mintage. Whereas when the dimes were "unmintmarked" in 1965, only 1 million were hoarded to complete sets. Only 5% of the total mintage. At least that was the thinking.
Sheesh, instead of saving 10,000,000 coins from two different mints, you could only save 10,000,000 from one mint. Thereby savings yourself, in the case of 1/4 dollars $5,000,000; quarters $$2,500,000, dimes $1,000,000, nickels $500,000 and cents, well that's just pocket change. See, it all makes sense (or is that cents?).
CHECK- M- ALL Very well said, and it's true sometimes the shortest example is the best explanation. BRUCE "THE FRANK GROUP"
For the years 1965, 1966, and 1967 the mint produced 1.6, 1.3, and 2.2 billion dimes respectively for circulation. Hoarding was obviously a concern by the numbers that were minted but I still don't know why they thought these clad coins were going to be so sought after. They don't seem to have been hoarded and leaving the mint mark off shouldn't have changed anything. Does anyone have any information other than a guess?
I would think that producing such quantity was not to protect the clads but rather the supply of the denominations in circulation as a whole. As Gresham's Law would take serious hold once the clads were introduced it would only be a short time until the silver was gone. The number of coins that were about to disappear would have to be replaced quickly.
The truthful reasons have been mentioned already, first and foremost the US Govt. was absolutely convinced that the reason the country was undergoing a coin shortage was because of collectors. Supposedly collectors were removing all the coins from circulation. It really wasn't true, but they really did believe it. That's why the mint mark was deleted - plain and simple. Secondly, the govt was also convinced that because the change from silver to clad was coming and that it had been well publicized that the silver coins would disappear even faster from circulation than they had been. That was true and they did. So they minted multiples of normal mintages to replace the coins that were disappearing. Not because they were afraid the clad coins would be hoarded, but because they knew the silver coins would be.
The SMS halves at least were 40% silver and likely a lot got melted in the 80's silver rush because it seems no one liked them.
Could there also be a change up factor here? Simply a guess as I was not around in 1965! Like when they would change a design, before they started doing it every 5 weeks, wouldn't the last design year and new design year be hoarded?
One factor that the Mint may or may not have taken into consideration was that tons of U.S. Coinage were shipped overseas every month for use in payment of Military and Civilian (Americans working for the U.S. Military) Personnel and to supply the Banking Institutions used by the Military and Civilian Personnel. That quite a lot of these coins, ended up on the local economy for one reason or another which eventually ended up at the main Banking Institutions of the said Country (such as the Dresdner and Bundes Banks in Germany) and then held as bargaining chips against the U.S. Dollar. The scenario above also happened to quite a bit of the U.S. Currency. The Other, Other Frank
Yes, one problem with that though - the designs didn't change in 1965. And if you wish to consider the metal change as the impetus - no one hoarded the '65 coins, they just hoarded the pre '65 coins.
So the Mint felt that removing the mint marks from the coins would stop collectors from collecting coins of that year or they figured each collector would only need one example therefore less coins would be taken out of circulation. I wonder who came up with this logic and whether collectors actually make much of dent in the circulation of coins? I had no idea that we were that much of a burden on the system when all I thought was that we were money makers for them by buying their overpriced poorly struck products. Soooooorrrrrry!
