Metal Detected US Silver Coin Finds - Updated Current Silver Melt Values

Hello everyone,
Today I updated my Excel spreadsheet information to reflect the current silver melt value. It's way more of course than when I started the list back on December 9th, 2024.
More finds and the rising value of silver has made my hoard very valuable

Here is a screenshot of my finds.
And line number 16 went from 9 to 8. I somehow misplaced one of the coins


@Spark1951 - Here is the latest info on all of my silver coins.

 

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Very good article which has some relevance to today. I suspect some of you know some of the people quoted in the article.

MELTS OF SILVER COINS HAVE AFFECTED COLLECTORS, The New York Times July 28, 1985

The value of a coin is normally based on how many were made. In years to come, however, the value of silver United States coins may hinge on how many were lost. Millions of coins have been melted for recapture of their metal and the impact on coin collecting is likely to be enormous.

Most of the melting took place in 1979 and 1980, when silver bullion soared to an all-time high of $50 an ounce. At that point, common-date silver coins were worth far more as metal than as money or collectibles. Even scarcer items could be melted at a profit.

The value of silver has plummeted since then. In recent weeks, it has hovered between $6 and $7 an ounce and the melts have been reduced to a virtual standstill. Nonetheless, the shape of the coin market has been changed dramatically by the earlier melts. The future course of the hobby - for better or worse - has been altered permanently.

A number of observers fear that the change has been for the worse. They outlined their concerns in recent interviews.

''Those coin melts probably hurt us more than we'll ever know,'' said Leon E. Hendrickson, proprietor of Silver Towne in Winchester, Ind., one of the nation's largest coin dealerships. ''They destroyed a lot of our 'seed coins' - the coins that got people started - and put a lot of collectors out of business.

''Unfortunately, you can't do things over,'' he added. ''It's sort of like Humpty Dumpty. After he had his great fall, all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put him back together again. And that's the way it is with the coin market, too, I'm afraid.''

Mr. Hendrickson himself was deeply involved in the silver melts. He bought huge quantities of silver coins from customers and sold them, in turn, to refiners. He estimated that during 1979 and 1980, Silver Towne processed ''thousands of bags'' of silver coins destined for refiners' melting pots.

''I was part of it,'' he said, ''so I can't point the finger at anybody else. I was just as guilty as anybody else. But that was the way everybody operated then; that was just the way coin dealers had to do business.''

Joel Coen, a New York coin dealer who also played an important part in the melts, agreed that they ''hurt the hobby.'' He believes they became inevitable, once the United States government removed the silver content from coins. That, he said, was what hurt numismatics most of all.

''The real damage,'' Mr. Coen said, ''was done 20 years ago, when the clad coins came along and people started pulling the silver coins out of circulation. I turned to my partner at that time and said, 'Do you realize that this is going to destroy not only the present generation of collectors, but future generations, as well?'

''That sounded the death knell for this business. From then on, no kid could look through his father or mother's change and form the nucleus of a coin collection, like I did when I was a kid. It's axiomatic that obsolescence eliminates accumulation. People need something out there - something that's available - to grab and hold their interest. And we're missing that today in numismatics.''

Mr. Coen estimates that of all the silver coins produced by the United States Mint, only about one-fourth have escaped the melting pots. He calculates that he alone sold refiners $400 million worth of fabricated silver, mostly common silver coins, during the one-year period from July 1, 1979 to June 30, 1980.

''I remember one day melting 100 bags of 1963 Franklin halves,'' Mr. Coen related. ''And, looking back, I'm glad I did. The most they bring today is maybe 6 bucks apiece, and I guess at that point I must have gotten 13 or 14 dollars each for them as dead items.''

Although 1980 marked the peak of the great silver melts, it was really the culmination of a process that began more than 10 years earlier. Silver coins had been melted - surreptitiously at first and later more openly - since the 1960's. From a hobby standpoint, the loss of these coins took part in two distinct stages: First, their withdrawal from circulation in the mid-1960's. Second, the melting itself. The melts made the losses permanent, but the physical withdrawal already had caused the hobby grievous harm.

There is no way of determining the number of coins or their dates that have been melted. Dealers and refiners have had neither the time nor the inclination to keep detailed records. For obvious reasons, late-date coins with high mintages have accounted for most of the losses. Key and semikey coins with significant value as collector's items seldom are melted except by mistake.

Jim Carr, a prominent dealer in Pelham, N.H., pointed out that this has resulted in a total rearrangement of relative rarity levels in every modern series of silver U.S. coins.

''Essentially,'' he observed, ''the key coins now are common, since they're the ones that were saved and the formerly common coins are now rare, since most of them were melted.

''Take Roosevelt dimes, for example. The 1949-S and the 1955-P, D and S are probably the commonest coins in the series today in circulated condition, whereas before the melts they were the scarcest. Being worth a premium, they were saved. In circulated condition, the new key may be the 1946-D or something like that.''

Silver dollars have weathered the melts to a far greater extent than smaller silver coins. This may be due to public perception. Not having seen the large silver coins for decades in circulation, many people view them as scarcer and more valuable than half dollars, quarters and dimes even though the opposite often may be true numismatically.

Whatever the explanation, their higher survival rate has made silver dollars more attractive and more useful to coin-market promoters in the five years since the melts subsided. This, in turn, has reinforced their traditional popularity and helped sustain their reign as ''king of the hill'' in the current marketplace.

Luis Vigdor, vice president and head of the numismatic department at Manfra, Tordella & Brookes Inc. in New York, maintains that up to now, most hobbyists haven't yet grasped the significance of the melts. The reason for this, he said, is that sluggish market conditions have served to delay the impact.

''You have to remember,'' he said, ''that since the time of the melts, the market has been relatively dull. We've gone through a cycle of stagnation, and there hasn't been much pressure on the small remaining supplies of silver coins. Once we have a resurgence of interest, the situation will become much more obvious. Then, in my opinion, you'll see these particular coins go up substantially.''

Harry J. Forman, a well-known Philadelphia coin dealer who has written several books on coin investment, doubts whether market analysts will ever really know just how many silver coins remain and how they break down by date and mint mark. For that reason, he said, future buyers and sellers may never again enjoy the security once provided by meaningful mintage figures.

''There's no way we could ever tell,'' he said. ''The only way would be to take a census and what guarantee do we have that any such census would be correct. Many people won't answer questions regarding their collections or their inventories. They like confidentiality, and I don't think you'd get them to cooperate.''

Mr. Carr believes that in time, the general outlines will be clear. He cautioned, however, that ''it's going to take a lot of real research'' to come up with even close approximations.

Mr. Carr agrees with Messrs. Hendrickson and Coen that the silver melts have been extremely detrimental for the hobby. But, he said, they could have been even worse. If the melts had continued unabated, he said, the stock of silver coins could have been all but wiped out. ''When silver hit $50 an ounce, I would say that 98 percent of the silver coins in existence were committed to smelting houses,'' Mr. Carr said. ''If the price had been maintained, most everything would have been lost.

''Fortunately,'' he added, ''the refiners had a two-to three-month backlog. As silver dropped in value they withdrew a lot of the coins. Even so, it's scary just thinking of what might have happened.''