This has always been in the back of my mind but now I have a forum to play with so... During the graet silver melt, millions upon millions of silver coins were destroyed. This included all silver coins. but roosevelt and mercury dimes come to mind especially as these were considered minor coins at the time. Roosevelt dimes have not appreciated that much since that time but Mercurys have. Has anyone, anywhere done a study on the actual population of either of these series to get an accurate idea of just what values these coins should actually have as opposed to valueing them by their mintage numbers? I would think that if such a study were done that both of these series would have or should have appreciated much more over the years than they have. Does anyone have any thoughts on this. I would love to hear from you and thankyou!
That is something I have always wondered about with all mintage numbers. Is that something that can actually be tracked? It's funny I was just roll searching and came across a wheat that the date had been obliderated and thought, well there is on less for whatever date that was. Same with Buffalo nickels, they almost always have "bad" or no dates.
Yes Merlin, you are right about the Buff's also. I can understand the appreciaition on series like the Standing Liberty 25 cent coins because of their high relief problems and the fact that were very much used for common transactions as were the two series I mentioned. Buffalo nickels definitly fit the mold also. Thanks for reply.
I don't think that's ever going to be possible to figure out how many survived. Remember that an awful lot of "junk" silver was melted around 1980.. bags and bags of silver coins were melted for their silver content, and in the mid 60s the government was doing the same. That being said, there's no real shortage of Mercury or Roosevelt dimes.
It is extremely difficult to even guess if there are any dates that were affected more by these silver melts. Morgans are more easily estimated by the number being submitted to TPG's, but even then it usually only estimates the rarity of top end uncirculated dates.
