Please Explain The Theory Behind Melting Silver Coins

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Well yeah, the refiners do. And, like was mention before, there is a market for bars, regardles of the fact that IMO, they'd be better off buying silver coins.

 

u know i really wish i would get half a mill so we would go on one more trip one last time. that should be real fun sigh the good old days

 

Well a dealer can pay $10,000.00 dollars for junk silver coins and sell them for scrap @ $12,500.00 tomorrow so he can buy $12,500.00 more in junk silver and so on and so on. Put the junk in inventory and he'll spend months trying to sell them.

 

Still waiting for a response to this theory. I contend one could off the junk silver on eBay or a similar site and have the money within a week or less from time of listing. Still need to know what the turn around is when selling to a refiner. And if it's faster, is it worth it.

 

I know market price is the same, but I see differences on my scale between BU and slick halves and the like. Maybe not between BU and XF I have never checked. I know a lot of the metal flows when worn, but some of it is lost. Remember, you have to clean a slick before you can measure the weight, since worn coins can accumulate dirt and grime, and that doesn't help the silver value but would throw your weight comparison off. I had never thought to check until a conversation with a local dealer in the 80's told me about the difference, and how the smelters would pay him differently based upon no/moderate wear and severe wear, (worn old WL, SL no dates, damaged barbers etc).

 

OK, if you think its negligible. I was just repeating what I was told from a guy who started dealing in the 40's and my own experience. The 1% plus or minus would work both ways, meaning that on average, (law of large numbers), it should net to the legal weight, and so should the slicks minus their silver loss. In my experience a slick can be more than 1% off from a BU coin in weight after cleaning. That means a $1000 face bag of slicks has 1%, or about 7.3 ounces less recoverable silver. I believe the coin I measured was a slick barber half versus a bu one. You are correct that maybe I didn't account for mint weight variations in that comparison.

You were correct earlier that the largest determination is dealer profit margin, I just wanted to add I thought this was a factor as well.

btw even your comparison above, with just a VF coin, in a bag of 1000 of them like that has over $300 less gold than standard.

Edit: Sorry, it is more like $100. My point is still that with large quantities of precious metal a 1% difference will not go unnoticed.

 

Pre-1965 US business coins for circulation contain only 90% silver and 10% copper. It takes chemicals to burn off the copper and lots of natural gas which has doubled in price in the last few years.

"Melt" is used nation wide as an acronym for buying gold and silver and while scrap gold is melted buy the ton, silver coins are now very rarely melted. Back in 1979, that was a different story, the Hunt brothers melted 100,000 oz. of silver coins at a time.

 

IMO the dealers who melt US .900 coins are buffons. They're destroying numismatics and their longterm livelihood.
I don't have many silver sprculators coming in for US coins but I pay close to spot for them, and I know a dealer who has sprculators and sells dozens of $1000 face bags weekly. So every week I dump on him. I make face value as the difference usually. I retain the Morgans and peace but nickels, dimes, quarters halves, go into his investment bags and that's the way it should be. The silver keeps circulating, and more people get to enjoy the silver coinage. Plus you never know what you may find.

 

Exactly!

 

I know a coin can be worn and still have darn close to the same weight as an uncirculated one. I know this isn't scientific, but when I filled quarter tubes with AG silver quarters, it took about 4 extra quarters (44 of them) to fill the tube as full as the BU's filled it. Of course it's not that bad because the worn rims are pretty thin. Anyone every weigh a roll of BU's and AG's to see how many extra AG's it takes to equal the same weight?

 

Good to hear! Is silver melting down due to the chemical hazards or gas prices or market demand for coins or....?

 

Wow, that eagle is a rare qrade, I bet it's the only one worn that much!