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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;GDJMSP, post: 1258137, member: 112&quot;]Fair enough, I stand corrected in regard to the beginning of the bullion fund. But during this time period the US was doing far more to procure the bullion deposits for the mint than just sitting around and waiting for them to come in.</p><p><br /></p><p>Example - in 1801 the US purchased 25 tons of copper planchets from Mathew Boulton in England specifically for the US Mint. </p><p><br /></p><p>The money to do that came from some place, and it wasn&#039;t from people bringing in deposits to the mint. It came in the form of loans, from other nations and the banks in other nations. And those foreign banks and governments gave the bullion, or the money to purchase bullion, to the Bank of the United States which in turn deposited the bullion with the US Mint for the purpose of producing coinage.</p><p><br /></p><p>In 1802 all foreign gold and silver coins ceased to be legal tender in the USA for three years.</p><p><br /></p><p>In Aug. 1803 Mint Director Elias Boudinot suspended coinage of dollars due to their main use in export profiteering. By Dec. of the same year the coinage of silver dollars resumed.</p><p><br /></p><p>Then inn March of 1804, President Thomas Jefferson suspended coinage of silver dollars, to stop the practice of profiteers exporting them to the West Indies, exchanging them for Spanish dollars, and then importing the Spanish dollars for recoinage at the Philadelphia Mint. </p><p><br /></p><p>Also, as early as May 1804 the first American mined gold was deposited at the Philadelphia Mint for coinage.</p><p><br /></p><p>In May of 1806 Secretary of State James Madison instructed U.S. Mint Director Robert Patterson to cease coinage of silver coins larger than the half dollar due to exportation of silver dollars by the Bank of the United States.</p><p><br /></p><p>And it was during this period that numerous bills were introduced in Congress, and even passed by the House, to abolish the US Mint and allow the Bank of the United States to mint coinage. This went on for several years but in the end the bills were always defeated. Of course all of this was caused by the profiteering possible because of the rates of exchange. The laws regarding the value of foreign silver and gold coins were constantly being changed. And it was not until 1828 that the battle to abolish the US Mint came to an end.</p><p><br /></p><p>I guess what I&#039;m trying to say is this. It&#039;s not that there was a shortage of silver and gold being made available to the mint for coinage during this time. Rather there was an abundance of it because of the profiteering motive. People were falling all over themselves trying to deposit silver with the mint.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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