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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;cladking, post: 639596, member: 68&quot;]Most people would be surprised just how few coins are melted by the issuer.&nbsp; This is especially true in this country.&nbsp; Back in the days they were silver it wasn&#039;t so costly to melt them and when they were worn or damaged they were destroyed and recoined. Of course they didn&#039;t keep records of the dates but generally the dates can be deduced from when they were melted.&nbsp; For instance there was some melting of subsidiary silver coin in the 1940&#039;s and &#039;50&#039;s.&nbsp; It&#039;s likely these were largely heavily worn barber coins skewed strongly to the earlier dates.&nbsp; If you know what&#039;s in circulation it&#039;s not tough to figure what gets the axe.&nbsp; Most mints do keep careful records of what they make and what they melt.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>As a rule of thumb it&#039;s been only in modern times that issuers have melted vast numbers of coins and these are almost always base metal coins.&nbsp; Usually it&#039;s caused by a change in the monetary system or steep inflation.&nbsp; Mints wouldn&#039;t even bother to recall silver coin since people wouldn&#039;t turn in good silver anyway. </p><p><br /></p><p>Now days the mint hates melting clad but accepts it in any quantity by weight.&nbsp; They pay about 96c per dollar on delivery in New York which is why they hate it; it&#039;s expensive for clad junk, especially damaged clad junk.&nbsp; Most of what they actually get comes in by truckload from municiple incinerators and large counting houses.&nbsp; This is a tiny fraction of production however.&nbsp; An awful lot of defective coins just get thrown in the garbage and somebody is out a quarter.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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