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Message:: [QUOTE="Nutfarm, post: 920183, member: 24649"]Silver Melt Data Henry Merton authored a book (The Big Silver melt) on the silver melts of the 1960's.  He provides very good data on what was melted during those years.  He claims that about 1.24 million ounces of US coins were melted between 1966 and 1969.  That's about 65% of every silver coin minted between 1916 and 1964. I have been researching and collecting data for about 6 years now and am compiling it in a book of my own (not sure if I'll publish it or not) that suggests that only between 7% and 8% of the silver Roosevelt dimes remain.  I have good correlation to verifiable data and am tracking it issue by issue so that I can predict the true rarity of each issue in the series.  That suggests that since 1969, 70% or so of the remaining common date silver has been melted.  Much of it was melted when silver prices were run up by the Hunt Brothers in the early 1980's and some of it is still being melted today. Some issues like the 1955 dimes remain largely unmelted because they were minted in low numbers and were perceived to be rare while issues like the 1948S have been melted such that there are less than 3 million specimens remaining for that date/mint.[/QUOTE]