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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;cladking, post: 961971, member: 68&quot;]I don&#039;t remember seeing any mention of massive silver melting in the mint reports of &#039;64 and &#039;65 but it&#039;s not impossible.&nbsp; There was massive melting again in &#039;68 and &#039;69 when the FED started removing the silver from circulation.&nbsp; They recovered about 20% of what had been in circulation in 1964.&nbsp; Then the melt of &#039;79/ &#039;80 got about 20% of what remained.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>They started melting again a couple years ago but it&#039;s difficult to tell how extensive this is.&nbsp; The refinerys are advertising for business so there must not be the kind of backlog there was in the past.&nbsp; One senses that a lot of the 300 million ounces targeted for the ETF&#039;s might be refined coin so the current melting might not be insignificant. </p><p><br /></p><p>It&#039;s really not US coins that concern me since rare coins won&#039;t be melted And collectors will continue to hold millions of the types of coins that are being melted.&nbsp; I&#039;m worried about almost everything else.&nbsp; In many cases most of the surviving mintage of some world coins is in the US and prices are low as well as demand.&nbsp; The Spanish 100P of the &#039;60&#039;s for example was melted by the Spanish government but few people collect such coins.&nbsp; This means that they won&#039;t sell and are likely to end up in a refinery.&nbsp; if this situation lasts for very long there are quite a few such coiins that could be nearly wiped out.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Then there are tokens and medals.&nbsp; The demand for these tends to be exceedingly weak now days and this goes many times over for the more modern ones.&nbsp; Something like a mardi gras doubloon in silver just won&#039;t attract a buyer willing to pay a premium despite mintages that tend to be under a dozen and a high attrition as well as beautiful designs and execution.&nbsp; There are lots of 20th century coins, tokens, and medals that will be almost unavailable at any price in the future.&nbsp; Most will be base metal but many will be silver and gold as well.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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