Message:

<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Conder101, post: 4501325, member: 66&quot;]In THEORY they are worth close to two cents each, if you could get full spot price for the metal.&nbsp; You won&#039;t, as an alloy the copper is worth about 1/4 of spot so that makes them about 1/2 cent apiece.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Absolutely nothing.&nbsp; Of course you unmarked alloy bars will now have to be assayed as well, so the buy price just went down, now equal to 1/3 cent apiece.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Because that is what the law says.&nbsp; Laws don&#039;t have to make sense, they just are.</p><p><br /></p><p>Collectingnut explained why it was passed.&nbsp; Back then copper was approaching $5 a pound and it looked like it might continue rising to the point where at even 25% of spot they would still have been profitable to melt.&nbsp; The government was afraid everyone would start hoarding them and there wouldn&#039;t be enough for commerce and that the Mint would have to replace all those hoarded cents at a cost of over 2 cents apiece.&nbsp; So instead they made melting them down illegal.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Yep, during the late 60&#039;s they made it illegal to melt down silver US coins, and while they kept spouting the line that the silver and clad coins would co-circulate for many years to come, they had machines at the Federal Reserve processing all the coins that came in from the banks separating out the silver from the clad.&nbsp; They kept the silver and sent the clad back to the banks.&nbsp; Finally around 1970 the amount recovered had dropped to a trickle so they shut the machines down and made melting silver coins legal again.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

Your name or email address:

Do you already have an account?

• No, create an account now.
• Yes, my password is:
• Forgot your password?

Stay logged in