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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;steve63, post: 2317906, member: 76463&quot;]The 2006 law applies to pennies and nickels.&nbsp; The government was trying to avert what happened in 1965 when silver coins were replaced and people started hoarding them for melt value.&nbsp; It caused a serious coin shortage (which explains the huge mint numbers for coins in the mid 1960&#039;s as well as the absence of mint marks on them).&nbsp; It was so bad that by 1967 the federal government passed a law that banned melting silver.&nbsp; But within a few years all the silver had been pulled from circulation so the melting law got repealed....huge mintages of clad coins in the mid 1960s had pretty much replaced all silver currency so there was no longer any need to protect the silver currency from melting.</p><p><br /></p><p>To prevent the same thing from happening with nickel and copper, the 2006 law was passed.&nbsp; Many feel that as happened with the 1967 law, the 2006 will be repealed eventually once the number of pre-1981 coins is a negligible percentage of circulating coins.&nbsp; At that point, any mass melting of them would not cause a coin shortage.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>It seems that about 20-25% pennies circulating today are pre-1981 so that&#039;s still too high a percentage to repeal the law.&nbsp; Another theory is that the penny will be discontinued entirely at some point in which case the melting law would also most likely be repealed.&nbsp; The only thing the government cares about is whether melting would cause a coin shortage.&nbsp; Once a shortage is no longer a threat, there will be no need for the melting ban.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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