what happened to the silver coins melted by the U.S. govt?

first off I'm new..so..hello everyone!

but my question is, what happened to all the silver from pre-1964 coins that were melted by the government (if the government managed to get at any before they were all hoarded)
did it go to the defense national stockpile? or did the government sell it? do they still have it?

oh yeah, one more question why werent the other silver coins (dimes and quarters) made of 40% silver from 65-70 like the kennedy half?

 

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Im not sure what happen with the money although the reason why the gov didn't make coins of silver with dimes-quarters after 64 was because The half dollar kennedy was in honor of his death when he died in 1963. I'm guessing the gov didn't want to end his honor with kennedy silver that quick so they expand it to 1969(1970 half dollars had to pay a premuim for it).

 

Not quite correct, actually, as has been recently discussed in this thread.

 

What coins were melted by the government?

And to the second part they stopped making the 40%ers the same reason they stopped making the 90%ers. We went off of the silver standard. Just like we stopped making gold coins for commerce...we went off of the gold standard. In a bit more detail it's because we spend more money then we bring in. You know like a household can do....then borrow by getting car loans and home loans and credit cards...

 

The coins that were recollected including our gold coins were smelted, refined (for purity) and secretively and covertly shipped to Fort Knox. I only know this because a recent Documentary I saw on the History Channel!

PS welcome to CT I hope you find a home to vent about your coins/collections that others (in your day to day life) will just blow off. (I know I have said this before but) the best part is, you can show CT members your prized pieces and no one will drop them in error!

 

Fort Knocks?!

 

That's classic...... Spell check can't help ya there......

 

Freud would be proud.

 

I think a lot of that silver might have gone into the Strategic Silver Stockpile, where it accumulated until Reagan started selling it off in the early '80s. I think some of it might have gone into the minting of the Washington Bicentennial halves of 1982 and the LA Olympics dollars of 1983-84, and subsequent commemorative silver dollars. The government release of so much silver in the '80s may be one reason why the price fell so dramatically during that decade.

 

The government probably got the lions share of the silver coins. First they published propaganda that the silver and clad would circulate side by side for many many years. Second they made it illegal to melt down the silver coins. Third they set up machines at at least two of the largest Federal Reserve banks and ALL of the dimes, quarters, and halves that came back from the banks were run through the machines. The clad was sent back to circulation and the silver was kept and melted.

The silver acquired this way was added to the strategic stockpile.

Later the stockpile was declared to be surplus and the government did start selling it off.

Silver from the stockpile was used for the commemorative coins and then finally used to strike the silver eagles. The stockpile was depleted around 2000. Since then the mint has had to purchase silver on the open market to produce the Commems, silver eagles, and silver proof sets.

 

In 1955 the national silver stockpile was nearly 3 billion ounces, or 94,000 tons!

 

The Fed got a very large percentage of the silver that was still circulating in 1968 when they began removing it but by this time a lot had already been pulled out by hoarders. They continued removing it until mid-'69 when there wasn't enough left to bother with. It was pretty much entirely gone by mid-'70 though a few strays continued to show up from piggy banks and the like until about '72. After this there was a statistically insignificant number and most of what has been found since that time are coins that have reenterred circulation.

I'd guess the goverment was able to recover about 15% of the mintage of 1964 dated silver in a year which was 50 to 60% of all these coins still in circulation at that time. In other words about two thirds of the silver was gone to attrition and hoiarding before the government acted. It did act almost as soon as the price of silver got high enough to warrant the effort to cull it out using simple inertial separators.

 

Jesse Ventura has most of it.

 

A true American hero......

 

Worldwide and historically, when the industrialized nations (Germany, England, the US, and Japan, etc.) went to the gold standard (UK first in 1821, then the others, 1870-1890), the price of silver, which was already falling, nosedived. In fact, coinage in silver actually increased, but it was no longer the national government's store of wealth, as they went exclusively to gold. The First Great Depression took a toll on silver as well -- though not on gold.

The point is that coinage was not the primary use of silver. Despite massive production of cheap, inflationary silver ("subsidiary") coinage, the price of silver did not hold or rise. Industrial uses were more important, from photography (a hobby craze) and medical X-rays, to solders which were critical to a civilization quickly becoming based on electricity, even more than fossil fuels -- indeed, the need for those fuels was the production of electricity, not direct home heating. Today, most silver comes as a biproduct of copper mining: we still live in an electrical age.

Similarly, coinage is a but a smaller fraction of gold consumption: five times more gold goes into jewelry than into official coins or investor bars. http://www.research.gold.org/supply_demand/ (From the World Gold Council, the guild for the mine owners.) Tokens of love aside, much of that jewelry is a form of savings: the people of India are the largest consumers of gold jewelry.

Just to say, silver's primary use even today

Overall, industrial demand is five times greater than coinage and even with near complete digitalization of imaging, photography eclipses coinage.
See here: http://www.silverinstitute.org/supply_demand.php

 

You mean Jesse "the body" Ventura? Is he a coin collector?

 

lol jessie the body ventura lol...

 

No, he keeps his silver stockpile in his chin dimple.

Addendum: In 1979, Nelson Baker Hunt & William Herbert Hunt had accumulated nearly 100 million ounces of silver, that is until Thursday, the 27th March 1980

 

Accumulated it or controlled it? My impression was that most of their holding were controlled silver through futures and options and not physical possession. That's why they were hurt so badly and the market collapsed when the government increased the required margins. You may be a billionare but when you unexpectedly have to come up with a few hundred million dollars by the end of the day you can't do it.