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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Conder101, post: 1723424, member: 66&quot;]TomB has part of the answer.</p><p><br /></p><p>In the early 60&#039;s silver rose in price to the point where the value of the metal in the coins threatened to rise enough to exceed the face value and it was feared that this would lead to hoarding.&nbsp; Not a good thing when the country was already in the midst of a coin shortage.&nbsp; So the mint looked for a replacement for the silver.&nbsp; The answer they came up with was the coppernickel clad copper that we are familiar with today.</p><p><br /></p><p>The problem was the western silver mining states did not want to cut the silver from the coins and lose that market, so they threatened to kill the clad coinage part of the coinage act.&nbsp; So in exchange for their support they were promised that some silver would be retained in the half dollar, the largest regular circulation coin, and that there would be a new issuance of 45 million silver dollars.&nbsp; And probably with promises of more in the future.&nbsp; With these promises in hand the silver states changed their position and threw their support behind the coinage act of 1965 and the clad coinage.&nbsp; Then after passage of the Act they lost the promised silver dollars, but they did get the partial silver composition in the half through 1970.</p><p><br /></p><p>Why 40% silver instead of some other composition?&nbsp; I really don&#039;t know how they settled on that.&nbsp; The Mint was not happy with the deal, they wanted to eliminate the silver completely.&nbsp; Other considerations were that they most likely did not want to change the size of the coin, and they would want a significant reduction in silver content because a small reduction would only delay the problem briefly.&nbsp; The 40% composition would mean that silver prices would have to double before they would have problems (Which only took about five years)&nbsp; The coin was most likely made clad because a 40% solid alloy would most likely turn dark too quickly.&nbsp; The 80% outer layers of the clad coin would visually look very similar to the previous 90% coins, and they wouldn&#039;t care if the lower fineness core darkened[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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