Why did they stop making coins out of silver, copper, etc.?

An interesing article about Mexican plans:
http://news.silverseek.com/SilverSeek/1161955977.php

 

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I thought that I knew something until I read this thread. I've learned so much in this short read and I'd recommend it to all. Nice job guys. :hatch:

 

Nice idea of Mexico's. But Mexico not have good record of sound finance plans, think of all bailouts of banking and finance USA have to do for Mexico in last 20 yrs. What happen also if price of silver go down? In perfect world of silver only go up, not problem, but it goes up and down. Very simplistic approach, and not manageable of practicality.

 

In USSR during time of GPW, Great Patriotic War, people survive with gold coins of Nikolai II and early USSR gold coins which hidden during times of Stalin.

 

I know little about circulating Mexican coinage, but does Mexico have a coin right now like the USA nickel where the metal value is around face value? If so, wouldn't that coin have a simular effect to the silver coinage they're talking about?

 

Sure but so what. How would it be any different from the period of about 1890 to 1940 period when the intrinsic value of the silver in the coins was only worth 25 to 50% of the face value? And although it would still be at least somewhat fiat it would still have much more real value than it does today. Trying to do a full intrinsic value coinage (especially if you are trying to do a bimetallic standard) is not possible and will fail as soon as one metal or the other shifts in value even slightly. With the system I outlined the precious metal alloy coins would continue to circulate even with large movements in the value of the metals. Silver would have to increase almost tenfold and gold roughly fourfold ($100 and $2400 in todays currency) before they would come close to exceeding the face value of the coins. Not saying that that can't happen, but if it did another currency revaluation could do the same thing again.

We have gotten into the position we are in today , not because the value of the metals fave really increased, but because the value of the dollar has declined. It has been a slow steady decline and we have tried to maintain the fiction that a dollar is a dollar is a dollar, and a dollar from years ago is the same dollar as it is today. That just isn't true.

 

What people fail to understand is that with "full intrinsic value coiinage" the definition of a dollar becomes a WEIGHT of silver and not a separate price measure. In the case of the US, 371.25 grains of silver WAS a dollar. The idea that the price of silver could fluctuate is an impossibility in this situation. If you tried to tell someone in 1800 that 371.25 grams of silver was something other than a dollar, they would look at you as if you just landed from Mars.

It is very difficult for people raised on a diet of fiat to fully grasp this.

 

:thumb:

 

metal composition

since american like pennies and nickels. to maintain the weight and color of those coins. just change the penny composition to steel clad copper and nickel composition to zinc clad copper or steel clad copper.

 

You could possibly get away with that with the cents since no vending machines take cents anymore. But you would have some problems with the five cent. these coins would have to work interchangably with the current coins in vending machines. The coins are normally passed through a magnetic field and the electromagnetic properties of the coin would distort the field in known ways resulting in a specific signal. One other function of the field is to reject steel slugs. This would cause them to reject a copper clad steel coin. Another problem is that the new coin needs to be the same size and weight that the machine expects the nickel to be. A copper clad zinc or copper clad steel would be lighter than the current nickel and would be rejected. Or if they were reprogramed to recognize the new coin, the old nickels would be dumped to the coin return. Of course it would be possible to design and program a coin mechanism that would work with both, but it would mean that every vending machine in the country would have to have their coin mechanism replaced. Just wait for the screams over that one.