Why was silver "really"removed from coins by the U.S. government in 1965?

I heard it was the Roswell Aliens.

 

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Tom B's post nails it. BTW, the Treasury official who sold off most of our silver supply in the 1960's was....Paul Volcker.

 

Except silver fillings didn't cost anywhere near $150 in 1968. (OK maybe you could get enough silver from a quarter to provide enough amalgam for $150 worth of filings, But what do you do about the copper in the alloy? Just buy pure silver, about the same price and no refining needed .) Yes I know you weren't being serious.

Most of the reduction in our silver supply in the 1960's went to making 90% silver coins. (At the beginning of the 60's the Treasury had about 1.6 billion oz of silver. At the beginning of 1964 they had 1.2 billion. Beginning of 1965 804 million. Beginning of 1966 594 million and 429 of that was silver reserved for backing silver certificates. That left 154 million oz. By the end of 1968 after they cut off redemption of silver certificates the stockpile was around 200 million oz. 116 million oz had been added to the stockpile from silver not needed for redemption.)

GSA sales of silver from 1967 to the beginning of 1970 amounted to about 100 million oz. They didn't really try to actually sell off the silver stockpile until the 1980's when legislation authorized the sell off of the 139.5 million oz remaining in the stockpile.

The GSA sales though failed to draw any real interest. By mid 1983 they managed to sell 2 million oz. July of 1985 the ASE is authorized in order to consume the stockpile. The silver stockpile was depleted in 2002. The ASE should have ended at that point as its reason for being ceased to be. But the coin was so popular that the government now buys silver on the open market, pays to have it converted into planchets, goes through the expense of coining them, in order to sell them at a very small mark up.