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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Tom B, post: 2134136, member: 11854&quot;]Please, no conspiracy theories...</p><p><br /></p><p>The price of silver had been rising such that the cost to produce silver coinage was starting to overtake the actual face value of the coins.&nbsp; This would mean that any residual profit that the US government made by producing coins would evaporate and each coin would run the government a deficit.&nbsp; Additionally, many other countries had either completely abandoned producing coinage in silver or had debased their coinage previous to the US change to clad.&nbsp; By 1960, the yearly average price of silver of 91-cents per troy ounce resulted in each quarter having about 16.5 cents of silver in it.&nbsp; This, plus the cost to manufacture each coin, was starting to push the US Mint toward running in the red.</p><p><br /></p><p>The government did something logical, which might be shocking, and switched to clad coinage instead so as to save money.&nbsp; However, some states with large silver mining interests would have taken a large blow to their economies and, thus, silver coinage was produced with the date of 1964 for some time after the year.&nbsp; Additionally, half dollars were made in 40% silver.&nbsp; Presumably, this helped soften the economic blow to silver mining states.&nbsp; Also, by producing silver coinage in conjunction with clad coinage, the government might have been hoping to make the public believe that silver was not being withdrawn from circulation.&nbsp; I believe that silver was actively withdrawn by the US government, as well as the public, and that by 1970 or so nearly all of it (save for those pesky 40% silver half dollars) was essentially gone.</p><p><br /></p><p>Gold was not used to back up silver coinage, nor was it used to back up clad coinage or paper currency save for gold certificates.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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