Will we ever know how many silver coins were melted down

If silver coins have been melted both officially and unoficially and by business and by the Mint there will never be any accurate and conclusive records kept.

The only thing that can be said for sure is that there is a much greater chance of the better grade coins surviving the melting pot because most of those who would have done the melting would have saved the obviously better grade coins as well as the older ones.

This phenomenon would have resulted in the better grade coins being more common, relative to the poorer grade coins prior to melting.

That is what happened when Australia converted to decimal currency in 1966, when before that time silver was part of the circulating coinage system. Within the old pre decimal coinage that survived the melting pot, very few better grade silver coins met their demise, because most of them had already found their way into collections.

The US Mint has melted more US coins by far than any other entity and they certainly did keep records. However, those records do not indicate series, year, or mintmark- just denomination but those numbers are pretty startling. 51% of all 3 Cent Silver pieces, 30% of all 20 Cent pieces, and 38% of all silver dollars were melted by the US Mint through 1970- well over 1 billion coins in total across all denominations.
http://www.numismaster.com/ta/numis...icleId=18381

Really fascinating article. biochemist6, thanks for posting that!

If you want to understand the nature of coin availability you must first study the way coins were minted in the first place. silver and gold coins typically came about when private citizens and businesses brought forth silver and gold- which the mint assayers measured and checked for purity and then coined. the term seigniorage is derived from the amount of money the government would skim off the top to make a little bit of profit and to cover their costs (a different notion that what is being done now)... So in the distant past, coins were minted to cater to private need- as such the government had no interest in the preservation of these coins- only in the facilitation of trade. you could take all of the coins minted in silver from 1793 to 1893 that survived up until the 1960s and the mint would outproduce that total with just one year of mintage from one mint.

as for what remains of the 20th century silver coins? it's anybody's guess. probably a good buy in the higher grades- in the lower grades they will never be all that collectible.. the reason for this is that so many BU coins and gem quality coins are being saved because the hobby is attuned to that type of collecting now. So for profit I'd say MS-66 on quarters, MS-66 or above FT on dimes, Ms-64FB and above on Franklins, MS-66 and above on Kennedy halves, MS-65/MS-66 on Clad Ikes, MS-68 on Silver business strike Ikes, MS anything on Mercury dimes up through the 30s, same for Standing Liberty quarters. MS anything on walking liberty halves and all but common date Peace dollars. Morgans? well, there are so many of them for most dates that you are better off collecting elsewhere for profit- not that it isn't a great set for varieties or just to have fun with.

My smelter claims that he never melts coins, and that he saves them up and sell's them to a coin dealer. I think that somebody who owns a refinery would have good knowledge on coins, enough to know not to scrap them.

However, in the past few years when all these "Cash for Gold and silver" places started popping up, MILLIONS and MILLIONS of coins changed hands from citizen to dealer. Who knows where they end up

I had to look it up. Figured I would link it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bland%...3Allison_Act

I note that the price of silver on the long term trend line 1933 - 2010 is around $12 per ounce.