How Many Gold Coins Are Melted?

Too many. A few years ago a huge hoard of Canadian gold coins from the teens were found and I was horrified to hear a LOT of them were melted.

All governments around the World that have bullion reserves of Sovereigns have long since melted the poorer condition coins. Swiss banks led the way in this regard, but so did the Bank of England.
Thus, with a gold coin such as a sovereign, it it difficult to find them in lower grades below VF (British grading).
Along with bars, Sovereigns were used for bullion storage by governments and banks.

Not so with Half sovereigns.
In Australia, British Half Sovereigns were a circulating coin from about 1835 until about 1855. As such, British Half Sovereigns dated 1835-1855 should be considered as just a much part of early Australian coin heritage as the proclamation coinage of Governor Gidley King. Coins of this date range in Australia are commonly found in lower grades. Same applies for Australian minted Half Sovereigns dated 1855 to about 1900, because they saw extensive circulation and not used for bullion reserve. After 1900, they were gradually replaced with silver coin banknotes

The Half Sovereign was withdrawn from circulation in Australia in 1914. Thus, it is much harder to find both British and Australian minted Half sovereigns in top grades, compared to Sovereigns, except for later dates 1900-1915.

You can see the numbers in Secretary of the Treasury Annual Report, this page is from 1891, I would imagine other countries have reports that are published similar to the USA.



This book is available to see for free at the Newman Numismatic Portal. They have other years as well, I just grabbed this one as an example.

Almost no American gold coins are melted now, because everybody dealing with gold knows that pre-1933 US gold coins are always worth considerably above melt value. But this is only because (a) so many were officially and unofficially melted down in the past, and (b) there are more collectors of US gold coins than there are collectors of, say, sovereigns. Low supply, with high demand, creates a numismatic premium that's worth a considerable fraction, or even a multiple, of the bullion value. Here in Australia lately, you'll rarely find a US gold coin sell for less than 150% of bullion value, no matter what condition it's in.

By comparison, relatively few sovereigns were melted, and very few people are searching for specific dates of sovereigns, or trying to complete a "date set". So supply is still high, while demand is low. Thus, they have a much smaller numismatic premium, and thus are much more likely to wind up in a melting pot.

As a general rule, the melters themselves know little and care less about the potential numismatic value of the things they destroy. To them, gold is gold - it's fungible, and therefore all equally furnaceable. So the coin collectors of tomrrow are relying on the people today who sell gold coins to scrappers, to fish out the "good coins" and sell them to other collectors, not the scrappers.


We do, generally, and most especially for gold coins. The main problem with using these reports to judge survival rates, as noted in several earlier discussion threads on survival rates and as can be seen in the image that westcoin posted: while intricately detailed records of the total counts of each denomination officially destroyed are kept by the Mint, there is no breakdown of which dates were melted. Nor, of course, are there any records at all of unoffical (private) melting, nor the melt rates of coins exported out of the country - other countries mints might keep records of "foreign coins melted", but probably won't record even a breakdown of country of origin and denomination, let alone a date. To foreign mints, US coins were just scrap bullion, fungible pieces of gold, good for nothing but melting and turning into real coins.

At least millions were melted, if not billions. Very unfortunate.

@numis, some of the sources I watch/read report lower prices from U.S. LCSs and dealers on foreign gold. If you have sold, has this been your experience?

Definitely foreign gold costs less from US LCS and bullion dealers.

I have been hearing of an increase in Mexican gold premia in the US, but do not know for certain. It was once a consistent source of gold near melt.