Do People Who Are Collectors Actually Melt Silver?

The thought of coins being melted makes me cringe. I know it happens, but I do not want to think about it!

It's rare, and dangerous, for collectors to melt their own silver. When people refer to "melt value" they are speaking of the actual precious metal content of an object, not literally melting (refining) the objects into other forms. Again, it can be done "at home" but is not recommended.

When I was a young kid in the late 1960's there was still a significant amount of 90% U.S. silver circulating. My dad used to sort and pull out quantities of it with his friends.

I spent two years in graduate school (1967-68) working at a currency exchange in Philadelphia. We took at least $5K in silver coins (or silver certificates) twice a day down to the smelter, often much more.

There are a lot more silver coins than there is demand for them. Even nice ancient silver coins sell for as little as 10 or $20 apiece and are in danger of being scrapped if silver prices keep moving higher. But coins like BU 1955-S dime rolls have no market and if you want to dispose of them there are no options but to melt them or take a loss on them.

It's a sad state of affairs. It made my heart break to see all the great coins and other items being destroyed back in 1979. Some of the things I saved from the furnace are likely to have just been a temporary stay of execution.

On the plus side it makes all the survivors a little more desirable.

Most refineries are paying back of melt and staying very busy. This means local coin shops are paying even less and the only reason they can pay the little they do is the have enough customers willing to pay small premiums that they don't have to ship to refineries which has become very costly.

Yes, a lot of what they get is worn out coins and culls but don't forget that anyone trying to sell in this market is likely to have things like BU rolls of '55-S dimes rather than average circ Roosevelt dimes. This means a lot of what is being melted are desirable coins that are just too numerous for the demand. And the demand can be paltry especially for modern silver. Even BU Canadian silver sets with mintages of several thousand and many of them already gone swamp the demand. The demand now days is for old rare US and slabbing. The Chinese undercut markets by creating fakes. The demand is for knowledge of how to sell on ebay and apparently paying very low prices for stock isn't necessary as they can sell dinged up pocket change for even more. Many people believe no coin has any value until it's slabbed so they disregard catalog prices.

Millions and millions of silver coins are being sold but collectors are barely buying and the first $20 of each purchase goes to the grading companies. Of course a lot of coins are being melted. We have a service economy that puts very little value on products or quality. Silver coins are mostly from a bygone era and today we need solar panels and cruise missiles rather than a medium of exchange. Just look at the fact we still make pennies and you'll see why the refineries are running almost flat out.

Yeah, this is just the thing. Millions have assembled silver sets from circs to Gem BU but there are now more sellers than buyers. You can still sell tough stuff like BU rolls of '47-D or '49 dimes but common stuff is hard to sell at a premium. There are a few buyers but most are picky and unless you have quantities it's not worth the effort for most people.

The real irony here is the clad dimes are in very short supply. Nobody has them but it doesn't matter because nobody wants them. Then people lament older BU rolls being melted and turn a blind eye to dealers cutting up mint sets for the cash register. Future collectors will understand why some silver was melted but I don't think they'll understand why clads weren't saved.

I have some friends that are long-time jewelry makers and they do melt down scrap silver to make jewelry,
and also have used nicer condition coins to make jewelry, etc. (no names mentioned).
If you have a reason or use for recycled silver than sure melt it. Would melting coins make it easier in any way
to store it, sell it? I dunno?

I am primarily a US coinage collector ... all of my foreign silver and damaged US silver goes in a cigar can. I'm not sure if / when I'll melt (it is a bit difficult to consider) but they will never be in my collection. Food for thought ...