Melting Silver Coins

Mainly because there is profit to be made by the dealer and the refiner. It's a shame as the vast majority of these coins could be collected and further scrutinized for varieties. Instead, we get large shiny bars... What fun :(

with Nic

At many flea markets and possibly regular jewlery stores that make their own items, Silver coins are melted all the time. Many of these type jewlers give a small amount over face value, melt down the coins and use whatever they get for Jewlery. There are many people that do not know what else to do with Silver coins so they sell to these people for any profit at all. No one really checks for purity when buying a charm bracelet, charms for the bracelet, earrings, neclaces, etc. If a jewler sells them as Silver, 90% of the customers have no idea and could care less if it was ever a coin.
Also, flea market Jewlers could care less if the coin WAS worth more as a coin since Numismatics is not their buisness. A Silver coin is just Silver to them.
Actually a very small percentage of people know or care about the values of coins. Very few know about dates or mint marks on coins. And even less people know or care what metals coins are made from. This is always difficult to understand when your on a coin forum, but go around and ask the average person about coins and it becomes clear that few care. Coins are money and that to them is all they are.

allot of dealers sell off coins to the smelter because they are getting more money for the coins to them and its immediate where it doesn't have to sit in their inventory. Most dealers work on a tight margin of profit so anytime they can make one they go for it. They can sell those bags of coins to the smelter for like $100.00 over what they paid where if they kept them to sell in their store it may be 5 or 6 years before they finally got the whole bag sold at a piece at a time no matter what condition they were in. That is 5-6 years with the market fluctuating and thats their money tied up until all their money is recouped, even if they can make double the price they are waiting 5 times as long to get it. With the smelter they make a profit (which is all they want) and they get it done faster. This was the fate of allot of silver coins in the 70's especially bags and bags of UNC Morgans, but they were worth more for silver content when you look at the big picture than they would be worth selling piece by piece. I have heard from some dealers that sold Morgans by the bags at 100 or 200 sealed bags at a time to the smelter. At 1000 coins a bag 200 bags is 200000 Morgans at one time

Same here. There's so many buyers wanting junk silver, dealers won't
bother with melting U.S. 90% coins.

The only true "junk" silver nowadays is scrap tableware and jewelry.
Dealers here will even sell their nicer sterling tableware and jewelry.

As someone who deals in both coin silver and scrap. I don't know why anyone would melt coins. If I did I can only get 90% of spot price for them. Not to mention I have a waiting list of about 20 people who will buy anything I get for spot. That said the refinery and smelters couldn't care less, silver is silver and they make money when its melted. I do melt krugerrands and maple leaves every week just because they are hard to move in huge quantities. All in all its about how quickly you can put cash back into your pocket so you can start the whole process again.

well in the 70's you have to remember silver was 50 dollars a ounce and the dealers may have bought the bags for allot less so when it skyrocketed they probably made 500% on the sale and it was immediate. They didn't care about the coins because back then Morgans werent all that popular any way so this was a quick way to make money and millions of Morgans were melted at this time, most of them were Uncirculated. I can't help but imagine how many rare VAM's were melted at that time along with some that would have made DMPL and super high grades since they never looked at them, they just sent them in still sealed from the mint