Why Was Any Silver Kept In The Half Dollar?

@Missy_2012

The 1970 Kennedy's were NIFC.

Same with all silver Ike's.

"(in other countries, when coin silver is debased to the point where silver comprises less than 50% of the total metal in the alloy it is called billion- but for some reasons of propaganda, I suppose, we call it silver-clad)"

It's called silver-clad because that's what it is. It isn't solid 40% silver; it's two outer layers of mostly silver sandwiching a core of mostly copper.

The answer to the OP question is politics. The mint knew that keeping silver in the coins was a deadend and they wanted to remove silver from ALL the coins and use clad for everything. But the Senators and representatives from the silver producing states wanted to keep the status quo with silver in all the coins even though it was an impossible situation. So eventually a compromise was reached. The half dollar would retain 40% silver content, and the other members of the coinage and banking committees would support the 1964 silver Peace dollar legislation in return for the silver state producing lawmakers support for the adoption of the clad composition for the dimes and quarters. This was agreed to as it would keep silver in the largest coins and thus represent a continued high use of silver. The compromise was reached and the Coinage Act of 1965 was passed. Then the administration, with the encouragement of the Mint, dropped the 1964 Peace dollar. This did not make the Senators happy as they had already promised their constituents that the dollar coin would soak up a lot of their silver production. But they did continue to honor their commitment to keep the half at 40% silver.

I'm starting to think Conder101 is a politician. He always knows about those guys and all the facts about what they are doing and why.

Apparently, it never occurred to anyone that the new Peace dollars could have been made 40% silver-clad, as well. Then they could have been dated 1965-onward, and their melt value wouldn't have been an issue for years.

Silver was around $1.30 an ounce in 1965.

A 1965 40% Peace dollar would have contained 41 cents worth of silver
at the time of its issue, making hoarding pointless (until late 1973,
when silver hit $3.15/oz., at which point the coins would have been worth $1 in melt value).

When silver hit $3.35/oz, the 40% JFK's were worth 50 cents in melt value.

True but to a large extent the half was being horded because it had Kennedy on it. And the 64's were hoarded for two reasons, Kennedy, and they were worth almost as much as their face value as metal. Not to mention their intrinsic value was considerably higher than the 1965's. (Gresham's law in action)