How Did It Go Down When The US Stopped Minting Silver Coins?

Wish they stopped in 1965. Lol. I would have found a lot more silver quarters.

I started looking at old coins about 1965 when you could still find Mercury dimes, Buffalo nickels and big "P/D/S" mint marks above Monticello on nickels in change. Wheaties were common (about 20% - 25%) but the white cents (steel) were mostly history. Coin collectors were setting aside uncirculated solid rolls of recent coins, sometimes up to ten years old that were being ferreted out of backwater bank vaults. My grandfather rolled into town one day with a bowling ball bag loaded with 90% silver coins he picked up from circulation in his travels, wanting to store them in my parents attic. He explained with a twinkle in his eye that he was sorry he turned in all his gold coins in '34. I believed him. My mother later let me know that back in 1934 my grandfather never had any gold coins. He didn't have Two Cents left, literally, and lost the house he built to foreclosure unable to pay back loans on the raw materials. They went autocamping in Florida for health reasons the winter of 1934 staying a couple of years in a tent, till things got better up north to the extent they could afford oil, coal or firewood to last out the long cold winter. My grandfather had about $250 in walking liberty and Franklin halves, Washington quarters, Roosevelt and Mercury dimes. Flying eagle quarters were few and worn down to dateless by then. He ignored 40% half dollars since with a little more looking you could find 90%. In 1968, I helped him coin roll search, finding between four and seven 90% coins in each roll of predominant clad, oddly consisting of just three or four most recent dates, (since 1965). The clad were all in XF to Unc condition with bright copper cores seen in the milling, obvious when stacked around a worn silver. Something important to note is the average grade due to circulation of silver coins by decade, since they all froze together by 1968 in the U.S. Coins of the early 1960s were XF to Unc in condition. Coins of the 1940s could be VG - VF. Coins of the 1920s were usually AG in grade. Nothing aside from a few slick Mercury dimes dating before the 1920s was left in circulation by then. Now saving this silver money, one began to wonder if it would have been better to simply deposit it in the bank to earn 4% interest, and that decision was a toss-up until the early 1970s. Silver did begin to rise in value over face (0.715 Troy per U.S. dollar in dimes / quarters / halves), but you had to have a means to sell before you could cash out. Only after the silver price passed 1.5 times face did folks begin to set up easy redemption points in coin shops and odd places that catered to speculators, rather than coin collectors. Mom & Pop bullion traders began to advertise when gold bullion, called-in in 1934, was again made legal to own in 1974. As the price rose those who only invested face just seven to ten years earlier began to do better than bank deposits would have paid. I had nearly $800 face by 1980 when the Hunt Brothers cornered the market for a time by dumping many millions into silver bullion down in Texas. The price rose to about 22 - 25 times face and stabilized for a few weeks, yet I saw no reason to dump as others did. Lots of table silverware, and even BU rolls of Franklin halves went into the crucible, making surviving common date silver coins an unknown quantity, despite their known mintages. In a very short time as the bubble became visible, the price exploded to near $50 per ounce for a few days, but that change was so quick and volatile almost nobody adjusted upward their buy prices quick enough, so little silver trading occurred at that stratospheric price. The bubble burst, and silver retreated to prices not seen for the past eight years. The lesson is not to buy and hold PM "stacking without end" but to buy and sell PM taking advantage of its liquidity in market swings. Do not get too attached to your stack in the form of coins, but always keep rare coins (good to hold long) apart from junk silver coins. Dump junk silver coins in a heartbeat, and buy back at a lower price if the market allows. I had to start over building my coin empire, a little wiser in my early twenties, resolved to only buy rare coins from then on, yet with little savings to do so with. Thank you Nelson and Bunker Hunt for the economics education so early in my stacking/collecting career.

oh yeah that's right pacificoin, I wasn't thinking.

I remember a vacation trip I took with my parents in the Summer of 1963. We drover across Nevada (in a car with no air conditioning) on our way to California. I recall being astounded at how Morgan and some Peace dollars were freely circulating in stores, etc. I think they wanted to encourage tourists to use them to gamble. I can recall my jeans pockets being weighted down with old silver dollars- some back to the 1870's. Of course I got rid of them by spending- no one thought of them as collectible apparently.

As a child of the sixties, I know firsthand that many common folk were not hoarding silver. Not my parents, not my grandparents, nor the neighbors. Not many were even aware of the composition of their coin, let alone the transition from silver to clad.

I was too young to know what was going on in 1965, but I was in college in 1980 when that silver craze happened. People were lined up around the block to cash in on their silver goods.

The tragedy of it was that they were not only turning in coins but also family heirlooms and other rare silver collectibles that could never be replaced--for melting.

SPQR- you just cleared up a giant mystery for me. I literally find at least 3-4 1964 nickels per roll and couldn't figure out why. That must also be the reason for the frequent 1965 quarters.

Two things I remember. First was the last chance to redeem silver certificates for silver coins. I can remember doing this for the novelty, but it wasn't a moneymaker. Second was how slowly the silver coins went away. They were still plentiful in 1968 and I can remember filling up rolls of silver dimes and War Nickels that year. Like the silver certificates this wasn't a moneymaker either, because the premium was only 10-20% over face at a coin shop. I don't remember that the War Nickels had any premium at all but they were easy to find.