Alloy Recovery Program In Us?

I don't think that the US will ever have an alloy recovery program, unless we convert our coins all to plated steel.

The coin isn't the real problem. A government that debases its currency is the problem. It's been going on for thousands of years. We're lucky they aren't making them out of cardboard.

The US mint does melt down or destroy billions of worn out or damaged coins every year. In theory, that is why we need 8 billion new cents every single year.

As far as actively targeting and melting coins, no. Copper cents still make a good 25% of the total circulating supply of cents, so we would need probably 30 billion cents made in 2016 to replace them all. Not worth it.

And, the US has a policy of allowing old coins to circulate for a *long* time. With the exception of gold coins in 1933 and the half and large cent after 1858, no coins have ever been actively removed from circulation channels by the US government. The Two Cent Piece had a single function (compete with private copper rounds during the Civil war) but there are older members on here and elsewhere who had parents who used those coins all the way into the 1920s and 30s. I honestly do not see any change to that policy when the plug is finally pulled on the cent.

They did back in the late 60's. Dimes quarters and halves that came through the Fed were run through high speed separators to remove the silver coins from the clad.

It doesn't make sense to do it now with our coins because except for the pre-1982 cents the metal value of the coins is still less than the face value of the coins (That wasn't the case of the pure nickel Canadian coins.) The copper cents would be worth recovering except for one thing. Since the cent has not been discontinued the copper cents removed would have to be replaced with new copper plated cents and since they cost more than face value to produce it wouldnegate he profit from the copper recovery. When Canada recovered their CuNi coins, they were replaced with plated steel coins that returned a seigniorage profit for every coin replaced in addition to the value of the metal recovered.

If the cent was discontinued then it would make sense to actively recover the copper cents while they still circulate, but they would need to have the separators on hand and operating when the discontinuance was announced/took place because the time period to do the recovery would be fairly short.