Any Available Estimates On Coinage Qty's Left After The Big Melts?

In Canada, there is a metal recovery program. In terms of condition aor rarity, the government makes no distinction about which coins are to be melted.
Different story, when it comes to dealers sending junk coins for melt. All coins are examined, and the rare or better condition ones are saved from the melt.


The Australian situation was a little different. After WW2, the siver currency was debased from .925 fine to .500 fine, but the designs on the coins remained the same. Extracting the .925 coins from circulation took a long time, and left quite a lot of the higher purity silver in circulation.

Come the conversion the decimal currency in 1966, and the complete substitution of silver to copper nickel, ALL silver coins dissappeared rather quickly.
What silver coins survived were quickly snapped up by coin collectors. The low grade junk silver coins were sent for melting via the coin dealers, thus leaving a much higher average grade of silver coins available to the collector

Doesn't really make sense imo to melt coins as they always seem to sell for more than melt

I think the big melts have been more the mints melting unsold coinage and using it to mint new issues, such as the Ceylon 1957 Five Rupee coin, half the mintage was melted by the mint. The coin shops of the world can't furnish enough to equal say, The Royal Mint dumping 300,000 silver crowns into the smelter.

I can't remember where I got this from, but here it is.

Now that CoinFacts is free to everyone I think it ought to be ok to post information from it here. They have a section for each coin that provides their estimate on "survival" of a coin. Here is their definition.



Notice it claims to take into account all coins, not just those in 3rd party holders.



And here's an example of one. This is for a 1902-O Barber Half.




Here's a link to the example if you want to explore further. Of course this is just their opinion as there is no way to know for sure, but hey, it's a start.

http://www.PCGScoinfacts.com/Coin/Detail/6493

I'm an Engineer, or was till I retired. I remember getting a trade journal at the height of the "great melt".

The amount of coins reportedly melted was higher than the total mintage of ALL US and Canadian coins combined, since the first coin was made in each country.

Now obviously this can not be correct. And there were a lot of comments about this in subsequent editions. The consensus was that the industry was not differentiating between Coins and other sources of silver.

Personally I think the scrappers were counting coins that had been TURNED IN FOR SCRAPPING, but that had been resold to companies like Ampex, and Silvertown. I was told by one of the largest refiners in Ohio that this was NOT the case. However; one of Silvertown's buyers told me casually, that he bought from this same refiner "in bulk". I've never been sure why this was confidential.

Too add to this, I personally saw a dealer who cut up a couple of THOUSAND Silver Proof Sets when the price went over $30/ounce and really, really accelerated when it went over $40/ounce.

I'm confident that the modern silver proof sets were melted in the Hundreds of Thousands.

Lets look at some numbers: Mintage Percentage Sold ttl qtr set

2004: 232 for sale on ebay 1,769,786 0.00013 568 334 234
2005: 247 for sale on ebay 1,678,649 0.00014 545 328 217
2006: 492 for sale on ebay 1,585,008 0.00031 863 286 577
2007: 210 for sale on ebay 1,547,712 0.00013 454 258 196
2008: 186 for sale on ebay 1,165,908 0.00016 436 249 187
2009: 159 for sale on ebay 996,548 0.00016 429 215 214
2010: 132 for sale on ebay 1,337,849 0.00009 336 188 148
2011: 143 for sale on ebay 722,076 0.00019
2012: 111 for sale on ebay 557,891 0.00020
2013: 162 for sale on ebay 558,171 0.00029

1959: 134 for sale on ebay 1,149,291 0.00013
1960: 226 for sale on ebay 1,691,602 0.00013
1961: 347 for sale on ebay 3,028,244 0.00011
1962: 346 for sale on ebay 3,218,019 0.00010
1963: 315 for sale on ebay 3,075,645 0.00010
1964: 408 for sale on ebay 3,950,762 0.00010

We can see that as the price of silver started to go up around 2009, and when it was possible to buy a silver proof set from the mint and then flip it to a scrapper for a profit; that the survival rate SEEMS to go down. At least there are less for sale.

2010, also coincided with an increase in sales, yet it is the year with the least number of sets for sale. This same year was THE year when dealers were buying in bulk from the mint and then flip them directly to the Scrappers. I know several dealers that did just that.

Now note that the mintage goes down in 2011, just as the peak is hit early that year. At the same time the number of units available for sale also goes up.

One would really have to do sample this once a month for several months to see if this is a real trend or just a fluke. But as we took a completely random sampling, it is telling.

I suspect that one day we will find that the 2010 silver proof set is THE key in the set. Rarer than the 2012, for which all if not most of the mintage should still be in existence. I suspect that half or better of the 2010 mintage was melted.

The mintage numbers btw are combined 11 coin set and silver quarter proof sets.

I think for silver it's a lot lower ... take the 1852 3cs with a mintage of 18,663,500 and estimated 35,000 survivors. That is 0.2%...

http://m.PCGScoinfacts.com/Coin/Rarity/3666

Note that up thread you have the mint melting 50% of the production of ALL 3cs. There are further melts reported (by $value) up to at least the 20s. $3,000 is 1,000,000 coins.

All of this is before the silver spikes.