As Silver Prices Continue To Climb...

In the late 70's the Hunt brothers tried to corner the market and it was up to almost $49 an ounce.
In 2011 is hit $35 an ounce.
I would think back in the 70's would have been the great melt of coins, but it didn't happen then, and I really don't see it happening now.

I occasionally talk to coin shop owners and at least one of them is sending all of their cull silver dollars and lower end junk silver to the refinery. They say that the amount of people buying at these now higher prices has stalled and they need to keep their inventory moving.

Melting Silver, Gold, etc. has been going on for a long time so why should it be different now.

I'm just watching the auctions on those tricked out lighting/weird angles to try and make a coin seem like they are in better condition then they are, and before covid and the rising price of silver, I saw bids and sales, as each week goes by I'm seeing less and less bidding on those to the point that unless they start with a 99 cent start, there has been a significant drop on bidding.

I understand those are not hard facts and are just a subjective view of one person's glancing auctions, but sooner or later those coins are going to go somewhere if they are not selling.

Of course it could be people are just getting smarter and or don't have the same discretionary spending, but I wouldn't place my bets there

A little bit off subject but I hope the mods will pass it through . Lets just say Silver were to hit an astronomical price of $100 an ounce , Do you believe your semi key and better date silver coins would go up in price to a Numismatic ally higher collector value . ( hope I put that across the right way ).

No. It merely raises the minimum price for any coin, regardless of grade.

I would guess that there is always a modest stream of melting that really accelerates when prices jump.

I would guess LCS don't do a whole lot of melting unless what they have is really awful and basically unsalable.  But for the most part they seem able to command and get substantial premiums to spot so no need to melt.
 
I would guess that the "Cash for Gold" people do a LOT of melting.  I think this is their business model.  They probably have a well organized melt arrangement.  Pay substantially less than spot to the uninformed public, cherry pick coins or jewelry to resell marked back up to retail and then immediately melt the rest to lock in their profit.

As to population, the best condition rare date coin populations are probably pretty well known and are not likely to change much.  As a recent study by PCGS pointed out, true rare date coins have performed remarkably well while generic graded coins (the ones you see by the box full at coin shows) have actually gone down in value.

Talking with my LCS last week, they were approached as to whether they had any St. Gaudens. Just culls was the answer. He got $300 over spot for culls.