Silver Coins Melted At The Mint, 1968-1970.

That is interesting. Thank you for sharing.

So now lets talk about the 'survival rate' of some of the old silver coins.

Wow - that is a lot!

1971 does not give #s, just that

I'd like to know how they separated out the silver.

My understanding is that each Fed district created their own machines. There were almost certainly some of these separators at contractors that were already counting and rolling coins for the FED even in those days. Most of the machines rolled coins down an incline and those which went a little further were the silver coins.

Remember most of the clads had to go through these machines multiple times as they were released and again mixed with silver coin.

The FED was removing these coins even as the government was saying they expected clad and silver to circulate side by side forever. At the time there were still brand new silver coins being released that had gotten lost in warehouses since this was before the days that they rotated their coin stocks. The percentage of silver in circulation had been dropping since late-'65 but it just plummeted after mid-'68. I should have suspected it was the FED but ascribed the drop to rising silver prices instead. It went very quickly and highlights just how short a time most coins sat out of circulation. In those days very few people could afford to hoard more than a couple years worth of coins and most people tried to spend their coins. Even today very few coins sit out of circulation for more than four years and the FED rotates the oldest coins out of storage first causing the clads to wear evenly since 1972.

In the '50's it was common to find old quarters in AU. Today older coins are heavily worn or already lost forever.

Thank you for the additional information.