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 Replies: 8 / Views: 1,296 |
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Valued Member
United States
53 Posts |
Just thinking....we all know the mintages of the silver half dollars or dollars, but I was wondering if any of these places that melt them keep track of exactly what they are melting so we would have an idea of what the balance is from the original mintage figues? I know alot of Morgans were melted down but is there a way to find out what is the balance from the original mintage? The same applies to halves. Again, just thinking..........hmmmm.......  |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
3278 Posts |
There are a lot of coins that I would love to know the surviving numbers for,
copper, uncracked proof sets, but certainly silver issues.
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
10982 Posts |
It's estimated that about half of all Morgans ever minted were melted in 1918. Over 270 million Morgan silver dollars hit the melting pot as a result of the Pittman Act. |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
4989 Posts |
I always fear when buying a key date Morgan that the government has a room full of them in bags. That happened with the 1904-O people paid $350+ for them back in 1961. Unfortunately for them, a hoard showed up in bags in 1962. It has never come close to recovering its historical price point. Kind of reminds me of the NASDAQ :)
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
19935 Posts |
Yea, they keep track of them....by weight. LOL
Sadly attrition is part of collecting. There's fewer and fewer older coins to collect everyday.
Lincoln Cent Lover!VERDI-CARE™ INVENTOR https://verdi.care/
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Moderator
 Australia
16809 Posts |
There's no way to know for sure. Not even the government kept track of that sort of data, back when it was its job to withdraw old worn-out silver coins, melt them down and reissue them as shiny new coins.
The best you can do is assume that the melter's aren't particularly sorting dates one way or the other, and so all date-mintmark combinations will be being melted at pretty much the same proportion.
Which is of course not true, since most of the people that supply the melters with scrap coins are collectors and dealers, who certainly will sift through them looking for what they think are scarce dates/mintmarks, which don't then get forwarded to the melters. So, given enough time, the "common" dates become scarcer and scarcer, while the dates that started out scarce stay at much the same scarcity, making them (proportionally) commoner and commoner.
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1213 Posts |
I'd like to sit in for a couple days at the silver melters and go through the silver that comes in. I suspect that I could find some good ones that slipped thru.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
3592 Posts |
I like Sap's theory...I may save my 1921-P Morgan until it's the last one !
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Valued Member
 United States
53 Posts |
SAP - Your comment of :So, given enough time, the "common" dates become scarcer and scarcer, while the dates that started out scarce stay at much the same scarcity, making them (proportionally) commoner and commoner.
This was my exact thought leading me to think at what point will premiums go up on the "common" date coin....if ever? I personally don't think they ever will due to the unknown factor of the melt.
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Replies: 8 / Views: 1,296 |
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Posted 12/04/2010 12:11 am
