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1862 - Mint Bureau paying $1.22-1/2 for silver
RogerB
Posts: 8,852 ✭✭✭✭✭
An interesting Treasury Circular showing amounts paid in subsidiary silver coins for bullion and foreign coins.
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RogerB
Posts: 8,852 ✭✭✭✭✭
RogerB
Posts: 8,852 ✭✭✭✭✭
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Wow, I wish I could buy those items at that prices today !!!
Very interesting...@RogerB.....Why were no British Crowns listed for exchange?? Cheers, RickO
During the Bryan "Free Silver" days it was down to about 50 cents, no?
I don't know. Congress approved acceptance of British, French, Spanish and Mexican coins for U.S. payments, but British silver is not mentioned. U.S. silver dollars were valued at about $1.08 from the Philadelphia Mint whenever people requested them. (Some large depositors of silver routinely requested payment in subsidiary silver coins plus a few thousand standard silver dollars. Presumably the dollars were for export at a rate above $1.08. This might also help explain the scarcity of some seated dollar dates.)
Silver hit 32-cents per fine ounce in the 1930s.
From records of FRB STL:
@Connecticoin I was interested myself.
Look at that surge when we got into WWI (1917)!
RE: "Look at that surge when we got into WWI (1917)!"
Yep. And it collapsed even faster after Britain began dumping sterling silver coins, and other countries followed. There was a short spurt of US Congress interest in debasing our silver coins, but the inflated price fell faster than Congress could act.
Three months after the date on the circular, the Mint was offered silver at $1.24-1.25 per standard (0,900 fine) ounce. The Philadelphia Mint had only about $20,000 in fine silver on hand and this was needed for parting gold bullion, so could not be used for coinage.