Can we get silver put back into our coinage?

mr3holesinone

This is an offshoot of Geoman's discussion on classic designs, kind of related though and I thought it may deserve its own thread.

Silver closed at $4.42/ounce today. I know we may never have 90% silver coins again, but I wonder if a 40% silver composite would be possible? If the government wants to circulate a dollar coin, wouldn't putting silver back in it help persuade the usage of them more than what they've been doing for the last 30 years or so?

Would this change make hoarding a common practice? Bicentennial and state quarters are often saved/hoarded as are any silver coin, wheat pennies and half dollars. Would a silver coin have a chance to ever circulate if the mints did put them out?

Wouldn't it be great to hear the sound of silver coins when you're getting change at the gas station?

Outhaul

Putting silver back into coins will be the one sure way to be certain that people will hoard them. There would be little left for commerce. IMHO.

Cheers,

Bob

BSqr

I doubt we will ever see another US circulated coin that contains a significant % of precious metal. Why would the FedGov do it if they don't have to. The populace has no problems with fiat money, for most it's all they know. I don't see why at some point we won't be using plastic tokens for coinage. Let's face it, there isn't much intrinsic value in the coinage we use now so, if the people won't complain, then why wouldn't the FedGov switch to something even cheaper to produce.

coppercoins

I see a couple of problems with this, both would be somewhat easy to overcome if we weren't talking about the U.S. Government needing to fix something that's not broken and actually move on it in less than three decades...

1. They would have to change all of the vending machines and change machines to accept the signature of a different metal. As I understand it, most of the current vending machines will not accept the old 90% silver now...some of my co-workers have discovered 90% silver in their change due to this very reason - the vending machines wouldn't accept the coins which made them take a closer look at what they had. Just last week, a 1953S dime was discovered in change here at work.

2. The government would have to go back and reverse all the laws removing silver from the coinage. This seems to be a relatively easy thing to do, but you have to remember that this is the U.S. Government we are discussing here - nothing is done in due time where they are concerned as a decision making institution.

The actual silver required for such a small alloy mixture including silver might be a slight bit more costly than the metals used now, but if it were an alloy, say 60% copper, 40% silver, that would probably actually save the government some money because of the more expensive method of sandwiching metals together for the clad of current day.

Would it cause hoarding? I seriously doubt it. The first couple of years might be a challenge, but after the public got used to hving nice looking coins made of a "real" metal, they would soon begin using them regularly.

As for the idea of placing silver into a dollar coin to see if it would fly...nope...that couldn't happen if you were doing the same thing with the quarter - that was the problem with the Carter quarters (SBA dollars) in the first place. Too close to the quarter in composition and size. I think the golden colored dollar is the right move, they just need to get rid of the dollar bill for it to work....and change the composition to something more inert, bathe the planchets, coat them in brass - something.

cladking

Who would want low fineness silver coins? Coin silver should be at least 800 fine
or so. Obviously silver is far too expensive to make small change. There is no rea-
son that we couldn't have silver 5, 10 and 20 dollar coins though. It might be handy
to have some high value coins since the quarter now is equivalent to the 1965 nickel
and not so much more than an 1865 cent! It would be nice not to have to get out the
wallet for small purchases. It would be necessary to make the face value significantly
higher that the bullion value to sell the idea and to prevent the coins being horded
when silver goes up.

coppercoins

Definately a good idea, I say. I like the idea of higher denomintion coinage, but I can guarantee the idea won't fly at all with the public. They are having a hard enough time accepting a $1 coin. The chances they would accept a $2, $5, $10 coin are absolutely nil. Unfortunately the only places we will ever see stuff like that is in the slots in Vegas.

Although the design and environmental reaction of the Sac coins are less than desirable to many collectors, there's no reason why the coins shouldn't have taken off as spending money to the public - except that the government made their biggest stupid mistake in 20 years regarding coinage and didn't remove the $1 bill. That was the key to a coin's success. (BTW, the other stupid mistake was the SBA dollar.) I very highly doubt there will ever be a time when the government is ready to axe the $5 bill, $10 bill, etc...they can't even see the lack of need for a $1 bill.

CLASSICS

its just a matter of time before we go into a cashless society. first will come the ...new colored money... the 20.00 bills will be first....when that fails, we will go to a a personal id card with your entire life history on it. it will be used for any and all transactions. and controll thru one major computer banking system, with several district branches, something like the federal reserve uses now. the police department uses a system very close to this now for tracking you and your car, if you are ever stopped just watch the officer and what he does with your licence and what information he can call-up on you. it will be a total information system used to track everything about you and you habits, from what you buy to when you sleep.......in order to know who is the good guy, and who is the bad guy people like bin-lauden and his growing family... goverments will be forced to use this system. think it cant happen? think again........ within the last 5 years the us goverment spent over 30 billion dollars trying to stop and track dirty money {drugs} as one can see , they cant stop it...try and use the new system, and all of the money we now know and use becomes worthless....will it work , who knows for sure, but i see major changes coming as far as the funny money we now use. the only silver we will see will be in a tooth filling.....

coppercoins

<< <i>its just a matter of time before we go into a cashless society. >>



Any chance we will be able to get the central federation government to continue to produce coinage sets for those of us who like collecting them?

Think about it this way...the postal system has had presorted, precancelled, and metered mail for years, yet stamp collectors still get their commemoratives to collect. I think the government makes far too much profit minting coinage just for us to buy from them to stop that program altogether - it gives them something else to put on that chip implanted in your skull...that you like round shiny things and are willing to give up credits to have them.

richbeat

I don't see a cashless society happening anytime soon. Certainly not in my lifetime.

IvanOnly

It would be nice to see $5 90% silver coin for general circulation. But I agree with Outhaul, people would hoard any silver coin.

nwcs

This is something countries with wild inflation do to help stablize their economy. Consider Mexico that went through a zillion revaluations until they added 10% silver to the peso to help slow down the inflation. The content of silver was slight enough to not make it worth melting, but was enough to slow down inflation a tad. The US doesn't have that problem right now, so it would only lead to hoarding. And then the US might blame us, the collectors, for all the hoarded silver coins as they did in the 60s.

jtryka

I think the biggest challenge to accomplishing any of these ideas is the fact that the Mint has no more silver, that's right, they have NO SILVER! They had to go to congress last year to get authorization to purchase silver on the open market just for the silver eagle program since the strategic stockpile that had been saved since the end of WWII was now depleted. So the likelihood of silver ever intentially circulating again is about the same as us returning to the gold standard under the original peg at $20.67/oz.