History of Morgan Dollar Melts

Mack

Happy New Year all-

I keep reading references to another silver melt after the 1918 melt (Pittman Act) of over 270 million Morgan dollars. Does anyone know about this? I hear somewhere in the 30's there was another melt.

Rittenhouse

No significant melts in the 30s; just the normal multilated & worn for around 6,000. In 1943 - 1945, a little over 53M were melted for war materiel including the atomic bombs. Melts are detailed from Mint records in Van Allen and Mallis.

SportsModerator

Let's not forget 1980

Stuart

SportsModerator1: What are the estimates for the number of Morgan Dollars (and total Silver Dollars) melted during the great Silver Bull Market melt of 1979-80?

Thanks for reminding us about that additional purge on Morgan Dollars.

cladking

Numbers and totals vary widely depending on who you talk to but a good
ball park figure should be around 300,000,000 mllion ounces of US silver
coin was melted. Morgan dollars were very hot at the time so it's not likely
there were large quantities of these destroyed except for worn and mutilated
pieces. Of course at $35 melt it would allow many to be sold as scrap. Much
of the silver that was in the pipeline in Jan, '80 may not have been melted at
all since the refineries were backed up about 6 months. By the time they caught
up the melt value would have been much lower and they'd have been saved.

I saw a lot of buckets of silver that were being sent in and don't remember many
Morgans in them.

Stuart

Thanks for the info CladKing!