Do you think Congress should bring back the Assay Commission?
RWB
Posts: 8,082 ✭
… Do you think we should bring back the Assay Commission?
PerryHall asked this question on another post, but I think it deserves its own home.
Background:
The old Assay Commission was intended to independently validate the conformance of silver and gold coins to legal standards. It did this my weighing sample coins taken from multiple coin deliveries, and by destructive assay of individual coins and an aggregate of coins. This was done for the output of each mint. However, during the old Assay Commission and presumably during any new one, the assay was performed by Mint employees – not by Committee members. Members simply watched and wrote down the results. Members of the Annual Commission were nominated by the Secretary of the Treasury and Appointed by the President. The proceedings were overseen by at least one Federal Judge, the Mint Director and the Philadelphia Mint’s Assayer. Their report went to the President.
My opinion:
Now that silver and gold no longer circulate as money, the validation function seems to be moot. However, the mints also produce large quantities of silver and gold bullion pieces that are sold worldwide. For these, there is presently no citizen-based, independent validation of weight and purity. It would seem reasonable to have some sort of Annual Assay Commission for bullion.
PerryHall asked this question on another post, but I think it deserves its own home.
Background:
The old Assay Commission was intended to independently validate the conformance of silver and gold coins to legal standards. It did this my weighing sample coins taken from multiple coin deliveries, and by destructive assay of individual coins and an aggregate of coins. This was done for the output of each mint. However, during the old Assay Commission and presumably during any new one, the assay was performed by Mint employees – not by Committee members. Members simply watched and wrote down the results. Members of the Annual Commission were nominated by the Secretary of the Treasury and Appointed by the President. The proceedings were overseen by at least one Federal Judge, the Mint Director and the Philadelphia Mint’s Assayer. Their report went to the President.
My opinion:
Now that silver and gold no longer circulate as money, the validation function seems to be moot. However, the mints also produce large quantities of silver and gold bullion pieces that are sold worldwide. For these, there is presently no citizen-based, independent validation of weight and purity. It would seem reasonable to have some sort of Annual Assay Commission for bullion.
0
Comments
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
K
<< <i>I see no need. The mint has sent me a little piece of paper with the gold coins I have bought that says they are good. >>
Good one! LOL
Seriously, I don't think it would be necessary given the current quality control with manufacturing.
Didn't wanna get me no trade
Never want to be like papa
Working for the boss every night and day
--"Happy", by the Rolling Stones (1972)
Did you get to the part in the Archives, where they talk about what all the assay commission banquet menus consisted of? It made me hungry
Lead me to the wine table please
Each year the mints reserved coins for use of the Annual Assay Commission. They were saved in quantities prescribed by the Coinage Act of 1873. In many years this meant that the Commission was presented with envelopes and boxes containing thousands of coins – far too many for the Commission to use.
Usually, the members divided into three subcommittees: Counting, Weighing and Assaying. The Counting folks counted all the coins and made sure the quantities matched separate inventory lists. The Weighing people selected coins from some of the samples and weighed them individually and also selected groups of coins to be weighed together, then averaged. Lastly, the Assaying Committee selected about a dozen pieces of each denomination and mint, and the Mint staff assayed each coin separately. The Committee also selected another lot similar to the first, and these were melted en mass and assayed by denomination.
After the proceedings were over. Members were commonly invited to exchange money for samples from the Pyx as souvenirs. Naturally, the coin collectors were selective in their pickings. Between 1906 and 1922 the Mint Curator selected the best coins from the pyx for distribution to major collections at face value. The best documented examples are in the Mitchelson Collection in Connecticut. Some of these coins are the finest examples of circulating coinage we have. (See RAC 1909-1915 for some of the anecdotal information.)
Coins not destroyed during assay or exchanged by participants or distributed by the Curator, were put into circulation. There was no need to melt the leftovers – they were normal coins. There was one exception: commemoratives distributed by an organization were usually destroyed to avoid violating the Mints’ agreement with the promoters.
Hope this helps.
[Nearly all of this research was performed by yours truly.]
The next highest priority should be to reestablish the Tea Tasting Commission. The USG should protect the consuming public from inferior-tasting tea of foreign origin.
If the government sees this thread we may have a new "Coin Assay Czar" created as a patronage position with a few hundred supporting positions created just to support the Czar as he/she goes about such important work.