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Silver aside, do government bullion coins ever actually get melted?
BryceM
Posts: 11,736 ✭✭✭✭✭
The whole issue of the Palladium coin got me thinking......
We all know that silver coins have disappeared by truckloads over the years when prices were high enough to justify it. I imagine some gold gets tossed every now and then, especially jewelry pieces.
Has anyone ever heard of government-issued platinum, palladium, or other PM actually being melted and returned to "industry" uses? I would imagine the markup over spot generally prevents this..... but it's true purpose is to be a store of the metal no?
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I do not know but will wait and see what people here have to say
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When gold hit $850 for the first time
in 1980, circ. $10's and $20's were melted.
BU's were worth spot, and circs. were
worth melt. Below XF- melted
We're about at the same point today -
those denoms are worth melt, wholesale,
for circ. pieces. - but I don't believe
they are being melted today (yet)
for PCGS. A 49+-Year PNG Member...A full numismatist since 1972, retired in 2022
I don't know about the bullion coins. To me it would not make sense to melt them because there is a ready market for them at spot +, but the modern gold commemative coins are another story. There has been a buy to melt market for them for many years.
I've heard that as well.
Any source of info re: the number of melted specimens of each modern gold commem out of the original mintages?
Here's a warning parable for coin collectors...
I heard of a lot of early first spouse coins hit the melting pot. You would think platinum coins would as well, for industrial uses especially considering fractional ones are available. Sometimes you just need a quarter ounce of platinum to make a stirrer or scientific tool.
It would be almost impossible to know how many of the gold commemorative coins have been melted. Perhaps there will be a partial answer in future if they ever becaome popular with collectors. Only then, when there is a "collector shortage" will we know if a significant number has gone to the melting pot.
I was living in Europe and 'needed' to get a ring re-done in platinum (dang developing gold allergy). I gave the 1/10 platinum eagles to use as the raw material.
Twisted Logic in play.
Dealer has inventory, palladium, platinum, gold, silver, whatever, immaterial.
Palladium coin is for sale for $1300, no takers, palladium suddenly spurts to $1500, dealer marks up price to $1600, still no takers. Dealer would have been happy at $1300, now can't sell for $1600. Even worse, coin has a scratch from whatever.
Dealer deep sixes the palladium coin to the melter, no issues, no risk, for $1465.
Dealers / Collectors / Investors who rode silver to $50 in 1980 and rode it down ti $5, and rode it back up again to $50 were not going to get burned a 2nd time, so TONS of gold, silver, whatever, including coins that WOULD NEVER BE MELTED were melted.
Take Platinum. 2001: $440 an ounce 2008: $2100 an ounce, and 6 months later$880 an ounce. Guarantee Platinum widgets hit the pot.
The Grace Coolidge gold proof actually has a lower mintage than Eleanor Roosevelt (2,315 Vs 2,377) but nowhere near the name recognition.
She's mostly known for wandering around with a pet raccoon.
@FredWeinberg
Sadly many US gold pieces are being melted. I melted 15 $20 Libs this morning as part of a dealers scrap lot. They all had issues which made not retail friendly. Few weeks ago we had 200+ problem $10 Libs melted, we netted more having them in bar form at the refiner than selling as coins.
I don't get the coin melting-thing. Why introduce speculation about the purity of the end result? 90% silver is assured with bags of Morgans or the like. The purity of past or modern gold issues is well established.
Unless someone has another application for these metals (jewelry, let's say) why go to the trouble and expense of melting? They can be traded as is.
Lance.
Depends on the price difference between 22 and 24 karat versus the refining cost. There aren't many 22 karat applications and what coin collector wants problem coins when no problem coins are only a little more costly
@BryceM...are you referring to commercial melting or government melting? If commercial, it goes on all the time when profit is an issue. If government, I am not sure what the motivation might be, other than minting more coins...@RogerB could probably find records indicating any melt/reclamation of PM coins by the government. Cheers, RickO
I was in a large bullion dealer's store recently and saw modern proof gold being bought and scrapped out. The dealer said he scraps out a LOT of modern gold because it doesn't sell in coin form, but sells in bullion form.
Spring National Battlefield Coin Show is September 5-7, 2024 at the Eisenhower Hotel in Gettysburg, PA. WWW.AmericasCoinShows.com
The Grace Coolidge gold proof actually has a lower mintage than Eleanor Roosevelt but nowhere near the name recognition.> @lkeigwin said:
The "another application" you mentioned is the primary use for gold. 78% of gold used goes to the jewelry industry. Some goes to the dental industry or aerospace or even gets turned into awards or medals.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.sbcgold.com/blog/top-6-common-uses-for-gold/amp/
I think people who are only used to seeing gold as coins sometimes forget just how magical the metal is. In Athens, I saw a sword with a bronze blade and gold hilt. The hilt looked like it was made yesterday while the bronze was pitted and falling apart.
Found it.
Wow. THAT tells you something about the appeal of gold!
Here's a warning parable for coin collectors...
$25 silver should tell the world how much love they have for their .....
silver 
Records showing gold coin melting are in most of the annual reports after 1873. The 1933 and later numbers and dates are in my files from the Archives. They have not been published because they have little meaning by themselves -- just numbers. There is a June 2017 Numismatist article about recovering gold collector coins from deposits after 1935, which migth be of interest, also.
I have melted about 7 silver eagles in my life before I knew you could buy much-easier to deal with .999 silver shot. I would pour it into a mold and make tags for my dogs and friend's dogs.
I nearly got a face full of molten silver doing it, too.
I know dealers currently melting common saints.
Me, I would not melt any precious coins
JMHO
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Bad transactions with : nobody to date
As an aside -- some might remember that many of the large Central America gold bars were melted after the faces were cut off. The metal was refined and used to make imitation/souvenir pieces. In effect, the bars were so large that they had no collector value as intact historical specimens.
I heard somewhere that a company such as Silvertowne or another company was melting the new spousal gold dollars by the thousands, if not tens of thousands. Can someone here verify that story? I wanna say it was in Coinworld mag.
Later, Paul.