I had three paper routes. I hoarded all the silver I could get my hands on. There were people on my routes still tipping me with Morgans and Peace dollars. Ahhhh...the jingle of REAL change in my pocket.
Mark . . . .thanks so much for the remembrances . . .
I can date the time as we had moved from an older house in Rose Park (SLC, UT) to the 'newer' Rose Park in 1967. Nuclear fam, mom a teacher and dad a mechanical engineer, and I remember us gathered around the kitchen bar (sort of a unique location at the time) and going through change in 1968-69. There were still a few dateless Buffs around, but the fun was finding silver. Mom and Dad would get some loose change, and we'd sort through it on the kitchen table sorting out the silver. We already knew at that time that silver would be special . . .but never realized how much so.
We probably sorted out several rolls of dimes, and one or two rolls of quarters.
I admit . . . that planted the seed for my appreciation of numismatics. I ended up with most of the junk silver.
A few quotes from LBJ when he signed the Coinage Act July 23, 1965.....
Some have asked whether our silver coins will disappear. The answer is very definitely-no.
Our present silver coins won't disappear and they won't even become rarities. We estimate that there are now 12 billion--I repeat, more than 12 billion silver dimes and quarters and half dollars that are now outstanding. We will make another billion before we halt production. And they will be used side-by-side with our new coins.
Since the life of a silver coin is about 25 years, we expect our traditional silver coins to be with us in large numbers for a long, long time.
If anybody has any idea of hoarding our silver coins, let me say this. Treasury has a lot of silver on hand, and it can be, and it will be used to keep the price of silver in line with its value in our present silver coin. There will be no profit in holding them out of circulation for the value of their silver content.
I tried to hoard as many of those 12 billion as I could.
it's crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide
@Justacommeman I would suggest reading The Big Silver Melt -- The untold story of the illegal melting of U.s. coinage and the coming upsurge in coin values. Merton, Henry A., 1983
A short read, the book gives all the details of an illegal silver melting operation in the boonies of upstate New York in roughly the 1967-1969 time period. From sourcing the coin, separating the silver from the clad, melting operation, transporting the bars to the airport and getting them to market in Europe. It's a wild story.
In 1965 I was 18 and a Freshman at Mizzou in Columbia Mo. I worked at a snack bar on campus and remember getting plenty of silver at first, then less and less over the next 4 years.
I wanted coins so I could call my GF back home. I managed to save about 20 Walker halves, but the rest went into the pay phone. Dam.
Before college I was a stamp collector - double dam.
The Golden Rule: Those with the gold make the rules.
@vplite said:
In 1965 I was 18 and a Freshman at Mizzou in Columbia Mo. I worked at a snack bar on campus and remember getting plenty of silver at first, then less and less over the next 4 years.
I wanted coins so I could call my GF back home. I managed to save about 20 Walker halves, but the rest went into the pay phone. Dam.
Before college I was a stamp collector - double dam.
Still cheaper then collecting girl friends
m
Walker Proof Digital Album Fellas, leave the tight pants to the ladies. If I can count the coins in your pockets you better use them to call a tailor. Stay thirsty my friends......
I was in my first year at college and somehow knew that silver was going away. I had a part time job of delivering candy to the small grocery stores all over town. Whenever I got paid in silver, I'd buy from the company with my bosses blessings. I had that job, which later bloomed into sales and doing bookkeeping as well as delivering, from 1963 to 1966...then came active duty and the coin stuff took a backseat.
"Ain't None of Them play like him (Bix Beiderbecke) Yet." Louis Armstrong
I inherited my father's IHC collection when he passed in 1958. His collection consisted of coins that he found out of circulation in his life with none to my knowledge ever being purchased from a dealer. I keep his collection intact today with no additions. Had the 1909-S and the 1908-S but not the 1877. I treasure his set as is and I will never add or subtract from it.
I had been collecting modern coins since about 1955 and accumulated most coins from 1964 back to 1932 mostly in circulated condition in Whitman albums. And I have a few special coins that I aquired at a coin shop in Long Beach. CA (S&G Coins) when visiting my grand parents there.
In 1964 I graduated from high school and entered an engineering college. My time for collecting coins literally disappeared at that time. I wouod still plug my holes with clad coins, but I my interest remained before 1932 with the coins that I needed to complete a set.
I do not think that it ever occured to me that a significant fortune could be attained by hoarding silver coins. My mother, who was not a collector thought otherwise, left me with a pot of silver coins that she collected.......and to this day I have never reviewed them. Probably nothing special, but they will be for my grand daughter to find. Can it be more special than to inherit a trove of silver coins from you great grand mother?
Great stories. I was just a couple years too young but I remember seeing plenty of halves in circulation. Undoubtedly many / most of these were silver (mid-70s).
My dad was one of those paper route kids in rural Idaho. He hated silver dollars. On collection day he could hardly keep his pants up for all the Morgans & Peace dollars.
@3keepSECRETif2rDEAD said:
What a Cool thread here!...Thanks to all in here for sharing...and Thank You @Justacommeman, for caring...now back to the misses because she’s staring
She just must be the secret. Good for you sir.
mark
Walker Proof Digital Album Fellas, leave the tight pants to the ladies. If I can count the coins in your pockets you better use them to call a tailor. Stay thirsty my friends......
While silver disappeared in US coinage it continued for larger denomination coins in France and Germany into the mid 1970s. When I was visiting Germany in the early 1990s you could still find silver 10DM coins - and like a fool I spent them because the silver wasn't worth as much as 10DM.
Tir nam beann, nan gleann, s'nan gaisgeach ~ Saorstat Albanaich a nis!
@chumley said:
I was a 12 year old paperboy at time......handled all kinds of change.....unfortunately,I was clueless about silver
Me too, except I was 10. I was so enamored with the 'bi-metallic' look of the new clad stuff, I traded my 1963 two dollar bills for the new coins. It was strange to see that copper layer. (I don't think any world coins did that before us)
My dad would fish out the silver from my collecting. Many years later, I traded his 90% for dollars, when they were at par. Years after that, he sold the dollars. It wasn't a lot, maybe a few hundred.
Someone already commented about the 40% halves making it seem like not such a big deal, the change-over I mean.
I take it for granted it wasn’t announced overnight. What was the transition like? How much lead time was given between silver and clad? How long to it take before silver coins pretty much disappeared? Was it done orderly? Were there big arbitrage opportunites? Were there places in the country that it disappeared more quickly? Were rural areas laggards? It just seem like a really big deal. When did you start pulling silver to save? Did Icollectors have an advantage over the layman? Did you put it in a coffee can? I asked my Dad and he really didn’t remember it as a game changer of any sort. He wasn’t a collector.
Please feel free to tell your stories. Hopefully Roger didn’t write a book about this.
There was serious hoarding going on as early as 1962. Higher mintages were the result of a very robust economy but they soared in '62/ '63. I believe part of this was caused by stories in the newspaper that silver stocks were being drawn down by coinage production and they feared they might need to find an alternative. It was well known in 1964 that silver was definitely ending and they had even passed laws to freeze the date on coins to discourage collectors who were unfairly being blamed for the massive coin shortage. They were also seeking input on new coinage materials.
I believe it was January of '65 that Coins magazine ran a picture of what the new quarter would look like. It was very close. By mid-'65 everything was a done deal and new legislation had been passed to freeze the 1965 date in perpetuity, eliminate mint marks, and take other actions to punish coin collectors. There was even a bill in Congress that would effectively outlaw all new coin collecting.
Of course these actions pretty much killed the hobby and chased away millions of collectors. The coin market simply imploded and people stayed away in droves until 1999.
Trying to keep silver in circulation in the '65 to '68 period was like trying to fill a very leaky bucket. Despite continued minting of silver right up till Feb 1966 silver was disappearing rapidly. All the attention on pocket change also managed to eradicate all better dates, better conditions, and even the nicer buffalo nickels. But then silver prices began increasing in mid-'68 and the FED began pulling silver. They did not announce it but suddenly there would be no silver at all in rolls that had passed through the FED. There were five or seven per roll before this.
The withdrawal of silver continued for one year by which time there was almost no silver left. Of course there were a few stragglers up until 1971 when silver was gone. Almost all silver found in circulation since 1971 are coins that had been removed and found their way back.
I'd guess the FED was only able to retrieve some 40% of the silver that had been in circulation when LBJ promised it would be there "forever". It lasted four years and only 2 1/2 years after cessation of the minting of silver coin.
I remember back around ‘81-82 I had a paper route and when I delivered a paper to this elderly woman she asked if I minded mailing a letter for her, since it was about a 10 minute bike ride out of my way I hesitated but told her I would with a smile. I remember her saying thank you and gave me a “This is for you” and pressed a silver Roosie dime in my hand. I always wondered if she realized she was giving me a silver dime or not but I kept it and still have it today. Bit off topic but figured I’d share
Hellz yeah those were the days!
I think I spent most of the silver change my mom had hoarded up down at the donut shop...then it was The Human League and Fun Boy 3..from then on I was spending the rest of her squirelled away coinage on clove cigarettes.
I'd do it all again..no questions asked.
I was a collector at the time, but not interested in silver at all per se, and not so interested in coins in circulation, so no real affect on me. I recall the change as a gradual thing. My top three priorities at the time were girls, so my memory of this topic may not be the most reliable.
Comments
I had three paper routes. I hoarded all the silver I could get my hands on. There were people on my routes still tipping me with Morgans and Peace dollars. Ahhhh...the jingle of REAL change in my pocket.
Cheers
Bob
Mark . . . .thanks so much for the remembrances . . .
I can date the time as we had moved from an older house in Rose Park (SLC, UT) to the 'newer' Rose Park in 1967. Nuclear fam, mom a teacher and dad a mechanical engineer, and I remember us gathered around the kitchen bar (sort of a unique location at the time) and going through change in 1968-69. There were still a few dateless Buffs around, but the fun was finding silver. Mom and Dad would get some loose change, and we'd sort through it on the kitchen table sorting out the silver. We already knew at that time that silver would be special . . .but never realized how much so.
We probably sorted out several rolls of dimes, and one or two rolls of quarters.
I admit . . . that planted the seed for my appreciation of numismatics. I ended up with most of the junk silver.
Drunner
I was 9 and don't recall it being a big deal at least to a kid. By the late 60s when I started looking for silver coins they were few and far between.
A few quotes from LBJ when he signed the Coinage Act July 23, 1965.....
Some have asked whether our silver coins will disappear. The answer is very definitely-no.
Our present silver coins won't disappear and they won't even become rarities. We estimate that there are now 12 billion--I repeat, more than 12 billion silver dimes and quarters and half dollars that are now outstanding. We will make another billion before we halt production. And they will be used side-by-side with our new coins.
Since the life of a silver coin is about 25 years, we expect our traditional silver coins to be with us in large numbers for a long, long time.
If anybody has any idea of hoarding our silver coins, let me say this. Treasury has a lot of silver on hand, and it can be, and it will be used to keep the price of silver in line with its value in our present silver coin. There will be no profit in holding them out of circulation for the value of their silver content.
I tried to hoard as many of those 12 billion as I could.
it's crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide
@Justacommeman I would suggest reading The Big Silver Melt -- The untold story of the illegal melting of U.s. coinage and the coming upsurge in coin values. Merton, Henry A., 1983
A short read, the book gives all the details of an illegal silver melting operation in the boonies of upstate New York in roughly the 1967-1969 time period. From sourcing the coin, separating the silver from the clad, melting operation, transporting the bars to the airport and getting them to market in Europe. It's a wild story.
Any other forum members read this book?
Jeff
In 1965 I was 18 and a Freshman at Mizzou in Columbia Mo. I worked at a snack bar on campus and remember getting plenty of silver at first, then less and less over the next 4 years.
I wanted coins so I could call my GF back home. I managed to save about 20 Walker halves, but the rest went into the pay phone. Dam.
Before college I was a stamp collector - double dam.
Still cheaper then collecting girl friends
m
Fellas, leave the tight pants to the ladies. If I can count the coins in your pockets you better use them to call a tailor. Stay thirsty my friends......
I was in my first year at college and somehow knew that silver was going away. I had a part time job of delivering candy to the small grocery stores all over town. Whenever I got paid in silver, I'd buy from the company with my bosses blessings. I had that job, which later bloomed into sales and doing bookkeeping as well as delivering, from 1963 to 1966...then came active duty and the coin stuff took a backseat.
Louis Armstrong
I inherited my father's IHC collection when he passed in 1958. His collection consisted of coins that he found out of circulation in his life with none to my knowledge ever being purchased from a dealer. I keep his collection intact today with no additions. Had the 1909-S and the 1908-S but not the 1877. I treasure his set as is and I will never add or subtract from it.
I had been collecting modern coins since about 1955 and accumulated most coins from 1964 back to 1932 mostly in circulated condition in Whitman albums. And I have a few special coins that I aquired at a coin shop in Long Beach. CA (S&G Coins) when visiting my grand parents there.
In 1964 I graduated from high school and entered an engineering college. My time for collecting coins literally disappeared at that time. I wouod still plug my holes with clad coins, but I my interest remained before 1932 with the coins that I needed to complete a set.
I do not think that it ever occured to me that a significant fortune could be attained by hoarding silver coins. My mother, who was not a collector thought otherwise, left me with a pot of silver coins that she collected.......and to this day I have never reviewed them. Probably nothing special, but they will be for my grand daughter to find. Can it be more special than to inherit a trove of silver coins from you great grand mother?
OINK
RE: "(Today is National Mixed Metaphor Day.)"
Olive or onion?
All interesting stories, thanks for sharing thanks rln
I got 2 rolls of half dollars from the bank this week and got 1 1966 half
Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value. Zero. Voltaire. Ebay coinbowlllc
Great stories. I was just a couple years too young but I remember seeing plenty of halves in circulation. Undoubtedly many / most of these were silver (mid-70s).
My dad was one of those paper route kids in rural Idaho. He hated silver dollars. On collection day he could hardly keep his pants up for all the Morgans & Peace dollars.
What a Cool thread here!...Thanks to all in here for sharing...and Thank You @Justacommeman, for caring...now back to the misses because she’s staring
She just must be the secret. Good for you sir.
mark
Fellas, leave the tight pants to the ladies. If I can count the coins in your pockets you better use them to call a tailor. Stay thirsty my friends......
While silver disappeared in US coinage it continued for larger denomination coins in France and Germany into the mid 1970s. When I was visiting Germany in the early 1990s you could still find silver 10DM coins - and like a fool I spent them because the silver wasn't worth as much as 10DM.
Me too, except I was 10. I was so enamored with the 'bi-metallic' look of the new clad stuff, I traded my 1963 two dollar bills for the new coins. It was strange to see that copper layer. (I don't think any world coins did that before us)
My dad would fish out the silver from my collecting. Many years later, I traded his 90% for dollars, when they were at par. Years after that, he sold the dollars. It wasn't a lot, maybe a few hundred.
Someone already commented about the 40% halves making it seem like not such a big deal, the change-over I mean.
There was serious hoarding going on as early as 1962. Higher mintages were the result of a very robust economy but they soared in '62/ '63. I believe part of this was caused by stories in the newspaper that silver stocks were being drawn down by coinage production and they feared they might need to find an alternative. It was well known in 1964 that silver was definitely ending and they had even passed laws to freeze the date on coins to discourage collectors who were unfairly being blamed for the massive coin shortage. They were also seeking input on new coinage materials.
I believe it was January of '65 that Coins magazine ran a picture of what the new quarter would look like. It was very close. By mid-'65 everything was a done deal and new legislation had been passed to freeze the 1965 date in perpetuity, eliminate mint marks, and take other actions to punish coin collectors. There was even a bill in Congress that would effectively outlaw all new coin collecting.
Of course these actions pretty much killed the hobby and chased away millions of collectors. The coin market simply imploded and people stayed away in droves until 1999.
Trying to keep silver in circulation in the '65 to '68 period was like trying to fill a very leaky bucket. Despite continued minting of silver right up till Feb 1966 silver was disappearing rapidly. All the attention on pocket change also managed to eradicate all better dates, better conditions, and even the nicer buffalo nickels. But then silver prices began increasing in mid-'68 and the FED began pulling silver. They did not announce it but suddenly there would be no silver at all in rolls that had passed through the FED. There were five or seven per roll before this.
The withdrawal of silver continued for one year by which time there was almost no silver left. Of course there were a few stragglers up until 1971 when silver was gone. Almost all silver found in circulation since 1971 are coins that had been removed and found their way back.
I'd guess the FED was only able to retrieve some 40% of the silver that had been in circulation when LBJ promised it would be there "forever". It lasted four years and only 2 1/2 years after cessation of the minting of silver coin.
I remember back around ‘81-82 I had a paper route and when I delivered a paper to this elderly woman she asked if I minded mailing a letter for her, since it was about a 10 minute bike ride out of my way I hesitated but told her I would with a smile. I remember her saying thank you and gave me a “This is for you” and pressed a silver Roosie dime in my hand. I always wondered if she realized she was giving me a silver dime or not but I kept it and still have it today. Bit off topic but figured I’d share
Great stories, keep them coming!
My YouTube Channel
Hellz yeah those were the days!
I think I spent most of the silver change my mom had hoarded up down at the donut shop...then it was The Human League and Fun Boy 3..from then on I was spending the rest of her squirelled away coinage on clove cigarettes.
I'd do it all again..no questions asked.
I was a collector at the time, but not interested in silver at all per se, and not so interested in coins in circulation, so no real affect on me. I recall the change as a gradual thing. My top three priorities at the time were girls, so my memory of this topic may not be the most reliable.
Is there any data supporting silver coin hoarding in 1962 as mentioned above?