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With current spot prices, is pre 33 gold at risk of being melted?

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  • GoldFinger1969GoldFinger1969 Posts: 2,837 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited November 15, 2025 10:31PM

    @lermish said:
    Though it doesnt make sense to us, I wasnt sure if these foreign adversaries prefer their gold in bar form, or >perhaps gold eagles or buffalos. It doesnt seem out of the realm of possibility for refiners to start melting down >junky pre33 if theres no longer a numismatic premium, but i have little knowledge of the inner workings of the >international gold market.

    Not as critical today, but Pre-1933, citizens of other countries wanted our gold coins, especially Double Eagles.

    Here's a NY Times article from 1931 talking about how the usual preference for gold bars was augmented with a request for coins/Double Eagles.

    This opinion is an informed guess but I don't have any data to back me up and could be totally wrong. That being >said... I don't think any country wants to deal with bags of coins even a little bit. I believe the vast majority is in ingot >form and is shuffled between different storage areas in the same vaults. I also believe on the global scale, the vast >majority of gold movement is on paper.

    Bars took off after WWI when we were still on a Gold Exchange Standard. Before that, coins were a good chunk or the majority of the gold settlement trade, more when you went back further in time.

  • GoldFinger1969GoldFinger1969 Posts: 2,837 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @BillJones said:
    what was wrong with K-Rands? I could find only one dealer at the Winter FUN show who would buy them.

    I think the fact it it only 0.9167 gold and not a domestic coin probably is why the premium that other coins have has long since faded for the K-Rand. My LCS says he sells only a fraction of the K-Rands that he sold 20 or 30 years ago...and usually Proofs to collectors.

    Once upon a time, the Kruggerand was the only modern gold coin regularly produced in volume that was widely available. So many choices today.

  • GoldFinger1969GoldFinger1969 Posts: 2,837 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited November 15, 2025 10:41PM

    @davewesen said:
    What percentage of the 90% silver coinage got melted during the Hunt brothers spike?

    Actually, not that much though there was damage to collectibles.

    A NY Times story I have posted on a thread here noted that the spike to $50 was so sharp and so quick that it didn't last long enough to melt many of the coins, including MSDs and other numismatics. Lots of coins were yanked back from refiners and wholsalers. We're talking about a 80% drop in silver in a few weeks, 50% in a few days.

  • WCCWCC Posts: 2,974 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @GoldFinger1969 said:

    @BillJones said:
    what was wrong with K-Rands? I could find only one dealer at the Winter FUN show who would buy them.

    I think the fact it it only 0.9167 gold and not a domestic coin probably is why the premium that other coins have has long since faded for the K-Rand. My LCS says he sells only a fraction of the K-Rands that he sold 20 or 30 years ago...and usually Proofs to collectors.

    Once upon a time, the Kruggerand was the only modern gold coin regularly produced in volume that was widely available. So many choices today.

    My inference is that the 1984 sanctions (if I have the year correct) changed the perception.

  • GoldFinger1969GoldFinger1969 Posts: 2,837 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @WCC said:
    My inference is that the 1984 sanctions (if I have the year correct) changed the perception.

    That didn't help, for sure.

    I also think that after a hot decade in the 1970's you had 2 decades following with not much interest in gold or gold coins. Financial assets took off.

  • coinbufcoinbuf Posts: 12,007 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @blitzdude said: I was offered 98% Spot/Melt (one in the same by the way)

    Here is a screenshot of melt for a St Gaudens

    Here is a screenshot of gold spot at this moment

    How are these "one and the same" when the melt value is $120 less than the gold spot value.

    My Lincoln Registry
    My Collection of Old Holders

    Never a slave to one plastic brand will I ever be.
  • jmlanzafjmlanzaf Posts: 37,629 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited November 16, 2025 2:08PM

    @coinbuf said:

    @blitzdude said: I was offered 98% Spot/Melt (one in the same by the way)

    Here is a screenshot of melt for a St Gaudens

    Here is a screenshot of gold spot at this moment

    How are these "one and the same" when the melt value is $120 less than the gold spot value.

    They are one and the same because they aren't one ounce of gold. Spot price is $/ ounce not $s. Expressed in units of $/ounce, as it should be, it is the same number.

    If I say that I'm paying "spot for pre-33 gold", I'm not saying that I'm paying $4080 for every coin - all the coins? I'm paying $4080 per ounce for every coin.

    That would be fun.

    "I've got 13 AGEs to sell, what are you paying? "

    "I'll pay double spot"

    "I'll take it!"

    "Here's your $8160!"

    All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.

  • coinbufcoinbuf Posts: 12,007 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @jmlanzaf said:
    They are one and the same because they aren't one ounce of gold. Spot price is $/ ounce not $s. Expressed in units of $/ounce, as it should be, it is the same number.

    I understand that spot is biased on an ounce of gold. Math still doesn't work.

    My Lincoln Registry
    My Collection of Old Holders

    Never a slave to one plastic brand will I ever be.
  • jmlanzafjmlanzaf Posts: 37,629 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited November 16, 2025 2:16PM

    @coinbuf said:

    @jmlanzaf said:
    They are one and the same because they aren't one ounce of gold. Spot price is $/ ounce not $s. Expressed in units of $/ounce, as it should be, it is the same number.

    I understand that spot is biased on an ounce of gold. Math still doesn't work.

    All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.

  • coinbufcoinbuf Posts: 12,007 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @jmlanzaf said:

    Pre33 is 90% not 97%

    My Lincoln Registry
    My Collection of Old Holders

    Never a slave to one plastic brand will I ever be.
  • alaura22alaura22 Posts: 3,651 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @coinbuf said:

    @jmlanzaf said:

    Pre33 is 90% not 97%

    $20 pre 33 gold has .9675 of gold

  • jmlanzafjmlanzaf Posts: 37,629 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @coinbuf said:

    @jmlanzaf said:

    Pre33 is 90% not 97%

    That's the gold weight but the fineness

    All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.

  • MasonGMasonG Posts: 6,301 ✭✭✭✭✭

    St. G. melt @ $3962.57 = gold spot @ $4097.

  • coinbufcoinbuf Posts: 12,007 ✭✭✭✭✭

    And here is what you get from the site you linked. What was posted above is that spot and melt are the same, they are not as the site you linked shows just as what I posted showed. Melt is a percentage of spot they are not equal.

    My Lincoln Registry
    My Collection of Old Holders

    Never a slave to one plastic brand will I ever be.
  • GoldFinger1969GoldFinger1969 Posts: 2,837 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @coinbuf said:
    I understand that spot is biased on an ounce of gold. Math still doesn't work.

    We're adjusting for the fact that a Double Eagle is 0.9675 troy ounces, right ?

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