Quote:
Originally posted by pwd72s
Really? All I did was take a bunch of 1964 and earlier coins out of my store's till, once Nixon announced he'd let the value of the dollar "float"....
|
By the time Nixon was in office, most of the pre-1965 silver coins were out of circulation (bad money drives out good). The price of silver hit about $2 a troy ounce in 1967; the silver content in a dollar's worth of dimes or quarters is about .7 ounces which would have given a 40 cent "premium" over the face value. I know my parents were not spending any silver coins they had back then; I think there were plenty of other people who understood the value too and hoarded the coins. Are you sure you have your time-frames correct?
Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard internationally making U.S. currency a completely fiat money. That was in 1973; silver jumped to over $3 an ounce that year.
As a curiosity a similar situation actually exists with nickels right now. The copper and nickel metal in the nickel is actually worth more than 5 cents. Since both copper and nickel market prices are driven by industrial demand more than anything else, I don't think that hoarding nickels will be particularly worthwhile in the event of some type of economic meltdown. They would maintain their value in the event of hyper-inflation -- which could happen if the government chooses to pay off the national debt with the printing press rather than greater taxation.