Rawles
Senior Member (#133)
Silver Contributor
FALaholic # 133
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RE:
>> $1,000 worth of dimes, quaters and half dollars contained 723.4 ounces of
>>silver when minted. Because of wear most have less silver now...
That is correct. Most coin dealers assume that a $1,000 face value bag of circulated pre-1965 coins has just 715 ounces of silver, due to wear. That is assuming typical wear for a bag that is composed of nearly one-half of the coins with a 1964 mint date (the largest--and last--minting year of 90% silver coins), and a mix of earlier dates. A lot of the really early quarters (such as Walking Liberty quarters) in a typical bag are so badly worn that you can hardly read the dates. A bag of those woudl probbaly have less than 700 ounces of silver.
So, assuming 715 ounces of silver at the current spot price of $8.12 per ounce, that makes a $1,000 face value bag worth $5,805, wholesale. (Or just think of it as about 5.8 times face value.)
As for the date confusion: The proper term is "Pre-1965"--coins with a mint date of 1964 or earlier. All of the dimes and quarters minted in and after 1965 show a copper edge--they are a phoney sandwich ("clad") copper token rather than a proper silver coin. It is no wonder hat they drove the old 90% coins out of circulation so quickly. There was quite a coin shoratge from 1965 ot 1967.
The 1965-to-1970 Kennedy half dollars are not clad coinages. They are a debased 40% silver alloy. BTW, I still occassionally find those circulating (rarely) in rural areas. They mainly get back into circulation via schoolchildren who break into the wrong piggy bank, and don't know the difference. (Probably the same source as those quarters from McDonald's.)
I recommend that folks get their "beans, bullets and band-aids" squared way first. Then, you might want to purchase one $1,000 junk silver bag per adult family member, for barter purposes. Above and beyond that, any "investment" silver should probably be in the form of 100 ounce Englehard or Johnson-Matthey serialized silver bars. That is the least expensive (lowest premium) way to buy bullion silver that does not require an assay upon resale.
OBTW, if you have the storage space, I strongly recommend silver over fgold. I believe that silver is far more likely to double or triple in price than gold. (It isn't very far from $8 to $16, but psychologically it is a lot farther from $490 to $980!)
I still predict silver at $40+ per ounce by the end of the second term of the Bush administration.
__________________
~Jim Rawles~ 
FALFiles Member #133 (A "Three Digit Midget")
Editor of http://www.SurvivalBlog.com -- The Daily Web Log for Prepared Individuals Living in Uncertain Times. Bookmark it. It may save your life!
Author of the pro-gun novel "Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse" (new expanded edition is in print!), author of the books "Rawles on Retreats and Relocation" and "SurvivalBlog: The Best of the Blog".
I'm also the author of numerous firearms FAQs including the original FN-FAL FAQ and other FAQs on: AR-15 magazines, M1 Carbine magazines, M1911 magazines, M14/M1A magazines, Mauser rifles, Pre-1899 Guns, and European Ammo Box Markings Translations. These FAQs are all available free of charge at my web site:
http://www.rawles.to/FAQ_index.html
Mail forwarding address (not my physical locale):
James Wesley, Rawles
c/o P.O. Box 303
Moyie Springs, Idaho 83845 USA
e-mail: rawles@usa.net
Last edited by Rawles on December 05, 2005 at 20:31
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November 24, 2005 01:14
