So when did silver start to begin HTF

GranvilleATPro

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So when did silver begin to be HTF

Kind of an off beat question I have always wondered about. For those who were old enough to have change in their pockets during the 60's, how quickly did silver begin disappearing in folks regular change. Just curious to know cause lets say a property or house is circa late 60's, what likelihood would there to be silver. I was born in '69 and would not have known when silver began disappearing or know when people realized they better start looking for it or holding on to it.
 

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They started to disappear right after the changeover to clad. People started hoarding silver. It was still common to find some in change during the 60's but you didn't find a lot of it. I concentrate on houses 60 years old or older. The ones 50 years old will probably have some but a lot less likely. I'll leave those to when the older ones have all been hunted!
 

I'm too young to remember as well. But from what I hear, it was as Mark says: Very fast. Like .... by the end of 1965, it was already getting to be hard to find silver ?

Example: There was a lady who used to post on T'net years ago, who during the early to mid 1960s had worked in Nevada gambling casinos (think "slot machines"). She recalled that it was quite bizzare: Seemingly within the space of less than a year, they weren't finding silver dollars and silver coins anymore. Yes I know that's probably an exaggeration, but ..... she said it was quite quick.
 

In about 1978 I bought these silver coins from an older gentleman! Initially there were twice this amount but I sold half to a friend!
IMG_1031.webp
 

Very quickly, I knew many people that started hoarding silver coins as soon as the change was announced. I knew a guy that owned a restaurant back then that had over 20k in silver coins. Then of course the government was removing them as they cycled through the Federal Reserve system
 

Thanks for the info. Just finished reading up on a great article detailing the events leading up to the coinage changes. Amazing how cunning the government was and also with the silver certificates. Interesting stuff
 

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Kind of an off beat question I have always wondered about. For those who were old enough to have change in their pockets during the 60's, how quickly did silver begin disappearing in folks regular change. Just curious to know cause lets say a property or house is circa late 60's, what likelihood would there to be silver. I was born in '69 and would not have known when silver began disappearing or know when people realized they better start looking for it or holding on to it.
I was born in 1965. My father owned a pool hall and would bring me when I was 3-4 years old to hangout for an hour or so during the day. An older gentleman that worked for him showed me how to look for them and I got to keep what I found. After he sold the pool hall he bought a gas station an I got to keep those too. I know I filled 2 coffee cans from 1968 to 1978. After 1978, they were very hard to find and I didn't search again until a friend who owned a laundry mat let me search through 5-7,000 dollars a month in the late 90's. I would find $4-6 bucks per $5,000 roughly. However some were proofs which leads me to believe these were possibly stolen and reintroduced. We would get people at the gas station try and pay with old silver dollars and even a $20!gold piece came in because they didn't know what they have.
 

I was born in 1965. My father owned a pool hall and would bring me when I was 3-4 years old to hangout for an hour or so during the day. An older gentleman that worked for him showed me how to look for them and I got to keep what I found. After he sold the pool hall he bought a gas station an I got to keep those too. I know I filled 2 coffee cans from 1968 to 1978. After 1978, they were very hard to find and I didn't search again until a friend who owned a laundry mat let me search through 5-7,000 dollars a month in the late 90's. I would find $4-6 bucks per $5,000 roughly. However some were proofs which leads me to believe these were possibly stolen and reintroduced. We would get people at the gas station try and pay with old silver dollars and even a $20!gold piece came in because they didn't know what they have.

My mother in law works at little mom and pops kinda store, and she showed me her collection of xoins over the years she worked there. Its u believable what people will pay for stuff with.
 

My father in law, he's 87, he hoarded silver coins when they made the change, and has a bunch still.
 

That was the fad back then. Everybody was hoarding silver....especially my parents and grandparents generation that were brought up during the depression.
 

I was in high school during the middle 60's and can remember having Merc's in my pocket along with silver quarters to buy gas with and a burger, when I came home from Vietnam the funny money, as we called it, was becoming more prevalent, lot of people thought it would go away & the "real" money would come back.
 

I think what also triggered increased hoarding of silver is a down turn in the economy. People start to worry and start saving what is available. I think the silver coins had pretty much disappeared by late 60's early 70's with only a very few showing up once in a while.
 

Amazing how cunning the government was and also with the silver certificates.

JFK signed executive order 11110 authorizing the Treasury to issue $4.2 billion in silver certificates, usurping the power of the Federal Reserve. The Fed didn't like that and had him assassinated.
 

Yeah, right........:icon_scratch:
 

That sounds like a boatload of something.
 

JFK signed executive order 11110 authorizing the Treasury to issue $4.2 billion in silver certificates, usurping the power of the Federal Reserve. The Fed didn't like that and had him assassinated.

"Critics of the theory note that Kennedy called for and signed legislation phasing out Silver Certificates in favor of Federal Reserve Notes, thereby enhancing the power of the Federal Reserve; and that Executive Order 11110 was a technicality that only delegated existing presidential powers to the Secretary of the Treasury for administrative convenience during a period of transition"

...personally, I think it was aliens who came here to mine all our gold & silver before we found it all with our detectors...
 

I was born in 1963. My father owned a small coin laundry. We counted, rolled, and took coins to the bank once a week. It was the norm to find several silver coins every week consistently till the mid to late 70's. The number of silver coins seemed to consistently decrease over the years but like I already stated, we would find some (sometimes a good number of them) every week. I sold most of my collection when silver hit the 21 x face value mark.
 

I can remember in the early 1960's bicycling to the local corner store where the owner was nice enough
to let me sort through his register change to look for silver and other coins. I was 10 to 12 at the time.

Gave up on that when I got my learners permit :hello2:
 

I can remember in the early 1960's bicycling to the local corner store where the owner was nice enough
to let me sort through his register change to look for silver and other coins. I was 10 to 12 at the time.

Gave up on that when I got my learners permit :hello2:
 

I remember when the '64 90% Kennedy halves came out people went nuts and hoarded them because of Kennedy's Image due to the recent assassination. Kids at my school wanted to trade Franklins and Walkers for Kennedys. I traded mine for walkers hoping to get the key dates, no such luck ever happened so I bought comic books with them instead. Comics like the first issue of Spider Man. Threw those away too, along with Mickey Mantle and Johnny U cards...The scourge of the Baby Boom generation...the stuff we threw away!
 

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