Coinage Act of 1965
The Coinage Act of 1965 eliminated silver from the circulating U.S. dime and quarter dollar coins. It also reduced the silver content of the half dollar from 90 percent to 40 percent. There had been coin shortages beginning in 1959, and the United States Bureau of the Mint expanded production. The act also banned the production of silver dollars until at least 1970.
About Coinage Act of 1965 in brief
The Coinage Act of 1965 eliminated silver from the circulating U.S. dime and quarter dollar coins. It also reduced the silver content of the half dollar from 90 percent to 40 percent. There had been coin shortages beginning in 1959, and the United States Bureau of the Mint expanded production. The new coins began to enter circulation in late 1965, and alleviated the shortages. They passed side by side with their silver counterparts for a time, but the precious metal coins were hoarded beginning in 1967 as the Treasury ended its efforts to keep silver prices low. The act also banned the production of silver dollars until at least 1970. The silver in a dollar’s worth of quarters would be worth more as bullion than as money if the price of the metal rose past USD 1. 38 per ounce. Without the government as the supplier of last resort, silver would likely rise in price, making it likely to make it profitable to melt it in the last resort of paper money for silver certificates: troy ounces of silver in coinage in 1963, up from just over 38 million in 1958 to 111 million in 1963. In 1958, with the return of lend-lease bullion, the Treasury’s stock of silver reached 2. 1 billion t Troy ounces; it began to offer the metal at USD 0. 91 per ounce to the public, despite warnings of the Conference of Western Governors that there was not enough silver to make these sales and maintain coinage operations. Worldwide consumption of silver between 1958 and 1965 was only about 15 percent of more than 10 million troy ozs, but production increased between 1959 and 1965 by more than 50 percent.
At the same time, the Mint’s production of. silver increased as it attempted to meet demand; it used 111 5 million ounces in 1963 and 111 111 ounces in 1965. The Act of 1792 authorized six silver coins, in value from five cents to a dollar, and prescribed their weights and fineness. The fact that the dime, quarter dollar and other smaller silver coins contained less silver in proportion to the dollar helped keep them in circulation. It was not until 1873 that the dollar was no longer equivalent to a set amount of silver, and U. S. coins flowed overseas for melting until adjustments were made to their size and weight in 1834 and again in 1853, when the amount of bullion in the silver coins worth less than a dollar was reduced. The bill was enacted with Johnson’s signature on July 23, 1965; it was signed into law by the president on August 1, 1965. It is still in force today. It has been called the “Silver Act” of 1965, Pub. L. 89–81, 79 Stat 254, and was signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson on August 2, 1965, on the advice of the Secretary of the Treasury, James Madison, and Secretary of State James A. Baker, and signed by Congress on August 3, 1965 on the recommendation of the secretary of the treasury.
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This page is based on the article Coinage Act of 1965 published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 01, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
