You asked a very complicated question that goes all the way back to the beginning of US monetary history. Good thing I already compiled a partial chronology:
goldsheetlinks.com
Money was really defined in terms of gold and silver coinage, with currency and its rules coming later.
We started in 1792 with a bimetallic standard, with silver dollars get devalued in 1837, then subsidiary coinage in 1853, then again in 1873. The rest of the century was a political fight between Eastern Republican gold backers, and Western Democratic populist silver backers, ending in the 1900 election with the defeat of William Jennings Byrant (who went on to become infamous in the Scopes Monkey Trail) and the election of McKinley and the Gold Standard Act of 1900.
Silver has a long tradition of getting screwed ;)
Great Book - Crime of 1873 by Robert R. Van Ryzin ISBN 0-87341-873-5
Website for Crime of 1873: micheloud.com
Website for Bimetalism: micheloud.com
Gresham's Law: micheloud.com
(absolutely critical to understand why gold beat silver by the end of the 19th century)
Gold Standard: micheloud.com
(starting with Germany in 1871 up to the US in 1900, the world abandons silver)
<In the past 50 years, there was at least one period, possibly still ongoing in some cases, when silver coins were pulled from circulation by individuals for their silver content, which exceeded their face value. You likely can provide a brief overview for this.>
Under a bimetallic standard, silver coin got pulled according to Gresham's Law when it was devalued. The face value was higher than the silver value, so folks exchanged it for gold coin where a $10 gold coin actually contained $10 worth of gold. Silver coin disappeared for monetary reasons in 1837, 1853, and 1873. Now for bullion reasons, silver would disappear when the bullion content of a dollar was higher than $1.00. Subsiidary coinage contains .7234 ounces, so once silver got over $1.38 per ounce coinage would disappear from circulation, which for all practical purposes has been every year since 1964. Theoretically, pre-1982 copper cents should disappear from circulation if copper ever gets above about $1.50 per pound.
<What weight of silver was used to back silver certificates, and were they profitable to redeem as well or did the government restrict redemption or change the rules for existing silver certificates? I am aware that no redemption is any longer possible, but my interest is in the past.>
A $1 silver certificate was redeemable into $1 of subsidiary coinage, so the factors mentioned above would also apply to silver certificates. Redemption of silver certificates was stopped in 1968.
<I am most interested in the opposite situation, where the value of the silver backing a silver certificate would be less than the face value of the certificate, presumably far less in some cases, but I don't have even a wild guess as to how much. What was the history over time of the value of silver that could be contemporaneously redeemed for a given face value of a silver certificate? >
This goes back to what I described at the top. If silver coinage had less bullion in it that face, then silver certificates would have the same problem, with the result being that both would be exchanged for better "good money" which would be either gold coinage or gold certificates.
<I would be surprised if you had anything off the top of your head on this>
The scary thing is that as a coin collector for almost 40 years, I have all the above dates memorized, and even the .7234 number for 90% silver was typed without looking at the Redbook (although I did verify it) |
