historic examples of alloy recovery on silver

[John_doe]

Just wondering of anyone knows of historical examples of governments taking steps to recover circulating silver?

[henrysmedford]

Yes-- http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coinage_Act_of_1857

The Coinage Act of 1857 was an act of the United States Congress which forbade the use of foreign coins as legal tender, repealing all acts "authorizing the currency of foreign gold or silver coins". Specific coins would be exchanged at the Treasury and re-coined. The act, which is four paragraphs long, was approved on February 21, 1857.

[henrysmedford]

Also from an old post.

If you think about most US silver coins came from melted foreign coins so no telling how old the silver is in that junk silver is or what coin it was from Wikipedia--

Coinage Act of 1857 was an act of the United States Congress which forbade the use of foreign coins as legal tender, repealing all acts "authorizing the currency of foreign gold or silver coins". Specific coins would be exchanged at the Treasury and recoined. The act was approved on February 21, 1857.
Before this Act, foreign coins, such as the Spanish dollar, were widely used[1] and allowed as legal tender by the Act of 1806.[2]
In addition to foreign coins being banned, the Coinage Act of 1857 also discontinued the American half-cent.

And see--http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsl&fileName=011/llsl011.db&recNum=184

[John_doe]

So was this an actual recovery, or did they just smelt the older foreign coins in order to monetize under a uniform currency?


I can see WHY they did this, but it does not seem like a recovery in the modern sense.

[John_doe]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Reserve_Act

We are seeing things closer to this now. It is more of a currency debasement with the recovery as opposed to a re-issue of a uniform currency.


I guess I was looking for an instance where silver was recovered and the currency was debased.

[henrysmedford]

OK Roman Debasement see--

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_currency#Debasement_of_the_currency

[John_doe]

OK Roman Debasement see--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_currency#Debasement_of_the_currency

cool thank you! someone has done their homework.

Was there a recovery associated with the roman debasement, I don't think I saw anything in regards to that in the wikipedia article? Still quite interesting.

Has this ever happened in modern times? (say the last 200 years?)